The Delicate Lawn
By Josh Simon
From the sky, glass rained upon Ollie’s dirty blonde hair. As we curled up next to each other in a smelly, burnt-out, rusted sewer tunnel, we couldn’t imagine why we were victim to the quick and irrational assault that now faced us. We were soaked from eyebrow to eyebrow in an unforgiving New York winter that scolded you as it fell. The yellow cabs had swirled on and off the roads that night trying to grip the slushy surface like a dog that had just been hit by a train. A slow, chugging like will to move a few more feet before collapsing into the endless heaps of muddy grey snow that would pile so generously in the gutters. New York winters will do that. It was in fact, during a New York winter when I saw my first corpse. Although most people won’t admit it, there is a dark yearning deep within themselves to see a corpse. Some people go their entire lives without ever seeing death in actual reality.
A homeless man had fallen asleep on an outdoor subway platform. He had probably closed his eyes tightly to resist the wind that whips a bare face to a red and scorched plain. His facial expression was still like a concrete golem. I though of the homeless man I had seen that winter as four more empty bottles of Mickeys crashed next to my soaked converse sending shards every direction. I gnawed vacantly on my fingernails as Ollie screamed for them to stop; he begged and pleaded but the violent pitching continued. We weren’t entirely sure why the young kids below were continually throwing bottles that once held liquid happiness but now simply consisted of empty waste. The kids who began to throw the bottles at us couldn’t have been any older than fourteen. They resembled a hostile tribe chasing an estranged colonist out of a nameless African country. With bottles and baggy pants as their sole identifying trait they stood as one.
As the glass continued to crash around us frantically in monsoon like quantities they finally came to a stop. They must’ve been trying to kill us that night as we huddled helpless to some teenagers and a city that was slipping on every cold, unfinished crack in the streets. After waiting another hour, we finally left the tunnel to an empty street mottled with green and brown glass that somehow resembled a fragile and delicate lawn. They resembled a lawn for aesthetics. A lawn that could hold no picnics or baseball games. We walked across the crackling glass beneath us. The pop and hiss of every step echoed through the last part of the tunnel as we approached 5th and 78th. We walked back home trudging past street vendors with hot dogs and honey-roasted nuts. Past the overpriced Indian gift shops and the over salted streets.
It was another New York winter and I suppose everyone wanted to see a corpse.
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Alyssa Duran- Week Three- Story 3 (mini-workshop)
The Reading
The building was decrepit and the people inside were equally just as aged. Alice was their opposite and she felt it. Her class had made it a requirement to do community service. Some people had chosen to clean a park and others had helped the hospitals for a day. Alice and a couple of friends had chosen to read a book to an elder for an hour. This had seemed easy enough and short enough. Other opportunities had been posted for far longer than the hour and she was not prone to an excess amount of work. Yet, she was depressed by the mass re-scheduling that took place a few days before with her and her friends and now she was alone.
The doors were bubbled over in ancient tint and they creaked open as she stepped inside, tightening her grip on her thick book. The room was dimly lit and silent. The carpet was burgundy and had a plush, sinking feeling under her feet. She heard the gurgling air of the water from the fish tanks off to the side of her as the little fish swam happily in their cages. A little dusty lady sat at the register table and eyed her suspiciously. She walked with tentative steps and set her book down, letting the woman see the title.
“I’m here to read. My school should have called.” The little woman blinked slowly, comprehending her words. Then, with a difficult effort, she nodded in understanding, as if her neck would break if she did it too hard.
“Room 139. He’s waiting.” She handed Alice a little hand-written nametag. The letters of her name were large and slanted, written with careful execution while still maintaining the sloppy aspect that was the woman’s trademark. Alice grabbed it and stuck it to the front of her striped shirt, thanked the woman, and made her way down the hall to the inevitable room.
The hall was far more silent than the lobby had been. There were no gurgling fish to take the grave-like atmosphere away. Alice could feel it full force and she huddled her arms around her chest as if she were going to freeze.
Room 139 was not as far down as Alice thought as she reached the white, peeling door. She knocked lightly, knowing her knock would not be heard. For a moment, she thought, if the mystery elder in there did not answer she could go, but she knew she had a duty to her grade. She needed to pursue this goal. She waited, but no one came, so she opened the door and peered inside.
An old man in a blue recliner sat patiently waiting for her to come in. “I can’t get to the door too quick.” He explained as he saw her head poke in from behind the door. “I can’t speak too loudly either.” This was true. His throat was raspy and laden with years of smoking cigarettes. “Please come in. You can take that chair.” His wrinkled hands ushered towards a little metal folding chair stationed under a crooked desk.
Alice grabbed the chair and positioned herself across from him. The man seemed familiar to her, but she thought nothing of it. She opened her book and took a breath to read her book.
“Wait.” The old man sat up a bit. Alice looked at him. “What are you reading to me?”
“It’s just a bunch of stories.” The man eyed her, waiting for a better answer. “Well, they’re mystery stories. There’s nothing really special about it, just a bunch of stories. You like mysteries?”
“I’ve liked them since I was a little boy. You made a good choice.” Alice gave a weak smile and stared down at the page, preparing herself for the first story. She felt uncertain as she read the book, the words coming out of her mouth in shaky syllables. The man was watching her steadily, that made her cheeks burn and her body twitch in her seat. She was simply uncomfortable.
When she had finished her tale, one of a man who had been murdered by his wife and then framed his mistress, she looked up at the man in his chair to see if he had fallen asleep. He had not said a word the entire time but his eyes were wide open and centered on her face.
“Are you alright?” She questioned him warily. Her heart fluttered in her chest. There was a chance he was not as fine as he had seemed when she first came in. She wondered if she would have to call a nurse. His gaze seemed glossed over as if he were in deep concentration, but then he shifted his weight in the chair and came back to reality.
“I know you.” He stated in a monotone voice, his eyes had become very serious. Alice was stunned, for a moment she had nothing to say, but a slow realization drifted down upon her and she became tense with anger.
“I know you too.”
“You put me in prison for a year.”
“You put me in therapy for two.” She stood up, unsure of what her next move should be. She wanted to hit him, to yell at him, but all she could do was check her watch, “Your hour’s up.” She made her way to the door and stopped, remembering to stay polite aside from all her anger. That had been the past, she told herself. “I hope you liked the story.”
“It was rather enjoyable. Thank you for coming.”
“Thank you for listening.”
“Do you hate me?”
“Yes.” She slammed the door behind her and made her way down the hall. She wondered why it was she got that room with that man, but she didn’t care about him anymore. What she cared about was that she had left the book on the floor in her frenzy, and she knew she could never go back to get it. She sighed. She wanted a nap.
The building was decrepit and the people inside were equally just as aged. Alice was their opposite and she felt it. Her class had made it a requirement to do community service. Some people had chosen to clean a park and others had helped the hospitals for a day. Alice and a couple of friends had chosen to read a book to an elder for an hour. This had seemed easy enough and short enough. Other opportunities had been posted for far longer than the hour and she was not prone to an excess amount of work. Yet, she was depressed by the mass re-scheduling that took place a few days before with her and her friends and now she was alone.
The doors were bubbled over in ancient tint and they creaked open as she stepped inside, tightening her grip on her thick book. The room was dimly lit and silent. The carpet was burgundy and had a plush, sinking feeling under her feet. She heard the gurgling air of the water from the fish tanks off to the side of her as the little fish swam happily in their cages. A little dusty lady sat at the register table and eyed her suspiciously. She walked with tentative steps and set her book down, letting the woman see the title.
“I’m here to read. My school should have called.” The little woman blinked slowly, comprehending her words. Then, with a difficult effort, she nodded in understanding, as if her neck would break if she did it too hard.
“Room 139. He’s waiting.” She handed Alice a little hand-written nametag. The letters of her name were large and slanted, written with careful execution while still maintaining the sloppy aspect that was the woman’s trademark. Alice grabbed it and stuck it to the front of her striped shirt, thanked the woman, and made her way down the hall to the inevitable room.
The hall was far more silent than the lobby had been. There were no gurgling fish to take the grave-like atmosphere away. Alice could feel it full force and she huddled her arms around her chest as if she were going to freeze.
Room 139 was not as far down as Alice thought as she reached the white, peeling door. She knocked lightly, knowing her knock would not be heard. For a moment, she thought, if the mystery elder in there did not answer she could go, but she knew she had a duty to her grade. She needed to pursue this goal. She waited, but no one came, so she opened the door and peered inside.
An old man in a blue recliner sat patiently waiting for her to come in. “I can’t get to the door too quick.” He explained as he saw her head poke in from behind the door. “I can’t speak too loudly either.” This was true. His throat was raspy and laden with years of smoking cigarettes. “Please come in. You can take that chair.” His wrinkled hands ushered towards a little metal folding chair stationed under a crooked desk.
Alice grabbed the chair and positioned herself across from him. The man seemed familiar to her, but she thought nothing of it. She opened her book and took a breath to read her book.
“Wait.” The old man sat up a bit. Alice looked at him. “What are you reading to me?”
“It’s just a bunch of stories.” The man eyed her, waiting for a better answer. “Well, they’re mystery stories. There’s nothing really special about it, just a bunch of stories. You like mysteries?”
“I’ve liked them since I was a little boy. You made a good choice.” Alice gave a weak smile and stared down at the page, preparing herself for the first story. She felt uncertain as she read the book, the words coming out of her mouth in shaky syllables. The man was watching her steadily, that made her cheeks burn and her body twitch in her seat. She was simply uncomfortable.
When she had finished her tale, one of a man who had been murdered by his wife and then framed his mistress, she looked up at the man in his chair to see if he had fallen asleep. He had not said a word the entire time but his eyes were wide open and centered on her face.
“Are you alright?” She questioned him warily. Her heart fluttered in her chest. There was a chance he was not as fine as he had seemed when she first came in. She wondered if she would have to call a nurse. His gaze seemed glossed over as if he were in deep concentration, but then he shifted his weight in the chair and came back to reality.
“I know you.” He stated in a monotone voice, his eyes had become very serious. Alice was stunned, for a moment she had nothing to say, but a slow realization drifted down upon her and she became tense with anger.
“I know you too.”
“You put me in prison for a year.”
“You put me in therapy for two.” She stood up, unsure of what her next move should be. She wanted to hit him, to yell at him, but all she could do was check her watch, “Your hour’s up.” She made her way to the door and stopped, remembering to stay polite aside from all her anger. That had been the past, she told herself. “I hope you liked the story.”
“It was rather enjoyable. Thank you for coming.”
“Thank you for listening.”
“Do you hate me?”
“Yes.” She slammed the door behind her and made her way down the hall. She wondered why it was she got that room with that man, but she didn’t care about him anymore. What she cared about was that she had left the book on the floor in her frenzy, and she knew she could never go back to get it. She sighed. She wanted a nap.
"Mick the Unready" (story 3, mini-shop)
Matt Carney
Dr. Tony Barnstone
Mick the Unready
My hands are cracked and blistered, and it’s not just from the work— that goddamned industrial strength soap is what’ll kill you. I’d take the grime and the grease any day of the week, Monday through Friday, and sometimes the Saturday if the director says so, over washing the grease off with that industry soap. He never makes you work Sunday, and I wouldn’t, of course. Don’t get me wrong, ‘cause if I had to work Sunday—though I wouldn’t— I’d scrub my hands clean. It’s just that I never work Sunday so I don’t need to.
We also don’t smoke anymore. I’ll tell you what, I’ve been at the facility, let’s say… who knows, 15 years? 15 to 20? It gives you plenty time to think. And it used to be that on the line, we’d smoke, and that was all set. Honest to God, I still smoke, but not on the line, of course. You’ll wait for the whistle for that and take it out on the deck out back. Lots of guys tell me I ought to quit, saying “Mick, see your sons graduate” and all that. And I will, see the graduation and stop smoking I mean. I can do that when it needs doing, just not at the moment, ‘cause I’ve got lunch coming up as soon as the whistle blows.
We also used to have the twelve hour day. That was fine, if you ask me. Especially when we could smoke. Typically, it would be… I reckon, 5 to 8 cigarettes leading to a break. You could take a break and enjoy your smoke then, not doing it to just pass the time, and talk with the other gents. Things are changing.
They’ve really changed, I mean, big stuff. Losing the smokes was big, but there’s more too. I’m all about progress— it’s the manifestation of our destiny, this great nation and all that. But those guys have their heads way up, honest to God. We used to rotate stations and everything, mostly me and Jim moving back and forth from the interior installations to setting in headlights and all that. Now I’m on headlights all the time, Monday through Saturday, sometimes the goddamn Saturday too, and I can’t smoke.
And then there was the bit with the earphones. For our safety, workplace safety, they set all the gents up with these earphones, for our hearing, of course. But now I can’t hear goddamn anything! I remember I’d usually be on the line with Phil and other times with Jim— mostly Saturday with Jim, when I had to come in Saturday— and Phil was great. We’d been on a couple of camping trips and everything. That was good— I mean, we had enough fun. He was a real guy, you know… he was a dude, like in that tune Mott the Hopple did, All the Young Dudes. Now, somebody said along the line “Mick, Bowie wrote that tune.” And that’s true, but honest to God, he was a strange one. He was a real freak. And I like his version all right, ‘cause it’s a rockin’ number, but I’m not gonna be influenced by a cake like him— that’s the God given truth. Anyway, we liked Phil but after the earphones, he couldn’t hear a word I said, and I’d wait till goddamn lunch to see or talk to Phil, and I had to cram it all in half an hour.
Without the smokes, though, I’m always fixin’ for the next one on my break. I see Phil and Jim out there on the deck sometimes, but we don’t talk anymore. I can’t. All I can do is sit and crave my smoke, and stare out past them, and forget what I’d wanted to say about anything. I see them and the family at church from time to time, but nobody talks in church. I just sit and stare, listen to the Word and everything, and I can smell all that industry soap on my hands, all cracked and goddamn dry and flaky. I don’t ask for much. I’m just tryin’ to make my way.
I tried to do this one as a "stream of consciousness" or whatever, writing it all at once, quickly and as I thought of it. It was fun but by the end, I felt I ran out of places to go. I don't like Mick, and I hope nobody does.
Dr. Tony Barnstone
Mick the Unready
My hands are cracked and blistered, and it’s not just from the work— that goddamned industrial strength soap is what’ll kill you. I’d take the grime and the grease any day of the week, Monday through Friday, and sometimes the Saturday if the director says so, over washing the grease off with that industry soap. He never makes you work Sunday, and I wouldn’t, of course. Don’t get me wrong, ‘cause if I had to work Sunday—though I wouldn’t— I’d scrub my hands clean. It’s just that I never work Sunday so I don’t need to.
We also don’t smoke anymore. I’ll tell you what, I’ve been at the facility, let’s say… who knows, 15 years? 15 to 20? It gives you plenty time to think. And it used to be that on the line, we’d smoke, and that was all set. Honest to God, I still smoke, but not on the line, of course. You’ll wait for the whistle for that and take it out on the deck out back. Lots of guys tell me I ought to quit, saying “Mick, see your sons graduate” and all that. And I will, see the graduation and stop smoking I mean. I can do that when it needs doing, just not at the moment, ‘cause I’ve got lunch coming up as soon as the whistle blows.
We also used to have the twelve hour day. That was fine, if you ask me. Especially when we could smoke. Typically, it would be… I reckon, 5 to 8 cigarettes leading to a break. You could take a break and enjoy your smoke then, not doing it to just pass the time, and talk with the other gents. Things are changing.
They’ve really changed, I mean, big stuff. Losing the smokes was big, but there’s more too. I’m all about progress— it’s the manifestation of our destiny, this great nation and all that. But those guys have their heads way up, honest to God. We used to rotate stations and everything, mostly me and Jim moving back and forth from the interior installations to setting in headlights and all that. Now I’m on headlights all the time, Monday through Saturday, sometimes the goddamn Saturday too, and I can’t smoke.
And then there was the bit with the earphones. For our safety, workplace safety, they set all the gents up with these earphones, for our hearing, of course. But now I can’t hear goddamn anything! I remember I’d usually be on the line with Phil and other times with Jim— mostly Saturday with Jim, when I had to come in Saturday— and Phil was great. We’d been on a couple of camping trips and everything. That was good— I mean, we had enough fun. He was a real guy, you know… he was a dude, like in that tune Mott the Hopple did, All the Young Dudes. Now, somebody said along the line “Mick, Bowie wrote that tune.” And that’s true, but honest to God, he was a strange one. He was a real freak. And I like his version all right, ‘cause it’s a rockin’ number, but I’m not gonna be influenced by a cake like him— that’s the God given truth. Anyway, we liked Phil but after the earphones, he couldn’t hear a word I said, and I’d wait till goddamn lunch to see or talk to Phil, and I had to cram it all in half an hour.
Without the smokes, though, I’m always fixin’ for the next one on my break. I see Phil and Jim out there on the deck sometimes, but we don’t talk anymore. I can’t. All I can do is sit and crave my smoke, and stare out past them, and forget what I’d wanted to say about anything. I see them and the family at church from time to time, but nobody talks in church. I just sit and stare, listen to the Word and everything, and I can smell all that industry soap on my hands, all cracked and goddamn dry and flaky. I don’t ask for much. I’m just tryin’ to make my way.
I tried to do this one as a "stream of consciousness" or whatever, writing it all at once, quickly and as I thought of it. It was fun but by the end, I felt I ran out of places to go. I don't like Mick, and I hope nobody does.
"Corning the Market" (story 4, class workshop)
Matt Carney
Dr. Tony Barnstone
Cornering the Market
Fluttering from the asphalt and the skin of the mighty airliner, the day rose in sauntering, hellish waves, pouring the sweat and stink from the volatile travelers. A 747 droned on the tarmac, humming idly, indolent in the suffocating Los Angeles summer heat. It was one in an army; some fueled and loaded by hundreds of furious uniformed laborers, some just returning and sighing a collective release of the matted and wary. But this one, flight 395, bound for Mexico City but delayed, couldn’t possibly take off soon enough— according to one man, the one pressing back into the seat, sweating streams of fatigue paranoia over a hollow face, one pallid, boney hand defending the briefcase between his feet.
He lifted a hand and tugged the fat knot of his gold and black tie away from the blue-collared button-up, quickly but careful not to draw attention. With some clever pre-calculation, he ran the hand through his wavy locks, bleached like straw, and looked over his shoulder in one motion. There were rows of people, and some made eye contact. The guy three rows back— staring straight into his eyes, moppy black hair and headphones. He swept his gaze forward. Nobody stares like that. Nobody is supposed to stare like that. His icy white fingers returned to the briefcase. The overwhelming feeling of somebody vague and nasty behind him shivered in his chest. He ignored it, playing hopelessly with the brass dials on the briefcase. He snorted loudly out of habit.
“So, where you from?”
He surged. It was feminine and accented but it frightened him. She was seated beside him at the window. Nervous laughter sounded from his thudding chest. “God, wow. Hello. Well I’m from, um, Los Angeles presently. Not originally but presently.” He was careful to watch her only from peripheral vision. There was some olive and some dark and eyebrows, but he didn’t dare look. No way. No risking it today. He tightened his grip on the briefcase and thoughtfully added, “I mean Los Angeles at the moment, see.”
She laughed. “My, you’re quite precise a man, no?” She had a sultry, silky voice, something Latin.
“Well, I’m just— I mean, the day is just tough, right, I’m avoiding some guys from the office. And it’s hot. It’s been a rough day but, uh, it’s over I guess, right? On the plane now. Time to relax. Maybe take a nap.” He pinched and rubbed his nose, eyes focused hard on the tray on the seat before him.
“What is your name?”
He pressed harder back into his seat, eyes snapping away and out into the aisle, up to the no smoking sign, down to the suitcase; anywhere else. He sighed and shrugged absently, fiddling with his suspenders. “I’m… Benedict.”
“Oh,” she said, and he could hear the smiling on her voice.
Ben knew she’d look at the case. He could feel it, and his hand gripped tighter still on it’s leather handle. He couldn’t trust this person— clearly, that was an impossibility. Who was she? This woman came out of nowhere, talking him up and down, prodding and investigating, and now it was personal with the “what’s your name” and probably more to come. That nervous static and paranoia twitched all through his chest and compressed his brow. He thought of looking at her but decided against it. Ben was trying to keep a low profile.
“So, you’re a real business man, no? Your look is professional.” He could feel her eyes glancing over his vaguely mid-70s soul-boy outfit.
He maintained peripheral eye contact, answering to the blue and orange patterned zigzags and upright tray-table in the seat before him. “I’m not— well, I am actually, yes. I’m a distributor. I’m into, um, pharmaceuticals, you know?”
“You mean like vitamin C?”
“Yes. Like vitamin C. Other vitamins. Vitamin C, that’s a big one I hear.” He laughed nervously, crossing one leg, compulsively snorting and straightening out the crease in his pants.
The plane suddenly jolted, preparing to taxi. Ben’s feet plopped on the floor. He tensed, his hands reflexively snapping back to the armrests. He remembered the briefcase, shooting his hand to its handle, and then remembered the low profile, pulling his arm back up and playing off the erratic jerk, running his fingers through his hair, grinning and laughing. The woman squinted at him curiously, he noticed, still from his peripheral vision.
“Oh, well I thought— it was like we were tipping, right, but I guess we’re not tipping. We’re taking off. Time to take off.” He buckled the seat belt, grinning. The game was up. It might be up. Did she suspect him? She had no idea, of course, but suspicion was different.
Time passed in the stuffy cabin. Their conversation ceased, but the muffled, hushed phrases of the others and occasional selfish outbursts from some nasty kids in the back continued. The lights flickered as the plane lurched and straightened at the end of the runway, pausing before the ascent. Ben wrestled with the temptation of eye contact and the woman beside him. People were not a top priority for him at that point: he’d seen enough of what people were made of for one day. Business is a vile and cutthroat industry.
“What?” she asked.
“Huh?”
“You said something about business, no? Some vile thing about business?”
“What— oh. Oh, that’s right! Thinking aloud, you know? Must be, um…” Mumbling, his gaunt face flushed a little. He hoped his days old fatigue hadn’t been spilling his thoughts all over the place. That could be bad. It could still be bad. But soon, he reassured himself, the plane would lift up and away from LA, all the people shrinking into pebbles and then into nothing, the shops and highways seeming as models, the high-powered Japanese bikes vanishing completely and the crazy gas hogs and smoggy college junkers and overloaded garden trucks falling into tiny glints. Ben trusted that all of the wrongs and the dishonesties and the evidence of that day and countless others would drift further into the past with every passing mile.
The woman beside him was going home. Wasn’t she? A new person, a new place, some other life. Could trust be something else in that new place with new people?
Ben faced at the woman beside him, finally, indulging the longing magnetism tugging at his eyes. Framed by the glow of the summer day in the window behind her and the short, slick black silk combed about her head, her face was set with dark, arching eyebrows and brilliant emerald eyes that flashed away as he noted them. Her skin was olive and faintly bronze over noble features, the high cheeks and full lips holding a slight smile, and her curvy body held firm beneath a faded tank top. Though her skin wore the blemishes of someone who was truly living, he found the magnetism definitely overwhelming.
The sudden, overbearing attack of the engines drowned out all the murmurs of travelers in the cabin. Gravity forced them back into their seats, the plane hurtling forward and finally, it lifted off from the tarmac, gravity rolling into the stomachs. Ben stared out the window with the woman, Los Angeles shrinking beneath them at an amazing speed. Benedict finally could feel the air conditioning, high in the clouds, the feeling of somebody nasty behind him fading away at last.
The novelty of the miniature landscape wore off quickly. Ben passed time fiddling with the lock and dials on the suitcase, two sets on either side of the handle. After absently rotating the sets of number dials, three on each side, he concluded that guessing the combination was out of the question. He sometimes stole glances of the woman. He did so again, and at that moment, she sent a text from her cell phone, which was illegal on the flight. He oddly felt the tingling stirring of hope for some conversation, and wanted her to start it. Starting was always tough. After some time she said nothing, so Ben simply started where he left off before.
He stared at her directly. “Right. So yes, business is quite cutthroat. My business is cutthroat. You know, hostile takeovers, bad deals, bad products, certain amounts of money and measurements. Recruiting. You know.”
Her eyebrows raised a little, though she remained focused on the cell phone. He felt her interest. She must have been. Slowly, she nodded, and raised her face.
“Right. Another thing,” Ben continued, “I mean, about the hostile takeovers. We’ve just been into that- my company, I mean. We, um, successfully took over. Hostilely.” He nodded with affirmation, sliding his hands along the top of the briefcase and raising his eyebrows with a smile.
She squinted with contemplation and interest for a moment. “So you made some money, no? Your business money?”
Ben sniffed a little. He openly fidgeted with the dials on the briefcase, “oh yes, yeah, I suppose. Acquisitions, great deals of acquisitions, and earned— you’ve got to earn everything in business, right, by blood and sweat, and salesmanship.” He lifted a boney finger. “Salesmanship is everything, complete. You’ve got to sell— got to be able to sell anything, any amount, to anybody. Like kids. You know? I mean, like they were kids of course. It’s all quite dangerous, really.”
Her mouth opened slightly as she stared ahead, contemplating his words. Ben trusted she was sensing a glimpse of the money and hard earned development of his trade, his masterful entrepreneurship and opportunism, and maybe some of the price he’s paid for it. Especially earlier that day, the price the gravest then— not for Benedict, but mainly for someone like him, only not so opportunistic and much more trusting. Also for the poor saps who’d only been waitin’ for the man, like so many other days, and happened to be there when the hostile takeover was completed.
Ben wished for some kind of affirmation. He wanted her, at least, this woman beside him on his way to a new world and time, to understand that he was simply a man trying to make his way. He evened his shoulders and added thoughtfully, “you know, it takes a certain kind of man to handle it all, right…”
She finally returned his eye contact with a smirk, for a moment, and then glanced away.
Some amount of satisfaction crept over Ben’s face. He trusted an impact was made, something or other. She was gorgeous, at least, and it was high time to start over. After a number of minutes, he pulled the barf-bag from the netting in the rear of the seat before him and tore the edges, flattening it out. He found a pen among the travel magazines and crash-landing instructions. For the remainder of the 6 hour flight, he systematically attempted the ascending combinations of triple digit numbers on each set of dials, beginning with 000, 000, and recording each failed attempt on the barf bag.
Ben awoke with a start. The voice, squawking in Spanish, rambled and slurred on the overhead speakers. His face ached. He recalled that passing out on the plane was his first sleep in days. The numbers in the barf bag ended somewhere beyond 150 with each set of numbers, and he still felt exhausted and delirious. His hands shook. Slowly, his eyes came into focus as the cabin bustled impatiently. Across the aisle, out the window, he could see torrential rains of Mexican summer pouring down the window.
He glanced to the woman at his left, and she looked into him with the emerald eyes and grinned, flipping her cell phone shut. “Sleeping well?”
“I can’t remember… I’m not sure. Who knows, right?” He laughed.
“You come with me for awhile, yes? And we’ll help you to open that case up.”
Ben nodded, but realized quickly he’d told her nothing of the case. “Um, well, the case is mine—“
“No it is not. You told me what happened, no? And that it is not yours?” She winked at him.
“…I suppose I did. Well yes, right. You know the story then.” He laughed a bit. Probably, he told her sometime before passing out, or in his sleep, or something. That happens, forgetting all kinds of things. Subtle relief lifted from his chest, trusting she knew the truth.
They strolled the terminal. Ben clutched the briefcase in his icy grip, but not so tightly now, his newfound ally at his side. She stared ahead with purpose deep in her eyes. Ben watched her closely, walking with forceful vigor, his shoulders purposefully loose. He felt he was walking into a new partnership.
Inevitably, they neared the end of the causeway, two automatic sliding doors parting to a darkened and musty underground street, green Volkswagen taxicabs parked all along it.
“You know, I’m really happy I met you, and that we’re gonna figure this all out, take care of things. I’m really starting over, you know? It’s a new time for me.”
“Yeah.”
“Another thing is, um… well you’re great, you know? Fantastic, and thanks for helping me out and everything. That business was tough.”
She kept her eyes ahead, determined.
Ben laughed with rapid excitement. “You know, I’m thinking, one thing I want to look into now that I’m here is, um, like maybe some entrepreneur type stuff. Like a coffee shop, ok. I mean, it’s time to go straight, and—“
The woman suddenly whistled sharply. Two men emerged from the shadows before them.
“Oh, I trust these are your friends?” Ben asked curiously.
She faced him and grinned wildly. She said something in Spanish but it was too quick. There was a rustle behind Ben.
The last thing he could remember for some time was the gorgeous emerald-eyed Latin, whose name he never asked, snatching away the briefcase, the contents known only in theory, and the sickening thud of the billy-club on the base of his skull.
Dr. Tony Barnstone
Cornering the Market
Fluttering from the asphalt and the skin of the mighty airliner, the day rose in sauntering, hellish waves, pouring the sweat and stink from the volatile travelers. A 747 droned on the tarmac, humming idly, indolent in the suffocating Los Angeles summer heat. It was one in an army; some fueled and loaded by hundreds of furious uniformed laborers, some just returning and sighing a collective release of the matted and wary. But this one, flight 395, bound for Mexico City but delayed, couldn’t possibly take off soon enough— according to one man, the one pressing back into the seat, sweating streams of fatigue paranoia over a hollow face, one pallid, boney hand defending the briefcase between his feet.
He lifted a hand and tugged the fat knot of his gold and black tie away from the blue-collared button-up, quickly but careful not to draw attention. With some clever pre-calculation, he ran the hand through his wavy locks, bleached like straw, and looked over his shoulder in one motion. There were rows of people, and some made eye contact. The guy three rows back— staring straight into his eyes, moppy black hair and headphones. He swept his gaze forward. Nobody stares like that. Nobody is supposed to stare like that. His icy white fingers returned to the briefcase. The overwhelming feeling of somebody vague and nasty behind him shivered in his chest. He ignored it, playing hopelessly with the brass dials on the briefcase. He snorted loudly out of habit.
“So, where you from?”
He surged. It was feminine and accented but it frightened him. She was seated beside him at the window. Nervous laughter sounded from his thudding chest. “God, wow. Hello. Well I’m from, um, Los Angeles presently. Not originally but presently.” He was careful to watch her only from peripheral vision. There was some olive and some dark and eyebrows, but he didn’t dare look. No way. No risking it today. He tightened his grip on the briefcase and thoughtfully added, “I mean Los Angeles at the moment, see.”
She laughed. “My, you’re quite precise a man, no?” She had a sultry, silky voice, something Latin.
“Well, I’m just— I mean, the day is just tough, right, I’m avoiding some guys from the office. And it’s hot. It’s been a rough day but, uh, it’s over I guess, right? On the plane now. Time to relax. Maybe take a nap.” He pinched and rubbed his nose, eyes focused hard on the tray on the seat before him.
“What is your name?”
He pressed harder back into his seat, eyes snapping away and out into the aisle, up to the no smoking sign, down to the suitcase; anywhere else. He sighed and shrugged absently, fiddling with his suspenders. “I’m… Benedict.”
“Oh,” she said, and he could hear the smiling on her voice.
Ben knew she’d look at the case. He could feel it, and his hand gripped tighter still on it’s leather handle. He couldn’t trust this person— clearly, that was an impossibility. Who was she? This woman came out of nowhere, talking him up and down, prodding and investigating, and now it was personal with the “what’s your name” and probably more to come. That nervous static and paranoia twitched all through his chest and compressed his brow. He thought of looking at her but decided against it. Ben was trying to keep a low profile.
“So, you’re a real business man, no? Your look is professional.” He could feel her eyes glancing over his vaguely mid-70s soul-boy outfit.
He maintained peripheral eye contact, answering to the blue and orange patterned zigzags and upright tray-table in the seat before him. “I’m not— well, I am actually, yes. I’m a distributor. I’m into, um, pharmaceuticals, you know?”
“You mean like vitamin C?”
“Yes. Like vitamin C. Other vitamins. Vitamin C, that’s a big one I hear.” He laughed nervously, crossing one leg, compulsively snorting and straightening out the crease in his pants.
The plane suddenly jolted, preparing to taxi. Ben’s feet plopped on the floor. He tensed, his hands reflexively snapping back to the armrests. He remembered the briefcase, shooting his hand to its handle, and then remembered the low profile, pulling his arm back up and playing off the erratic jerk, running his fingers through his hair, grinning and laughing. The woman squinted at him curiously, he noticed, still from his peripheral vision.
“Oh, well I thought— it was like we were tipping, right, but I guess we’re not tipping. We’re taking off. Time to take off.” He buckled the seat belt, grinning. The game was up. It might be up. Did she suspect him? She had no idea, of course, but suspicion was different.
Time passed in the stuffy cabin. Their conversation ceased, but the muffled, hushed phrases of the others and occasional selfish outbursts from some nasty kids in the back continued. The lights flickered as the plane lurched and straightened at the end of the runway, pausing before the ascent. Ben wrestled with the temptation of eye contact and the woman beside him. People were not a top priority for him at that point: he’d seen enough of what people were made of for one day. Business is a vile and cutthroat industry.
“What?” she asked.
“Huh?”
“You said something about business, no? Some vile thing about business?”
“What— oh. Oh, that’s right! Thinking aloud, you know? Must be, um…” Mumbling, his gaunt face flushed a little. He hoped his days old fatigue hadn’t been spilling his thoughts all over the place. That could be bad. It could still be bad. But soon, he reassured himself, the plane would lift up and away from LA, all the people shrinking into pebbles and then into nothing, the shops and highways seeming as models, the high-powered Japanese bikes vanishing completely and the crazy gas hogs and smoggy college junkers and overloaded garden trucks falling into tiny glints. Ben trusted that all of the wrongs and the dishonesties and the evidence of that day and countless others would drift further into the past with every passing mile.
The woman beside him was going home. Wasn’t she? A new person, a new place, some other life. Could trust be something else in that new place with new people?
Ben faced at the woman beside him, finally, indulging the longing magnetism tugging at his eyes. Framed by the glow of the summer day in the window behind her and the short, slick black silk combed about her head, her face was set with dark, arching eyebrows and brilliant emerald eyes that flashed away as he noted them. Her skin was olive and faintly bronze over noble features, the high cheeks and full lips holding a slight smile, and her curvy body held firm beneath a faded tank top. Though her skin wore the blemishes of someone who was truly living, he found the magnetism definitely overwhelming.
The sudden, overbearing attack of the engines drowned out all the murmurs of travelers in the cabin. Gravity forced them back into their seats, the plane hurtling forward and finally, it lifted off from the tarmac, gravity rolling into the stomachs. Ben stared out the window with the woman, Los Angeles shrinking beneath them at an amazing speed. Benedict finally could feel the air conditioning, high in the clouds, the feeling of somebody nasty behind him fading away at last.
The novelty of the miniature landscape wore off quickly. Ben passed time fiddling with the lock and dials on the suitcase, two sets on either side of the handle. After absently rotating the sets of number dials, three on each side, he concluded that guessing the combination was out of the question. He sometimes stole glances of the woman. He did so again, and at that moment, she sent a text from her cell phone, which was illegal on the flight. He oddly felt the tingling stirring of hope for some conversation, and wanted her to start it. Starting was always tough. After some time she said nothing, so Ben simply started where he left off before.
He stared at her directly. “Right. So yes, business is quite cutthroat. My business is cutthroat. You know, hostile takeovers, bad deals, bad products, certain amounts of money and measurements. Recruiting. You know.”
Her eyebrows raised a little, though she remained focused on the cell phone. He felt her interest. She must have been. Slowly, she nodded, and raised her face.
“Right. Another thing,” Ben continued, “I mean, about the hostile takeovers. We’ve just been into that- my company, I mean. We, um, successfully took over. Hostilely.” He nodded with affirmation, sliding his hands along the top of the briefcase and raising his eyebrows with a smile.
She squinted with contemplation and interest for a moment. “So you made some money, no? Your business money?”
Ben sniffed a little. He openly fidgeted with the dials on the briefcase, “oh yes, yeah, I suppose. Acquisitions, great deals of acquisitions, and earned— you’ve got to earn everything in business, right, by blood and sweat, and salesmanship.” He lifted a boney finger. “Salesmanship is everything, complete. You’ve got to sell— got to be able to sell anything, any amount, to anybody. Like kids. You know? I mean, like they were kids of course. It’s all quite dangerous, really.”
Her mouth opened slightly as she stared ahead, contemplating his words. Ben trusted she was sensing a glimpse of the money and hard earned development of his trade, his masterful entrepreneurship and opportunism, and maybe some of the price he’s paid for it. Especially earlier that day, the price the gravest then— not for Benedict, but mainly for someone like him, only not so opportunistic and much more trusting. Also for the poor saps who’d only been waitin’ for the man, like so many other days, and happened to be there when the hostile takeover was completed.
Ben wished for some kind of affirmation. He wanted her, at least, this woman beside him on his way to a new world and time, to understand that he was simply a man trying to make his way. He evened his shoulders and added thoughtfully, “you know, it takes a certain kind of man to handle it all, right…”
She finally returned his eye contact with a smirk, for a moment, and then glanced away.
Some amount of satisfaction crept over Ben’s face. He trusted an impact was made, something or other. She was gorgeous, at least, and it was high time to start over. After a number of minutes, he pulled the barf-bag from the netting in the rear of the seat before him and tore the edges, flattening it out. He found a pen among the travel magazines and crash-landing instructions. For the remainder of the 6 hour flight, he systematically attempted the ascending combinations of triple digit numbers on each set of dials, beginning with 000, 000, and recording each failed attempt on the barf bag.
Ben awoke with a start. The voice, squawking in Spanish, rambled and slurred on the overhead speakers. His face ached. He recalled that passing out on the plane was his first sleep in days. The numbers in the barf bag ended somewhere beyond 150 with each set of numbers, and he still felt exhausted and delirious. His hands shook. Slowly, his eyes came into focus as the cabin bustled impatiently. Across the aisle, out the window, he could see torrential rains of Mexican summer pouring down the window.
He glanced to the woman at his left, and she looked into him with the emerald eyes and grinned, flipping her cell phone shut. “Sleeping well?”
“I can’t remember… I’m not sure. Who knows, right?” He laughed.
“You come with me for awhile, yes? And we’ll help you to open that case up.”
Ben nodded, but realized quickly he’d told her nothing of the case. “Um, well, the case is mine—“
“No it is not. You told me what happened, no? And that it is not yours?” She winked at him.
“…I suppose I did. Well yes, right. You know the story then.” He laughed a bit. Probably, he told her sometime before passing out, or in his sleep, or something. That happens, forgetting all kinds of things. Subtle relief lifted from his chest, trusting she knew the truth.
They strolled the terminal. Ben clutched the briefcase in his icy grip, but not so tightly now, his newfound ally at his side. She stared ahead with purpose deep in her eyes. Ben watched her closely, walking with forceful vigor, his shoulders purposefully loose. He felt he was walking into a new partnership.
Inevitably, they neared the end of the causeway, two automatic sliding doors parting to a darkened and musty underground street, green Volkswagen taxicabs parked all along it.
“You know, I’m really happy I met you, and that we’re gonna figure this all out, take care of things. I’m really starting over, you know? It’s a new time for me.”
“Yeah.”
“Another thing is, um… well you’re great, you know? Fantastic, and thanks for helping me out and everything. That business was tough.”
She kept her eyes ahead, determined.
Ben laughed with rapid excitement. “You know, I’m thinking, one thing I want to look into now that I’m here is, um, like maybe some entrepreneur type stuff. Like a coffee shop, ok. I mean, it’s time to go straight, and—“
The woman suddenly whistled sharply. Two men emerged from the shadows before them.
“Oh, I trust these are your friends?” Ben asked curiously.
She faced him and grinned wildly. She said something in Spanish but it was too quick. There was a rustle behind Ben.
The last thing he could remember for some time was the gorgeous emerald-eyed Latin, whose name he never asked, snatching away the briefcase, the contents known only in theory, and the sickening thud of the billy-club on the base of his skull.
help me with the dialogue...
Christian Fazio
Advanced Fiction Writing
Tony Barnstone
2/20/2007
Help with dialogue...i want the guy to seem bewildered to emphasize his feeling of uselessness while her to be needy. the story is about expectations and dissapointment
Hercules
Hercules was the name she gave. It rested on her lips when she slept at night and was there when she woke up–and woke me up. Hercules you saved me, she’d whisper, sliding her hand under my undershirt, kissing me with her morning breath. “Hercules, I need you.
Hercules lets have breakfast. Hercules you need to protect me from the Harpies and the wraiths. Flex those muscles one more time like I know you can.” I’d laugh at this and she would laugh too, and we would whisper about nothing until we fell asleep at night. These were the moments I loved, the ones I held and the ones I tried to remember. I would always ask her why she called me this and she would laugh, “you’re my Greek god, didn’t you know?” and I would laugh too, wondering what she meant.
On nights when she would come home shaking, pale and skinny she would sulk on the couch while I watched television. Her words were soft and delicate like her fingers or her eyes.
“Hercules my boss is an asshole, make him go away.”
“I cant.”
“Was that not you that vanquished monsters in ancient lands?”
“I guess.”
“Well vanquish this one, ok?.” I would smile and so would she and we would have dinner, and talk. Listening to the walls of the tiny apartment and the dripping of the sink, we would sit and eat, while I secretly admired her.
On nights we would lay in bed, she would weave for me her childhood. Her pain her loss and how she wanted it to fade away. Though she never said it explicitly
“Hercules, do you remember when you saved me from the dragon?”
“No.”
“It happened around the time of my parents divorce, remember?”
“Refresh my memory.”
“My parents were in the kitchen screaming or whatever and a dragon came and swooped me away.
“Oooh...maybe...its coming back now.”
“ You broke its neck! Remember...right before the cops came.”
“Why did the cops come?”
“They took my dad Away...But that’s not the important part...you broke the dragons neck!”
“I don’t think that really happened.”
“I know, but I wanted it to.” She would get angry after that. Punch me in the shoulder and ask me why I didn’t play along. I would like to tell her I was afraid to, but I didn’t. I shrugged. Told her I didn’t no how–as she sighed and rolled towards the wall. On nights like these I dreamed about how I could make myself better, like she wanted. Be the boyfriend she always claimed I was.
At nights she’d spend at her house in New Jersey she would call me crying. “I hate it here Hercules, take me away to Las Vegas with my father, to Arabia, to ancient Greece where we could be Gods. I would sigh into the receiver and whisper, “I cant, or I never could...I can only be here and listen to you.” Sometimes this was enough...sometimes it wasn’t. The night she showed her mother the new tattoo she called me and explained in choked whispers.
“She hit me...she hit me hard...I fucking thought she’d like it and she hit me and told me to get out...
“Why?”
“She hates me!”
“I doubt it...she was probably just surprised or something, you know.”
I don’t know what to do, I don’t know where to go...I feel like you’re a million miles away.”
“I am...right now...I’m in Brooklyn, you’re in Philli.”
“Do something.”
“I’m sure Amanda or some other friend will take you in.”
“No.”
“I don’t know what else to say.” she sighed.
“Maybe...”
“Maybe?”
“Maybe, Hercules your not as strong as I thought.”
Advanced Fiction Writing
Tony Barnstone
2/20/2007
Help with dialogue...i want the guy to seem bewildered to emphasize his feeling of uselessness while her to be needy. the story is about expectations and dissapointment
Hercules
Hercules was the name she gave. It rested on her lips when she slept at night and was there when she woke up–and woke me up. Hercules you saved me, she’d whisper, sliding her hand under my undershirt, kissing me with her morning breath. “Hercules, I need you.
Hercules lets have breakfast. Hercules you need to protect me from the Harpies and the wraiths. Flex those muscles one more time like I know you can.” I’d laugh at this and she would laugh too, and we would whisper about nothing until we fell asleep at night. These were the moments I loved, the ones I held and the ones I tried to remember. I would always ask her why she called me this and she would laugh, “you’re my Greek god, didn’t you know?” and I would laugh too, wondering what she meant.
On nights when she would come home shaking, pale and skinny she would sulk on the couch while I watched television. Her words were soft and delicate like her fingers or her eyes.
“Hercules my boss is an asshole, make him go away.”
“I cant.”
“Was that not you that vanquished monsters in ancient lands?”
“I guess.”
“Well vanquish this one, ok?.” I would smile and so would she and we would have dinner, and talk. Listening to the walls of the tiny apartment and the dripping of the sink, we would sit and eat, while I secretly admired her.
On nights we would lay in bed, she would weave for me her childhood. Her pain her loss and how she wanted it to fade away. Though she never said it explicitly
“Hercules, do you remember when you saved me from the dragon?”
“No.”
“It happened around the time of my parents divorce, remember?”
“Refresh my memory.”
“My parents were in the kitchen screaming or whatever and a dragon came and swooped me away.
“Oooh...maybe...its coming back now.”
“ You broke its neck! Remember...right before the cops came.”
“Why did the cops come?”
“They took my dad Away...But that’s not the important part...you broke the dragons neck!”
“I don’t think that really happened.”
“I know, but I wanted it to.” She would get angry after that. Punch me in the shoulder and ask me why I didn’t play along. I would like to tell her I was afraid to, but I didn’t. I shrugged. Told her I didn’t no how–as she sighed and rolled towards the wall. On nights like these I dreamed about how I could make myself better, like she wanted. Be the boyfriend she always claimed I was.
At nights she’d spend at her house in New Jersey she would call me crying. “I hate it here Hercules, take me away to Las Vegas with my father, to Arabia, to ancient Greece where we could be Gods. I would sigh into the receiver and whisper, “I cant, or I never could...I can only be here and listen to you.” Sometimes this was enough...sometimes it wasn’t. The night she showed her mother the new tattoo she called me and explained in choked whispers.
“She hit me...she hit me hard...I fucking thought she’d like it and she hit me and told me to get out...
“Why?”
“She hates me!”
“I doubt it...she was probably just surprised or something, you know.”
I don’t know what to do, I don’t know where to go...I feel like you’re a million miles away.”
“I am...right now...I’m in Brooklyn, you’re in Philli.”
“Do something.”
“I’m sure Amanda or some other friend will take you in.”
“No.”
“I don’t know what else to say.” she sighed.
“Maybe...”
“Maybe?”
“Maybe, Hercules your not as strong as I thought.”
my metaphor story...please see if you can make any suggestions
Christian Fazio
Advanced Fiction Writing
Professor Tony Barnstone
2/20/2007
initially wanted to chronicle how it feels to break up with some one...i think it needs work..what if i shorten it in some places and lengthen it in others? question where how and why?
Wrestling Match
We are in a room—she and I. we stand facing each other. I have no clue where we are, how we got there or how long it has been—maybe a year or month, maybe an hour. It’s hard to say. The room is always dark. The walls are black, and so is the floor and ceiling. The only thing that punctuates this darkness is a swinging light bulb hanging above. It never illuminates the room entirely, it only gives fleeting glimpses of her arms, legs and sometimes face. There are no windows in this room, just a door on the wall far behind me. Light from beneath it fans out, yet never reaches us. We stand in isolation, both of us afraid to speak. The only thing that breaks our silence is the hum of electricity and our breath.
In this moment I breathe deep and watch as the light swings in her direction. I see her arm and the meat that clings to it. It is radiant, and off-white, like cheese cloth but more human. I see her hips as well, nestled beneath her floral print skirt, that I have ran my fingers across many times before, and taken off in our more intimate moments, when I still felt alive. Slightly above the skirt, I can see her hip bone sticking out. More then it has in some time. It looks like she lost weight, maybe too much. It doesn’t matter she soon fades into the darkness of the room and the light swings my way. I pull my hands deep from within my pockets and curl them into fists. The bones beneath form into four solid tan points—I open them and stare at my fingers. I have gotten a bit heavier, even looking at my hands I can tell. My fingers no longer look sleek and athletic. They are bloated fat, like me, or how I have become. My shirt doesn’t fit right either; it feels pasted against my body, while I bulge out around it. I wonder if she notices I hope she doesn’t.
The light swings back in her direction. I see her face, her lips, her eyes and they are still pretty and keen, and they haven’t changed. Though I wish they did. It would make all of this so much easier. She seems calm, collected unsuspecting. Her eyes are warm and comforting, resonating with familiarity. She soon fades out of view again. The light shines brightly in my face. I hear her cough lightly and wonder if she is ok. I wish I could ask, but forgot how to speak to her. Above us the light stops swinging, illuminating only the center of the room. Both of us stand for a while in this darkness, before she steps into the light. She stares into the void waiting for me to join her. My heart beats beneath my ribs clunking heavily against the bone. Sweat forms on my forehead and my mouth runs dry. I click my tongue a few times, and listen to her sigh. More time passes–maybe a few minutes or an hour, its really hard to tell. She motions for me to join her and I stay where I am. She motions again. In the light she is beautiful. Her features are brightened and highlighted. I can see the valley between her lips and nose, her tiny mole, her warm green eyes that always made me think of Ireland. Her hair falls in auburn sheets across her forehead that her nimble fingers sweep into puddles on the side of her head. I grit my teeth and stay paralyzed. Frustrated, she throws up her arms and steps back into the darkness.
More time passes and I am overwhelmed with the desire to move. Finally after much debate I step forward into the center. Immediately, she runs forward to embrace me. Her long arms wrap around my body, and push me into her chest. My arms dangle useless at my sides, my body rises and falls with her breathing. Our hearts pound in unison before I slide out of her arms. She looks confused and hugs me again. Again, I slide out from her arms. She tries a third time and this time I push her away–she falls hard on the ground and looks up at me. Her eyebrows are arched and her head is tilted to the side. Her lip quivers and she screws up her eyes. I turn my back, and fade out of the light–moving toward the door, only to feel fingers tugging on my shirt, pulling hard, harder then I expected. In a moment I lose my balance, as a final tug sends me toppling back on her. The force of her is so strong my shoes rip off my feet. I grit my teeth and curl my hands into concise cannon balls. My back gets warm and so does my chest.
. With all my weight and momentum, I flip around to pin her. She freaks out and writhes beneath me. Sliding against my body, serpentine and fluid, impossible to keep in one spot. Her arms flail wildly, her fists pounding against my ribs my back and my head. Hot Pain blooms beneath my skin, while I try and drive her shoulders to the ground. My shirt sticks to me and a fresh layer of perspiration coats my body. My muscles tighten, I drive harder. My socks try to gain footing on the surface, but slide like crazy. Her hands claw wildly at my face and I can feel warm blood dribble out. Suddenly her knee catches me right in the chest, and I roll off of her, onto my back gasping, trying to breathe. Pain fills the cavity between lung and bone and I cant breathe. She looks at me for a while, her upper lip tucked into her lower one, and her eyebrows fluctuating, and the muscles in her face shifting emotions from anger to sympathy. Slowly she crawls over to put her hand on my me. With a bolt of energy I try to move away and crawl towards the door. I am too slow and she catches me by the ankle and pulls me back with all of her might.
She is on top now, punching me with one hand and pinning me with the other. I squirm as much as I can, yet eventually give up and let her hit me for a while. Blood sprays out of my nose and eyebrows while my flesh feels like it is exploding with heat. After a while I flip her off of me. Frantically I throw my body on top of hers and try to keep her down. My heart pumps even harder and I can feel the veins in my neck moving to the rhythm of my body. I press my knees into her chest and punch her in the belly as hard as I can. Her face convulses in weird red spasms that I find too surreal, too actual, to be authentic. Everything goes silent after that except for the increasing hiss of the electricity.
As I force my weight on top of her she reaches up, and tears one of my ears off. I screech in pain and roll off. Blood pours out the side of my head, onto her face, mixing with her tears. I in turn do the same, only I grab a bit of her back and yank the skin off. She screams too, much louder then me, and I can tell that this scream is real. Her blood sprays too, all over me. Its warm and vibrant, unlike mine, that looks grey under the hollow light of the dark room. In a moment she is back on top of me, her fingers curl around my nose and pull it off, leaving me with a gaping crater of a face. More pain rushes to the point. I feel sick, as a familiar salty taste fills my mouth. She laughs slightly, pleased with herself, until I stealthily slip my hands under her shirt and grab hold of her breasts. More tears streak down her face and a low whimper of self anguish hums beneath the buzzing. Suddenly the sound of them ripping from her chest cuts through everything. Red explodes from her in a thick gooey wave and she falls off of me. She tries to crawl away. I chase after her looking to inflict more damage. My heart beats even harder and feels like it is going to burst. I grab hold of her waist. She looks back at me. Her eyes are glazed over. She pivots around and carefully, deceptively tears my penis off. I rupture from the middle, caught in a frenzy of anger and agony, vomiting up what feels like my intestines.
I open my mouth to speak, but cant find the energy to do anything but cry. I cry hard loud heavy sobs, while trying to mouth, “I’m sorry,” but only having the words rest on my lips. She collapses on top of me. Seemingly beyond tears–too tired to do anything but lay here and listen to the increasing roar of the static. In this moment I feel hollowed by my decision, wishing there were a way to put us back together again. In a moment, after the static dies down, she whispers, “is this really what you want?” too tired to answer, I nod. She sniffles a bit, but wipes her face and stands up. Slowly she picks up her pieces and walks towards the door–God...where do i go from here?
Advanced Fiction Writing
Professor Tony Barnstone
2/20/2007
initially wanted to chronicle how it feels to break up with some one...i think it needs work..what if i shorten it in some places and lengthen it in others? question where how and why?
Wrestling Match
We are in a room—she and I. we stand facing each other. I have no clue where we are, how we got there or how long it has been—maybe a year or month, maybe an hour. It’s hard to say. The room is always dark. The walls are black, and so is the floor and ceiling. The only thing that punctuates this darkness is a swinging light bulb hanging above. It never illuminates the room entirely, it only gives fleeting glimpses of her arms, legs and sometimes face. There are no windows in this room, just a door on the wall far behind me. Light from beneath it fans out, yet never reaches us. We stand in isolation, both of us afraid to speak. The only thing that breaks our silence is the hum of electricity and our breath.
In this moment I breathe deep and watch as the light swings in her direction. I see her arm and the meat that clings to it. It is radiant, and off-white, like cheese cloth but more human. I see her hips as well, nestled beneath her floral print skirt, that I have ran my fingers across many times before, and taken off in our more intimate moments, when I still felt alive. Slightly above the skirt, I can see her hip bone sticking out. More then it has in some time. It looks like she lost weight, maybe too much. It doesn’t matter she soon fades into the darkness of the room and the light swings my way. I pull my hands deep from within my pockets and curl them into fists. The bones beneath form into four solid tan points—I open them and stare at my fingers. I have gotten a bit heavier, even looking at my hands I can tell. My fingers no longer look sleek and athletic. They are bloated fat, like me, or how I have become. My shirt doesn’t fit right either; it feels pasted against my body, while I bulge out around it. I wonder if she notices I hope she doesn’t.
The light swings back in her direction. I see her face, her lips, her eyes and they are still pretty and keen, and they haven’t changed. Though I wish they did. It would make all of this so much easier. She seems calm, collected unsuspecting. Her eyes are warm and comforting, resonating with familiarity. She soon fades out of view again. The light shines brightly in my face. I hear her cough lightly and wonder if she is ok. I wish I could ask, but forgot how to speak to her. Above us the light stops swinging, illuminating only the center of the room. Both of us stand for a while in this darkness, before she steps into the light. She stares into the void waiting for me to join her. My heart beats beneath my ribs clunking heavily against the bone. Sweat forms on my forehead and my mouth runs dry. I click my tongue a few times, and listen to her sigh. More time passes–maybe a few minutes or an hour, its really hard to tell. She motions for me to join her and I stay where I am. She motions again. In the light she is beautiful. Her features are brightened and highlighted. I can see the valley between her lips and nose, her tiny mole, her warm green eyes that always made me think of Ireland. Her hair falls in auburn sheets across her forehead that her nimble fingers sweep into puddles on the side of her head. I grit my teeth and stay paralyzed. Frustrated, she throws up her arms and steps back into the darkness.
More time passes and I am overwhelmed with the desire to move. Finally after much debate I step forward into the center. Immediately, she runs forward to embrace me. Her long arms wrap around my body, and push me into her chest. My arms dangle useless at my sides, my body rises and falls with her breathing. Our hearts pound in unison before I slide out of her arms. She looks confused and hugs me again. Again, I slide out from her arms. She tries a third time and this time I push her away–she falls hard on the ground and looks up at me. Her eyebrows are arched and her head is tilted to the side. Her lip quivers and she screws up her eyes. I turn my back, and fade out of the light–moving toward the door, only to feel fingers tugging on my shirt, pulling hard, harder then I expected. In a moment I lose my balance, as a final tug sends me toppling back on her. The force of her is so strong my shoes rip off my feet. I grit my teeth and curl my hands into concise cannon balls. My back gets warm and so does my chest.
. With all my weight and momentum, I flip around to pin her. She freaks out and writhes beneath me. Sliding against my body, serpentine and fluid, impossible to keep in one spot. Her arms flail wildly, her fists pounding against my ribs my back and my head. Hot Pain blooms beneath my skin, while I try and drive her shoulders to the ground. My shirt sticks to me and a fresh layer of perspiration coats my body. My muscles tighten, I drive harder. My socks try to gain footing on the surface, but slide like crazy. Her hands claw wildly at my face and I can feel warm blood dribble out. Suddenly her knee catches me right in the chest, and I roll off of her, onto my back gasping, trying to breathe. Pain fills the cavity between lung and bone and I cant breathe. She looks at me for a while, her upper lip tucked into her lower one, and her eyebrows fluctuating, and the muscles in her face shifting emotions from anger to sympathy. Slowly she crawls over to put her hand on my me. With a bolt of energy I try to move away and crawl towards the door. I am too slow and she catches me by the ankle and pulls me back with all of her might.
She is on top now, punching me with one hand and pinning me with the other. I squirm as much as I can, yet eventually give up and let her hit me for a while. Blood sprays out of my nose and eyebrows while my flesh feels like it is exploding with heat. After a while I flip her off of me. Frantically I throw my body on top of hers and try to keep her down. My heart pumps even harder and I can feel the veins in my neck moving to the rhythm of my body. I press my knees into her chest and punch her in the belly as hard as I can. Her face convulses in weird red spasms that I find too surreal, too actual, to be authentic. Everything goes silent after that except for the increasing hiss of the electricity.
As I force my weight on top of her she reaches up, and tears one of my ears off. I screech in pain and roll off. Blood pours out the side of my head, onto her face, mixing with her tears. I in turn do the same, only I grab a bit of her back and yank the skin off. She screams too, much louder then me, and I can tell that this scream is real. Her blood sprays too, all over me. Its warm and vibrant, unlike mine, that looks grey under the hollow light of the dark room. In a moment she is back on top of me, her fingers curl around my nose and pull it off, leaving me with a gaping crater of a face. More pain rushes to the point. I feel sick, as a familiar salty taste fills my mouth. She laughs slightly, pleased with herself, until I stealthily slip my hands under her shirt and grab hold of her breasts. More tears streak down her face and a low whimper of self anguish hums beneath the buzzing. Suddenly the sound of them ripping from her chest cuts through everything. Red explodes from her in a thick gooey wave and she falls off of me. She tries to crawl away. I chase after her looking to inflict more damage. My heart beats even harder and feels like it is going to burst. I grab hold of her waist. She looks back at me. Her eyes are glazed over. She pivots around and carefully, deceptively tears my penis off. I rupture from the middle, caught in a frenzy of anger and agony, vomiting up what feels like my intestines.
I open my mouth to speak, but cant find the energy to do anything but cry. I cry hard loud heavy sobs, while trying to mouth, “I’m sorry,” but only having the words rest on my lips. She collapses on top of me. Seemingly beyond tears–too tired to do anything but lay here and listen to the increasing roar of the static. In this moment I feel hollowed by my decision, wishing there were a way to put us back together again. In a moment, after the static dies down, she whispers, “is this really what you want?” too tired to answer, I nod. She sniffles a bit, but wipes her face and stands up. Slowly she picks up her pieces and walks towards the door–God...where do i go from here?
What do i do with this story?
Christian Fazio
Advanced Fiction
Story 3
Tony Barnstone
I wanted to make it implicit that the woman in the park was at one time in a relationship with this fellow...any sugestions?
Pigeons Love Bread
Pigeons at my feet gobble up the bread I throw. The fat one waddles back and forth, while the others encircle him. He moves bravely pushing them away—slowly pecking at the others, before his skinny counterparts snatch the food from under him. I rip off another piece of bread and throw it to him. The others dive for it. He just watches waiting to strike. Before long, he gets frustrated and dives in. they peck and claw at him for a few moments, before he gives up and waddles by my foot looking for sympathy. I give into him. His red blank eyes make me feel sorry and I toss him another piece. He grabs it happily and runs off before his friends can notice. I sigh and put my bread back in its paper bag and fold it over. The paper is hard and stiff and crinkles as I do. I shift my foot slightly so one of my new friends doesn’t try to sit on it. It doesn’t matter, they won’t stay long; there is no more food for them. I sigh again and watch as the pigeons disperse, saddened by my loss. Its early morning, the park is empty and quiet, with only pigeons and the sounds of children in the distance. It’s easy to lose yourself in parks like this, easy to forget.
I sit and shuffle my feet a bit staring at my shoes, before the sound of laughter jerks my attention away. Across from me on the playground a little girl soars in the air. Her pale little legs dangle from the swing, while her mother pushes her. Her brown hair is caught by wind and flows gently with it, giving in to the back and forth. It moves in thick sheets across her eyes, while little fingers sweep it out. She seems so happy and carefree. The mother watches with intent motherly eyes, staring blankly at her child’s back. Her red curly hair falls gently at her shoulders covered by a scarf that matches her sweater but not completely. At her side a man who might be her husband stands. His large, masculine hand firmly placed on her arm—his thumb massaging it with precision and care. He is a big man, athletically fit and clean shaven. His blue sweater accents olive skin that sits just above his collar. His face is strong looking; as dark, longish hair comes down to create prominent sideburns that look outdated but are fitting. These cover a prominent jaw He reminds me of something you might see on the cover of a romance novel, or maybe a fireman. Looking at him, I can tell he is all she has ever wanted.
The child laughs as brown strands of hair come down in her face. She smiles softly and pushes them aside. This is to no affect however and more hair flutters back thicker then before. The little girl laughs harder, delighted and husband and wife, look at each other, seemingly pleased with themselves. This is before the little girls attention is grabbed away by the rest of the playground. She swings her legs frantically and lets out a whimper signaling that she wants to get off. The woman stops pushing and lets the swing slow down. As it does the little girl hops off and runs with all her might towards the monkey bars. She climbs up and waves to them, they smile wider and wave back, happy and content.
I stare back down at my feet, in hopes that some pigeons will notice me. Its no use, they are all pre-occupied with whatever. My fat friend who worked so hard to get a bit of crust is now off by a statue, squatting, staring at nothing. I grab a bit of bread and wave it in his direction, in hopes that he might come over. His friends see this and scurry forward for me. I watch a bit to see if he will come over too, but he doesn’t. He just sits and stares. I throw the bit of bread and his friends instantly pile on top of it. Flakes scatter as bestial urges dig into the dough. Two skinny pigeons squawk at each other as both try to claim the bread for themselves. I smile slightly and throw another piece down. Both walk away happy with bread in their mouths. I stare at my feet again, shuffling around, reaching for my pack of cigarettes. I pull one out and lit up. Grey smoke wafts into the air, moving like a jellyfish, sliding with transparent glee out of sight. As it does I do, I try and think of the last time I was happy–or if I ever was...it’s hard to say.
This thought is interrupted by the sound of the little girl. She is laughing again. I look up and watch her at the top of the monkey bars. She stands at the top of the ladder, pressing her weight on the top bar. She smiles a big, baby tooth smile and tries to catch leaves falling from near by trees. The father looks at her with cautious eyes, mouthing the words, “be careful.” The little girl doesn’t notice, as a big orange leaf catches her attention. Her eyes follow it as it spins in the air. She tries to catch it with open baby palms. The mother begins to walk over. Looking at her, I can tell this is what she has always wanted. The way she strides across the playground, authoritatively, with slim, tense shoulders and arms, pale and pristine, swaying at her sides. She looks like a mother, or motherly. Like how she always dreamt a caring mother would be. Her eyes are focused sole on those monkey bars, all else at the moment probably seems irrelevant. As she reaches her destination, she places one of her dainty hands on the ladder and looks up. Concern is smeared all over her face. Looking at her, I can see, she wants to be concerned, she wants to care and does.
Her husband or what might be her husband watches, with his arms folded. On his wrist a sports watch glints in pale sunlight, and I can tell by looking at him he loves the life he lives. After a moment, he walks over, moving with confidence and charm that might have drawn her to him, in a sports-bar, or wherever they met. He stands and smiles, again placing a firm hand on his wife’s shoulder. She smiles back at him. The little girl reaches for her parents with outstretched arms. Again the might be father mouths the words “be careful,” while she nods her gentle head and begins to climb down. This is before he catches me staring.
The mans eyes move from the little girl to me and for a moment, he and I make eye contact. His face shifts from contentment to a blank gaze while I take a drag of my cigarette, wondering what my face looks like. The little girl plays at his feet, picking up clumps of sand, piling them on top of each other while the woman stares at her, bustling with contentment. I do nothing. I sit and keep my eyes trained on them. Before long, the man looks away and grabs his wife by the arm. She looks away from her child and up at him. In my chest I feel my heart thumping against my ribs and my hands crust with sweat. The woman’s eyes shift over at me. The corners of her mouth anchor down into a frown and she turns towards the man. He embraces her and places his lips on her forehead. I lick my lips and take another drag of my cigarette. My attention shifts to the little girl for a moment. She seems so happy and carefree. The way I was when I was young. The woman turns back to face me. She mouths something but I am not sure what, maybe “I’m sorry.” It doesn’t matter. She waves at me slightly. Delicate fingers topple over and land calmly on her wrist. I wave back. Looking at her, I can tell this is the life she always dreamt of. The one she whispered in the mans ear late at night before they’d go to bed.
This thought is interrupted by the laughter of the little girl. She dances around, her dress over her head, waving her arms around. The mother look down at her and smiles. The man does the same. Before long, the family turn their backs to me and begin to walk away. I sigh and take a final drag of my cigarette, before I put it out. At my feet two pigeons stand and wait for me two toss them a piece of bread. I sigh, reaching for my bag. Pigeons love bread.
Advanced Fiction
Story 3
Tony Barnstone
I wanted to make it implicit that the woman in the park was at one time in a relationship with this fellow...any sugestions?
Pigeons Love Bread
Pigeons at my feet gobble up the bread I throw. The fat one waddles back and forth, while the others encircle him. He moves bravely pushing them away—slowly pecking at the others, before his skinny counterparts snatch the food from under him. I rip off another piece of bread and throw it to him. The others dive for it. He just watches waiting to strike. Before long, he gets frustrated and dives in. they peck and claw at him for a few moments, before he gives up and waddles by my foot looking for sympathy. I give into him. His red blank eyes make me feel sorry and I toss him another piece. He grabs it happily and runs off before his friends can notice. I sigh and put my bread back in its paper bag and fold it over. The paper is hard and stiff and crinkles as I do. I shift my foot slightly so one of my new friends doesn’t try to sit on it. It doesn’t matter, they won’t stay long; there is no more food for them. I sigh again and watch as the pigeons disperse, saddened by my loss. Its early morning, the park is empty and quiet, with only pigeons and the sounds of children in the distance. It’s easy to lose yourself in parks like this, easy to forget.
I sit and shuffle my feet a bit staring at my shoes, before the sound of laughter jerks my attention away. Across from me on the playground a little girl soars in the air. Her pale little legs dangle from the swing, while her mother pushes her. Her brown hair is caught by wind and flows gently with it, giving in to the back and forth. It moves in thick sheets across her eyes, while little fingers sweep it out. She seems so happy and carefree. The mother watches with intent motherly eyes, staring blankly at her child’s back. Her red curly hair falls gently at her shoulders covered by a scarf that matches her sweater but not completely. At her side a man who might be her husband stands. His large, masculine hand firmly placed on her arm—his thumb massaging it with precision and care. He is a big man, athletically fit and clean shaven. His blue sweater accents olive skin that sits just above his collar. His face is strong looking; as dark, longish hair comes down to create prominent sideburns that look outdated but are fitting. These cover a prominent jaw He reminds me of something you might see on the cover of a romance novel, or maybe a fireman. Looking at him, I can tell he is all she has ever wanted.
The child laughs as brown strands of hair come down in her face. She smiles softly and pushes them aside. This is to no affect however and more hair flutters back thicker then before. The little girl laughs harder, delighted and husband and wife, look at each other, seemingly pleased with themselves. This is before the little girls attention is grabbed away by the rest of the playground. She swings her legs frantically and lets out a whimper signaling that she wants to get off. The woman stops pushing and lets the swing slow down. As it does the little girl hops off and runs with all her might towards the monkey bars. She climbs up and waves to them, they smile wider and wave back, happy and content.
I stare back down at my feet, in hopes that some pigeons will notice me. Its no use, they are all pre-occupied with whatever. My fat friend who worked so hard to get a bit of crust is now off by a statue, squatting, staring at nothing. I grab a bit of bread and wave it in his direction, in hopes that he might come over. His friends see this and scurry forward for me. I watch a bit to see if he will come over too, but he doesn’t. He just sits and stares. I throw the bit of bread and his friends instantly pile on top of it. Flakes scatter as bestial urges dig into the dough. Two skinny pigeons squawk at each other as both try to claim the bread for themselves. I smile slightly and throw another piece down. Both walk away happy with bread in their mouths. I stare at my feet again, shuffling around, reaching for my pack of cigarettes. I pull one out and lit up. Grey smoke wafts into the air, moving like a jellyfish, sliding with transparent glee out of sight. As it does I do, I try and think of the last time I was happy–or if I ever was...it’s hard to say.
This thought is interrupted by the sound of the little girl. She is laughing again. I look up and watch her at the top of the monkey bars. She stands at the top of the ladder, pressing her weight on the top bar. She smiles a big, baby tooth smile and tries to catch leaves falling from near by trees. The father looks at her with cautious eyes, mouthing the words, “be careful.” The little girl doesn’t notice, as a big orange leaf catches her attention. Her eyes follow it as it spins in the air. She tries to catch it with open baby palms. The mother begins to walk over. Looking at her, I can tell this is what she has always wanted. The way she strides across the playground, authoritatively, with slim, tense shoulders and arms, pale and pristine, swaying at her sides. She looks like a mother, or motherly. Like how she always dreamt a caring mother would be. Her eyes are focused sole on those monkey bars, all else at the moment probably seems irrelevant. As she reaches her destination, she places one of her dainty hands on the ladder and looks up. Concern is smeared all over her face. Looking at her, I can see, she wants to be concerned, she wants to care and does.
Her husband or what might be her husband watches, with his arms folded. On his wrist a sports watch glints in pale sunlight, and I can tell by looking at him he loves the life he lives. After a moment, he walks over, moving with confidence and charm that might have drawn her to him, in a sports-bar, or wherever they met. He stands and smiles, again placing a firm hand on his wife’s shoulder. She smiles back at him. The little girl reaches for her parents with outstretched arms. Again the might be father mouths the words “be careful,” while she nods her gentle head and begins to climb down. This is before he catches me staring.
The mans eyes move from the little girl to me and for a moment, he and I make eye contact. His face shifts from contentment to a blank gaze while I take a drag of my cigarette, wondering what my face looks like. The little girl plays at his feet, picking up clumps of sand, piling them on top of each other while the woman stares at her, bustling with contentment. I do nothing. I sit and keep my eyes trained on them. Before long, the man looks away and grabs his wife by the arm. She looks away from her child and up at him. In my chest I feel my heart thumping against my ribs and my hands crust with sweat. The woman’s eyes shift over at me. The corners of her mouth anchor down into a frown and she turns towards the man. He embraces her and places his lips on her forehead. I lick my lips and take another drag of my cigarette. My attention shifts to the little girl for a moment. She seems so happy and carefree. The way I was when I was young. The woman turns back to face me. She mouths something but I am not sure what, maybe “I’m sorry.” It doesn’t matter. She waves at me slightly. Delicate fingers topple over and land calmly on her wrist. I wave back. Looking at her, I can tell this is the life she always dreamt of. The one she whispered in the mans ear late at night before they’d go to bed.
This thought is interrupted by the laughter of the little girl. She dances around, her dress over her head, waving her arms around. The mother look down at her and smiles. The man does the same. Before long, the family turn their backs to me and begin to walk away. I sigh and take a final drag of my cigarette, before I put it out. At my feet two pigeons stand and wait for me two toss them a piece of bread. I sigh, reaching for my bag. Pigeons love bread.
Untitled #1 (mini workshop)
(note: I'm not particulary fond of this story so don't feel overly compelled to read it.)
With trepidation, I rise. The candlelight shows my palms a pale grizzled mass of scar tissue and great blue veins. My family crest rests precariously upon my finger bone as the meat that used to hold the ring in place has slowly withered from my frame. In the faint glow I can make out my hole; it is underground but much more of a room than hole. I found it when a light lead me down a tunnel and I had to jump out of the way of a great fire-breathing dragon into a river that flowed into this room. This room… Anyway, there’s not much to say about it anyway. I know there isn’t much of interest down here and that my life looks rather drab and dreary. But I have never been a terribly eccentric person so I’ve found my needs to be humble.
I remember the first time I tried it. There’s nothing like the incredible rush of the first time. When you taste it on your lips, you know you’ve tasted heaven. The habit is something that just sneaks up on you. I am a vampire.
After night falls, I climb towards heaven and rise unseen into the fresh air that tastes like I place whose name I’ve long forgotten. A dry summer heat envelopes me but does not warm my cold blood. It feels as if I am freezing but that must be from my veins. My shivering only momentarily prevents me from remembering where I am headed –Brookland, by the metro. It’s there I see what I’m looking for. A lonely man, standing on a corner with a shoulder leaning against the “No Parking” sign in an oversized coat. I come up behind him out of the shadows and he never sees a thing.
When I get back to my hole, I’ve already had my first meal and am feeling like the lizard king. I don’t know what that means but I’ve always respected Jim Morrison. I curl up in the pile of something on the floor and try to regain my strength. My presence is a constant illusion. Now I am a god among men, exerting my will upon any I wish, no longer a nothing of a forgotten past. I soar through the heavens on the wings of a beautiful angel. I am all things to all people. And when I feel myself dropping back down into the sewer, I roll over, spark the horn, and start again.
With trepidation, I rise. The candlelight shows my palms a pale grizzled mass of scar tissue and great blue veins. My family crest rests precariously upon my finger bone as the meat that used to hold the ring in place has slowly withered from my frame. In the faint glow I can make out my hole; it is underground but much more of a room than hole. I found it when a light lead me down a tunnel and I had to jump out of the way of a great fire-breathing dragon into a river that flowed into this room. This room… Anyway, there’s not much to say about it anyway. I know there isn’t much of interest down here and that my life looks rather drab and dreary. But I have never been a terribly eccentric person so I’ve found my needs to be humble.
I remember the first time I tried it. There’s nothing like the incredible rush of the first time. When you taste it on your lips, you know you’ve tasted heaven. The habit is something that just sneaks up on you. I am a vampire.
After night falls, I climb towards heaven and rise unseen into the fresh air that tastes like I place whose name I’ve long forgotten. A dry summer heat envelopes me but does not warm my cold blood. It feels as if I am freezing but that must be from my veins. My shivering only momentarily prevents me from remembering where I am headed –Brookland, by the metro. It’s there I see what I’m looking for. A lonely man, standing on a corner with a shoulder leaning against the “No Parking” sign in an oversized coat. I come up behind him out of the shadows and he never sees a thing.
When I get back to my hole, I’ve already had my first meal and am feeling like the lizard king. I don’t know what that means but I’ve always respected Jim Morrison. I curl up in the pile of something on the floor and try to regain my strength. My presence is a constant illusion. Now I am a god among men, exerting my will upon any I wish, no longer a nothing of a forgotten past. I soar through the heavens on the wings of a beautiful angel. I am all things to all people. And when I feel myself dropping back down into the sewer, I roll over, spark the horn, and start again.
A Gunshot Starts the Race (Class Workshop)
Even as dawn broke across the silent sky, the horses munched on their oats as the stable boys brushed them down. Teddy was one in this myriad and no exception, though his horse had already eaten its fill. These were always the most frantic hours and although it was hard to ignore the race-day bustle, there was a pleasant calm within the stall. The movements performed themselves as Teddy’s mind was left free to wander and consider females, fathers, and fallacies.
When Paul came to inspect his horse, he saw the stable boy dozing off again. The sun was bright overhead and it was almost time to lead the horse out to the starting gate. Paul admired how smart both he and the horse looked; he hoped they would look just as good in pictures taken in the winner’s circle and he hoped to be there when the flashbulbs went off. Paul patted the horse’s flank and began to lead it out without a second thought to the stable boy or the tongue lashing he deserved.
Mr. Butler strolled through the stables giving handshakes to those he knew by name and friendly waves to those constituents he did not. He reminded himself to return with more time and really ham it up. After all, he considered himself as much an actor as a policy maker and the mayor’s mansion was far too luxurious, with more than enough unoccupied rooms, not to devote as much of himself as possible to his craft. At last he came to the stall of his favorite horse and saw the jockey and horse emerging as he neared them.
“Hey there Paul. Is it that time already? I must have lost track of time.”
“Sure is Mr. Mayor. Me and Nixon sure are ready though.”
“That’s what I like to hear. Go get ‘em, son.”
Mr. Butler returned to the track, bought his booklet, and placed his bet to win. He was confident in the horse and in the rider and felt like they would fill up his pocket today. He ambled up to his box and joined his daughter but not before numerous handshakes and salutations. He never forgot that this public had elected him so he never let them forget either. As Mr. Butler took his seat and wiped his ruddy forehead with a linen handkerchief, he felt his thigh brush against his daughter’s and a slight smile spread across his face. He considered how the pleasure his daughter gave him was almost equal to the pleasure he received from filling his pocketbook but he would never speak that.
Lila had used to hate coming to the racetrack with her father. She had felt the pain of the animals while all around her were screams of those making and losing pointless dollars. But one day, her father had taken her down to the stables and it was there she found her reason for ever coming to this place. The attendant to her father’s favorite horse was a tall young man with deep, dark eyes and strong, chocolate muscles. His tender face had shown compassion only for the horse on that meeting, but from then she had taken every opportunity to see him.
Lila did not really even care to know his name. She knew it was Teddy but never used it. Her upbringing, and that of her father, was one of Sunday school and white lace, with an emphasis on the white. So this new fascination would never have sat well with her father, had he been alive long enough to disapprove. So as they both sat in the box, waiting and watching for the hammer to be cocked, the trigger to be pulled, the bullet to exit, and the sound of discharge to reach their ears, they each thought of the one they loved.
When Paul came to inspect his horse, he saw the stable boy dozing off again. The sun was bright overhead and it was almost time to lead the horse out to the starting gate. Paul admired how smart both he and the horse looked; he hoped they would look just as good in pictures taken in the winner’s circle and he hoped to be there when the flashbulbs went off. Paul patted the horse’s flank and began to lead it out without a second thought to the stable boy or the tongue lashing he deserved.
Mr. Butler strolled through the stables giving handshakes to those he knew by name and friendly waves to those constituents he did not. He reminded himself to return with more time and really ham it up. After all, he considered himself as much an actor as a policy maker and the mayor’s mansion was far too luxurious, with more than enough unoccupied rooms, not to devote as much of himself as possible to his craft. At last he came to the stall of his favorite horse and saw the jockey and horse emerging as he neared them.
“Hey there Paul. Is it that time already? I must have lost track of time.”
“Sure is Mr. Mayor. Me and Nixon sure are ready though.”
“That’s what I like to hear. Go get ‘em, son.”
Mr. Butler returned to the track, bought his booklet, and placed his bet to win. He was confident in the horse and in the rider and felt like they would fill up his pocket today. He ambled up to his box and joined his daughter but not before numerous handshakes and salutations. He never forgot that this public had elected him so he never let them forget either. As Mr. Butler took his seat and wiped his ruddy forehead with a linen handkerchief, he felt his thigh brush against his daughter’s and a slight smile spread across his face. He considered how the pleasure his daughter gave him was almost equal to the pleasure he received from filling his pocketbook but he would never speak that.
Lila had used to hate coming to the racetrack with her father. She had felt the pain of the animals while all around her were screams of those making and losing pointless dollars. But one day, her father had taken her down to the stables and it was there she found her reason for ever coming to this place. The attendant to her father’s favorite horse was a tall young man with deep, dark eyes and strong, chocolate muscles. His tender face had shown compassion only for the horse on that meeting, but from then she had taken every opportunity to see him.
Lila did not really even care to know his name. She knew it was Teddy but never used it. Her upbringing, and that of her father, was one of Sunday school and white lace, with an emphasis on the white. So this new fascination would never have sat well with her father, had he been alive long enough to disapprove. So as they both sat in the box, waiting and watching for the hammer to be cocked, the trigger to be pulled, the bullet to exit, and the sound of discharge to reach their ears, they each thought of the one they loved.
Exercise Paired Sentences
Danielle Orner
Exercise # 3
02/20/07
Pairs of Beginning Sentences
Beginning and End of the School Year
With a fresh coat of white paint on each building and carefully groomed lawns, the campus gives off the illusion of unlimited potential but, as soon as a door opens to the interior, the smell of old habits anchors the mirage in reality again.
Surveying the stripped dorm room one final time, I close the door and carry the last overstuffed box to the car.
Starting and Quitting a Job
Clarissa managed to find the coffee maker on the first day but not the pot, the filter, the mugs, the beans, the grinder, the cream, or any little plastic stir straws.
It was the pens that posed the only problem; which ones were his and which belonged to the company or his various other colleagues typing away behind their beige cubical walls.
Arriving and Leaving
The driveway leading to her sister’s cottage was far longer than expected and Sarah wished she hadn’t told the cab driver to drop her off at the corner rather than the front door.
Before I could find a seat, the train lurched into motion and forced me to spend those last moments in the station clumsily navigating the obstacles of knees and baggage rather than blowing solemn kisses out the window like they do in black and white movies.
Exercise # 3
02/20/07
Pairs of Beginning Sentences
Beginning and End of the School Year
With a fresh coat of white paint on each building and carefully groomed lawns, the campus gives off the illusion of unlimited potential but, as soon as a door opens to the interior, the smell of old habits anchors the mirage in reality again.
Surveying the stripped dorm room one final time, I close the door and carry the last overstuffed box to the car.
Starting and Quitting a Job
Clarissa managed to find the coffee maker on the first day but not the pot, the filter, the mugs, the beans, the grinder, the cream, or any little plastic stir straws.
It was the pens that posed the only problem; which ones were his and which belonged to the company or his various other colleagues typing away behind their beige cubical walls.
Arriving and Leaving
The driveway leading to her sister’s cottage was far longer than expected and Sarah wished she hadn’t told the cab driver to drop her off at the corner rather than the front door.
Before I could find a seat, the train lurched into motion and forced me to spend those last moments in the station clumsily navigating the obstacles of knees and baggage rather than blowing solemn kisses out the window like they do in black and white movies.
Story #4 While Snipping (Small Workshop)
Danielle Orner
Story # 4
02/27/07
While Snipping
Amy always felt a little ashamed of not making an appointment for the hairdressers. As she sat flipping through old magazines in the waiting area, she noticed each of the women who walked straight up to the receptionist’s desk and were immediately lead to the backrooms for their scheduled waxings, trims, or highlights touch-ups. Unlike these well-groomed women who penciled in their monthly overhauls, Amy was a walk-in. She swore she saw the receptionist give her a nasty look as she tapped on her keyboard searching for an available appointment slot.
“You’re in luck. It looks like Genie had a cancellation this afternoon. That is very rare for a Saturday.” The receptionist, whose foundation was so thick it created a smooth mask over the barely visible pock marks in her natural skin, stared at Amy as if expecting some extravagant display of gratitude.
“Well, thanks. I guess I will wait right her until she is ready.” The remark was stupid and obvious but Amy felt she needed to say something to the heavily-made-up guardian of hairdressers’ appointment slots. The truth was that, if the receptionist had come up empty handed, Amy would have simply left the salon and come back several weeks later when she accidentally caught sight of herself in a mirror or storefront window. She bent her face back to her magazine and attempted to appear absorbed in an article on how to make eatable reindeer even though it was the fifth of June. She could still feel the receptionist’s purple-eyed – the shade that only comes from cosmetic contact lenses – eyeliner-rimmed gaze burning into her split-ended-shapeless-hairdo adorned skull. Finally, the clicking of the receptionist’s acrylic nails on the keyboard began and Amy relaxed into the Italian-renaissance themed chair.
“Hey, I am Genie. I’ll be your hairdresser for the afternoon.” Amy, startled by the greeting, let the magazine slide off her lap. Trevi Spa and Salon was one of those places were you never see the same hairdresser twice unless you specifically request them. Genie didn’t look familiar.
“Great. Um, let me just grab my purse and put this magazine away and then we can go on back.” Amy fumbled with her stuff. Talking to hairdressers – and for that matter dentists, doctors, waitresses, flight attends, and anyone else you see for a few hours in a few years or in a lifetime – always made Amy nervous, as if these brief meetings were the true test of one’s character. The hairdresser, on the other hand, was relaxed and chatty. Genie had maroon hair spiked in a stylish pixie cut. Judging by the wrinkles around her eyes and lips, Genie must have been nearing fifty. Yet, with her dusky orange tank top and kaki clam diggers, she was one of those lucky women who had found their own style. Just the right amount of funky beaded jewelry hung around her neck and Amy thought she saw a tattoo peaking out of her shirt on the left shoulder. Genie ran sections of Amy’s hair through her fingers as the walked back to the room with chairs and mirrors.
“Looks like you have dyed this a couple of times without correcting it or letting it grow out. I definitely see some blonde, a bit of black, and a redish tone. Your natural color is a dark auburn, right?” Amy nodded embarrassed that this stranger could tell so much about her. Suddenly, all the insecurities she thought she hid so well seemed glaringly obvious. “Right, well no problem, we can dye it back to a natural hue in no time. I can see by your split ends that you haven’t been in to see us for a few months. When was your last haircut?”
“Um, I think it was six months ago.” Amy tried to remember if she cut her hair before her mom’s funeral or not.
“You really should come in every six weeks at the very least. It will make your hair look healthier.” Genie wrapped Amy in a black smock, guided her to a chair leaning back to a sink, adjusted her head, rinsed, shampooed, conditioned, rinsed, massaged, toweled dry, and then guided Amy to a barber chair circling her around to face the mirror. She collected her brush, scissors, clips, and blow dryer from their cupboards and drawers; then laid them neatly on the folded white towel on the countertop. She pumped Amy’s chair up and began running her hands through sections of the wet hair. She chatted the entire time. She paused momentarialy to get down to business.
“What style would you like? Did you bring any pictures or magazine clippings you want me to look at?” Amy thought of how her mother-in-law commented on the fact that Amy never got the same cut twice at the salon. Amy didn’t think there was a point to coming home with a slightly cleaned up version of what you already had. This was a time to go for something new with the never-dampened hope that someday you’d get the cut that changed your life.
“Let’s try a bob.” Amy looked at Genie in the mirror standing over her shoulder and stroking her straggly locks. Genie made a face that signaled that she didn’t agree with Amy’s choice but got the scissors ready.
Another hairdresser walked into the room leading an elderly man dressed in a black smock identical to Amy’s. She was young with olive skin, a Spanish accent, and vivid streaks of jet black and platinum blonde in her waist-length hair. Amy smiled sympathetically at the balding gentleman who didn’t seem to know what to do with his skunk-headed stylist. Genie greeted the other hairdresser as Mimi and they began chatting. Amy and the old man let the murmur of the women’s voices and the fingers in their hair lull them into a hazy state of relaxation. This was the part Amy liked. Not the beginning with its focus on her nor the end with the judging of the cut with a hand-held mirror to see the back, but the middle when the hairdresser was busy working.
“How is your little boy doing?” Genie’s scissors snipped thick chunks of wet hair while she spoke to Mimi.
“He is doing just fine. Yesterday he brought home a finger painting for me to hang up on my mirror but I forgot it at home. You heard from Rick yet?”
“No and I don’t think I am going to. Did I tell you I bought that little trailer out on the two acres of property?”
“You’re kidding! Good for you. If I were you I wouldn’t leave a forwarding address at the apartment.”
“That wouldn’t do any good. He knows I work here now. Right now the trailer is all rusty and the lands just a bunch of dirt. But I swear to you that I am gone have a garden and trees and all that before this time next year. I might even have a porch swing.”
“You will have to invite Benny and me over for a BBQ or something”
“Sure, I will. You’re done Amy. What do you think?” Genie fluffed the hair while professional shaking a blow dryer along the ends. Amy’s face was too fat for a bob to look good.
“It looks great.” Amy slid a ten dollar bill into Genie’s hand while she swept the little clumps of Amy’s hair into a pile at the base of the chair. Amy walked out of the salon and felt the itchy bristles of hair that had gotten past the black smock into her shirt all day.
Story # 4
02/27/07
While Snipping
Amy always felt a little ashamed of not making an appointment for the hairdressers. As she sat flipping through old magazines in the waiting area, she noticed each of the women who walked straight up to the receptionist’s desk and were immediately lead to the backrooms for their scheduled waxings, trims, or highlights touch-ups. Unlike these well-groomed women who penciled in their monthly overhauls, Amy was a walk-in. She swore she saw the receptionist give her a nasty look as she tapped on her keyboard searching for an available appointment slot.
“You’re in luck. It looks like Genie had a cancellation this afternoon. That is very rare for a Saturday.” The receptionist, whose foundation was so thick it created a smooth mask over the barely visible pock marks in her natural skin, stared at Amy as if expecting some extravagant display of gratitude.
“Well, thanks. I guess I will wait right her until she is ready.” The remark was stupid and obvious but Amy felt she needed to say something to the heavily-made-up guardian of hairdressers’ appointment slots. The truth was that, if the receptionist had come up empty handed, Amy would have simply left the salon and come back several weeks later when she accidentally caught sight of herself in a mirror or storefront window. She bent her face back to her magazine and attempted to appear absorbed in an article on how to make eatable reindeer even though it was the fifth of June. She could still feel the receptionist’s purple-eyed – the shade that only comes from cosmetic contact lenses – eyeliner-rimmed gaze burning into her split-ended-shapeless-hairdo adorned skull. Finally, the clicking of the receptionist’s acrylic nails on the keyboard began and Amy relaxed into the Italian-renaissance themed chair.
“Hey, I am Genie. I’ll be your hairdresser for the afternoon.” Amy, startled by the greeting, let the magazine slide off her lap. Trevi Spa and Salon was one of those places were you never see the same hairdresser twice unless you specifically request them. Genie didn’t look familiar.
“Great. Um, let me just grab my purse and put this magazine away and then we can go on back.” Amy fumbled with her stuff. Talking to hairdressers – and for that matter dentists, doctors, waitresses, flight attends, and anyone else you see for a few hours in a few years or in a lifetime – always made Amy nervous, as if these brief meetings were the true test of one’s character. The hairdresser, on the other hand, was relaxed and chatty. Genie had maroon hair spiked in a stylish pixie cut. Judging by the wrinkles around her eyes and lips, Genie must have been nearing fifty. Yet, with her dusky orange tank top and kaki clam diggers, she was one of those lucky women who had found their own style. Just the right amount of funky beaded jewelry hung around her neck and Amy thought she saw a tattoo peaking out of her shirt on the left shoulder. Genie ran sections of Amy’s hair through her fingers as the walked back to the room with chairs and mirrors.
“Looks like you have dyed this a couple of times without correcting it or letting it grow out. I definitely see some blonde, a bit of black, and a redish tone. Your natural color is a dark auburn, right?” Amy nodded embarrassed that this stranger could tell so much about her. Suddenly, all the insecurities she thought she hid so well seemed glaringly obvious. “Right, well no problem, we can dye it back to a natural hue in no time. I can see by your split ends that you haven’t been in to see us for a few months. When was your last haircut?”
“Um, I think it was six months ago.” Amy tried to remember if she cut her hair before her mom’s funeral or not.
“You really should come in every six weeks at the very least. It will make your hair look healthier.” Genie wrapped Amy in a black smock, guided her to a chair leaning back to a sink, adjusted her head, rinsed, shampooed, conditioned, rinsed, massaged, toweled dry, and then guided Amy to a barber chair circling her around to face the mirror. She collected her brush, scissors, clips, and blow dryer from their cupboards and drawers; then laid them neatly on the folded white towel on the countertop. She pumped Amy’s chair up and began running her hands through sections of the wet hair. She chatted the entire time. She paused momentarialy to get down to business.
“What style would you like? Did you bring any pictures or magazine clippings you want me to look at?” Amy thought of how her mother-in-law commented on the fact that Amy never got the same cut twice at the salon. Amy didn’t think there was a point to coming home with a slightly cleaned up version of what you already had. This was a time to go for something new with the never-dampened hope that someday you’d get the cut that changed your life.
“Let’s try a bob.” Amy looked at Genie in the mirror standing over her shoulder and stroking her straggly locks. Genie made a face that signaled that she didn’t agree with Amy’s choice but got the scissors ready.
Another hairdresser walked into the room leading an elderly man dressed in a black smock identical to Amy’s. She was young with olive skin, a Spanish accent, and vivid streaks of jet black and platinum blonde in her waist-length hair. Amy smiled sympathetically at the balding gentleman who didn’t seem to know what to do with his skunk-headed stylist. Genie greeted the other hairdresser as Mimi and they began chatting. Amy and the old man let the murmur of the women’s voices and the fingers in their hair lull them into a hazy state of relaxation. This was the part Amy liked. Not the beginning with its focus on her nor the end with the judging of the cut with a hand-held mirror to see the back, but the middle when the hairdresser was busy working.
“How is your little boy doing?” Genie’s scissors snipped thick chunks of wet hair while she spoke to Mimi.
“He is doing just fine. Yesterday he brought home a finger painting for me to hang up on my mirror but I forgot it at home. You heard from Rick yet?”
“No and I don’t think I am going to. Did I tell you I bought that little trailer out on the two acres of property?”
“You’re kidding! Good for you. If I were you I wouldn’t leave a forwarding address at the apartment.”
“That wouldn’t do any good. He knows I work here now. Right now the trailer is all rusty and the lands just a bunch of dirt. But I swear to you that I am gone have a garden and trees and all that before this time next year. I might even have a porch swing.”
“You will have to invite Benny and me over for a BBQ or something”
“Sure, I will. You’re done Amy. What do you think?” Genie fluffed the hair while professional shaking a blow dryer along the ends. Amy’s face was too fat for a bob to look good.
“It looks great.” Amy slid a ten dollar bill into Genie’s hand while she swept the little clumps of Amy’s hair into a pile at the base of the chair. Amy walked out of the salon and felt the itchy bristles of hair that had gotten past the black smock into her shirt all day.
Story #3 My Mother's Side Job (Class Workshop)
Danielle Orner
Story # 3
02/27/07
Monologue
My Mother’s Side Job
My mother writes erotica to keep food on the table for my sister and me. My sister doesn’t know. No one else knows. Or at least I can’t imagine who else would know. I am telling you because if I don’t share this with someone then I will go insane thinking I am the only one who can see the clues. You are probably thinking that my mother is one of those trailer trash whores that has lots of gentlemen callers over, reeking with the scent of too many Bud Lites and covered in tattoos of naked women, and has sex with them on the couch while her two innocent daughters sit outside one the porch listening to the noises through paper-thin walls. Or that she is a total hippie chick who doesn’t shave, has long hair with natural streaks of grey, eats tofu at every meal, and believes in free sexuality or whatever. You know the kind that has statues of Asian gods and goddess in kama sutra positions and tells her daughters to explore their beautiful female bodies. You don’t have to tell me. I know that is what you are thinking.
But she is not either of those women. My mom is completely plainly average like dry toast or unsweetened shredded wheat. She is the kind of women you bump into at the grocery store because you truly didn’t see her standing there trying to figure out which brand of ketchup she has a coupon for. The word that best describes her is dumpy. You know short, soft around the edges, mousy hair, jiggly arms, a limp pudgy stomach that never quite deflated after pregnancy, lumpy sweaters with stupid little seasonal pins like a gold Christmas tree or a seesaw with pastel bunnies on it, granny underpants peaking out of her mom jeans, glasses, and a mop of graying hair that never seems to be in any kind of style.
She belongs to that class of middle-aged moms who couldn’t keep their husbands attention and are now divorced. Dad hated that sight of her lumpy figure in boxy, outdated styles so much that he ditched us all. He may have some other woman or a whole other family but I wouldn’t know because we haven’t heard from him in two years. He stopped sending the child support checks last December, just in time for Christmas.
Anyway, I have gotten way off the subject. The point is that my mother is the last person in the world who you would think writes erotica. She doesn’t even seem like a sexual being, just an androgynous bunch of wrinkled, depressed flesh. Don’t get me wrong, I love my mother. It’s just that I want you to really get a picture of who she is so you can understand why I am so upset. It’s probably a sin to call your mother an androgynous bunch of wrinkled, depressed flesh so I am sorry for that. Anyway, mom has this job as a checker in at the Albertsons down the street. She walks because we don’t have a car and she wears her stupid blue vest with her name tag all the way there. I am always trying to tell her that she should just carry the vest until she gets inside the store but she thinks I am being to self-conscious like young women always are. What she means is that I still have self-esteem and haven’t completely let myself go like she has. Anyway, she rings up people’s stupid groceries for eight hours every day and still barely has enough to pay the rent on our crummy little two bedroom apartment, to pay for food, and other necessary items. So one day she said she got a raise and took us out to dinner at the pizza parlor and bought new curtains. Like a moron, I believed her. Then the amount of extra money she had to spend kept getting bigger and bigger. I got suspicious. My sister is too young and too self-absorbed to care about these things especially if mom is buying her jeans like the cool kids wear.
Anyway, I went snooping around my mother’s room to see if I could find a clue to what she was up to. I know it was wrong but I just had to know. I had once been in my mother’s room and found her diary. It had all this angry emotional stuff about Dad in it which scared me so I never snooped in her room again. This time I found a bunch of those $1.99 notebooks from the grocery store instead of a diary. There were filled with my mom’s scribbly handwriting. I flipped to a page in the middle and read a paragraph. Now I am not going to tell you exactly what I read but it was explicit. You know whispered dirty words, wet panties, feverish touches, and throbbing members…the whole deal. Okay, sorry, maybe you don’t know but I am sure you can imagine. Anyway, it was detailed and, I must say, pretty good. At first, I panicked because I thought I might still be reading a diary. But that thought soon past. The only places mom goes without us is the grocery store and the library. Books are her only way to relax and I guess dream of a different life. She spends most of her weekends there. Anyway, the thought of my mom at the library made me realize that maybe she was typing this stuff up on their community computers and sending it in to online contests or printing it and mailing it to publishers. I knew immediately that that was where the money was coming from. I thought I might look for the stuff online at an internet café or something because we don’t have a computer at home and I could get caught searching for something like that at school. But then I realized that was a stupid idea because she probably some pen name or something. There is no way she writes erotica under the name Paula Hungal. No one would read it. She must go by Madame Van Wick or Gloria White or something sultry and author-like.
So it doesn’t really bother me that she writes this stuff. It is just that now when I look at her from across the dinner table I know she has all these romantic sex scenes playing in her mind. You know like she is all dumpy on the outside but on the inside she is some princess being ravaged by the stable boy in this medieval castle. And now she has got all this money too. And when people bump into her in the aisles or don’t say hello when she starts ringing up their groceries, she can smile to herself and think that they have no idea who she real is. Kinda like Superman or something.
Anyway, I guess this really isn’t a confession so I should stop taking up your time. It is just that you’re the only person I knew I could talk to who couldn’t tell anybody else and who could charge me for your time. So save your Hail Marys and such for a really sinner. Okay, thanks for listening I guess. Oh, one more thing, I hope you learned something from my story. You know, like you never know what someone is doing with their own private lives. I guess you think twice when you see those nuns now. Kinda crazy, huh?
Story # 3
02/27/07
Monologue
My Mother’s Side Job
My mother writes erotica to keep food on the table for my sister and me. My sister doesn’t know. No one else knows. Or at least I can’t imagine who else would know. I am telling you because if I don’t share this with someone then I will go insane thinking I am the only one who can see the clues. You are probably thinking that my mother is one of those trailer trash whores that has lots of gentlemen callers over, reeking with the scent of too many Bud Lites and covered in tattoos of naked women, and has sex with them on the couch while her two innocent daughters sit outside one the porch listening to the noises through paper-thin walls. Or that she is a total hippie chick who doesn’t shave, has long hair with natural streaks of grey, eats tofu at every meal, and believes in free sexuality or whatever. You know the kind that has statues of Asian gods and goddess in kama sutra positions and tells her daughters to explore their beautiful female bodies. You don’t have to tell me. I know that is what you are thinking.
But she is not either of those women. My mom is completely plainly average like dry toast or unsweetened shredded wheat. She is the kind of women you bump into at the grocery store because you truly didn’t see her standing there trying to figure out which brand of ketchup she has a coupon for. The word that best describes her is dumpy. You know short, soft around the edges, mousy hair, jiggly arms, a limp pudgy stomach that never quite deflated after pregnancy, lumpy sweaters with stupid little seasonal pins like a gold Christmas tree or a seesaw with pastel bunnies on it, granny underpants peaking out of her mom jeans, glasses, and a mop of graying hair that never seems to be in any kind of style.
She belongs to that class of middle-aged moms who couldn’t keep their husbands attention and are now divorced. Dad hated that sight of her lumpy figure in boxy, outdated styles so much that he ditched us all. He may have some other woman or a whole other family but I wouldn’t know because we haven’t heard from him in two years. He stopped sending the child support checks last December, just in time for Christmas.
Anyway, I have gotten way off the subject. The point is that my mother is the last person in the world who you would think writes erotica. She doesn’t even seem like a sexual being, just an androgynous bunch of wrinkled, depressed flesh. Don’t get me wrong, I love my mother. It’s just that I want you to really get a picture of who she is so you can understand why I am so upset. It’s probably a sin to call your mother an androgynous bunch of wrinkled, depressed flesh so I am sorry for that. Anyway, mom has this job as a checker in at the Albertsons down the street. She walks because we don’t have a car and she wears her stupid blue vest with her name tag all the way there. I am always trying to tell her that she should just carry the vest until she gets inside the store but she thinks I am being to self-conscious like young women always are. What she means is that I still have self-esteem and haven’t completely let myself go like she has. Anyway, she rings up people’s stupid groceries for eight hours every day and still barely has enough to pay the rent on our crummy little two bedroom apartment, to pay for food, and other necessary items. So one day she said she got a raise and took us out to dinner at the pizza parlor and bought new curtains. Like a moron, I believed her. Then the amount of extra money she had to spend kept getting bigger and bigger. I got suspicious. My sister is too young and too self-absorbed to care about these things especially if mom is buying her jeans like the cool kids wear.
Anyway, I went snooping around my mother’s room to see if I could find a clue to what she was up to. I know it was wrong but I just had to know. I had once been in my mother’s room and found her diary. It had all this angry emotional stuff about Dad in it which scared me so I never snooped in her room again. This time I found a bunch of those $1.99 notebooks from the grocery store instead of a diary. There were filled with my mom’s scribbly handwriting. I flipped to a page in the middle and read a paragraph. Now I am not going to tell you exactly what I read but it was explicit. You know whispered dirty words, wet panties, feverish touches, and throbbing members…the whole deal. Okay, sorry, maybe you don’t know but I am sure you can imagine. Anyway, it was detailed and, I must say, pretty good. At first, I panicked because I thought I might still be reading a diary. But that thought soon past. The only places mom goes without us is the grocery store and the library. Books are her only way to relax and I guess dream of a different life. She spends most of her weekends there. Anyway, the thought of my mom at the library made me realize that maybe she was typing this stuff up on their community computers and sending it in to online contests or printing it and mailing it to publishers. I knew immediately that that was where the money was coming from. I thought I might look for the stuff online at an internet café or something because we don’t have a computer at home and I could get caught searching for something like that at school. But then I realized that was a stupid idea because she probably some pen name or something. There is no way she writes erotica under the name Paula Hungal. No one would read it. She must go by Madame Van Wick or Gloria White or something sultry and author-like.
So it doesn’t really bother me that she writes this stuff. It is just that now when I look at her from across the dinner table I know she has all these romantic sex scenes playing in her mind. You know like she is all dumpy on the outside but on the inside she is some princess being ravaged by the stable boy in this medieval castle. And now she has got all this money too. And when people bump into her in the aisles or don’t say hello when she starts ringing up their groceries, she can smile to herself and think that they have no idea who she real is. Kinda like Superman or something.
Anyway, I guess this really isn’t a confession so I should stop taking up your time. It is just that you’re the only person I knew I could talk to who couldn’t tell anybody else and who could charge me for your time. So save your Hail Marys and such for a really sinner. Okay, thanks for listening I guess. Oh, one more thing, I hope you learned something from my story. You know, like you never know what someone is doing with their own private lives. I guess you think twice when you see those nuns now. Kinda crazy, huh?
Story #2 She Only Meant to Dry Her (Small Workshop)
Danielle Orner
Story # 2
02/20/07
She Only Meant to Dry Her
It was a Wednesday when Mrs. Parking woke up to find a mess in her microwave. It took her a few minutes to identify the source of the multicolored, stinking blobs clinging to the walls, ceiling, window, and turntable of the microwave. It was the patches of white curly hair that finally tipped her off. When she felt how soft and clean they were (despite the splotches of red and grey matter splashed on them), she remembered the events of yesterday evening.
It all started when Fifi had knocked over the trashcan in the kitchen. Mrs. Parking discovered her rolling around in the almost empty tubes of denture paste, the dripping jugs of prune juice, and the crumbs of fiber crackers. After a thorough bout of scolding, Mrs. Parking swiftly swept Fifi into the bathroom and scrubbed her with raspberry scented poodle shampoo. Despite her anger, Mrs. Parking remember to remove Fifi’s pink collar studded with rhinestones and her matching bows before plunging her into the sudsy water. It was not until Mrs. Parking hauled the shivering, dripping Fifi out of the tub, that she remembered that she had lent her turbo hairdryer 2000 to the nosy redheaded lady upstairs. That was at least a week ago but the vulgar women had yet to return the appliance.
Mrs. Parking attempted to dry her miniature poodle with a vigorous toweling off but her arthritis kicked in before she could finish the job. Fifi shook violently while little goose pimples speckled the pink skin visible beneath her damp clumped curls and her itsy-bitsy toenails, which were painted fire engine red, clicked on the bathroom linoleum. Her baby blue eyes stared up at Mrs. Parking pleadingly. Fifi had been bad but Mrs. Parking was not about to let her freeze to death. She gathered up her little dog in a fresh, fluffy towel and went in search of a way to dry her. She thought about going upstairs to retrieve her hair dryer but the thought of climbing all those flights of stairs only to find that the red-haired lady wasn’t home made her decide to be resourceful instead.
Her first thought was the oven. Yet, the question of what heat setting to put it on and whether or not to preheat had her looking for a simpler option. Her second thought was the dryer but it cost a dollar fifty at the apartment Laundromat and Mrs. Parking wasn’t made of money. That’s when Mrs. Parking thought of the microwave. It was small but it would do. She coaxed the nervous Fifi into the little cube and secured the door. She meant to type in 5:00 minutes on the timer but her arthritic finger slipped on the button and added a few zeros. She didn’t check the digital display panel before pressing start. Then, she wandered back toward the bathroom to fetch Fifi’s collar and bows which were still on the kitchen sink. Before she made it down the hall, she forgot what she was doing (a thing that happened very often to poor, old Mrs. Parking). She sighed and shuffled into the living room to watch infomercials. Meanwhile, forgotten Fifi went around and around in the microwave.
After hours of infomercials (most of them missed by a dosing Mrs. Parking), the stiff, old lady got up, stretched herself, and went into the bedroom to go to bed. It wasn’t until the next morning that she found the remains of her faithful pooch exploded all over the interior of the microwave. She felt sad and a bit guilty for a moment before reminding herself that she was only trying to dry her little dog. With that comforting thought, she took her bowl of stewed prunes into the living room and watch soap operas.
It wasn’t until Saturday that Fifi was discovered again. Mrs. Parking’s eldest daughter came over, as usual, to help with the cleaning. She knew something was amiss when she didn’t her Fifi’s customary greeting of sharp little yips. Her suspicions were conformed by the stink, which was as horrible as you might imagine the four-day old fragments of an exploded poodle to be. She screamed when she went into the kitchen.
“Mother, what the hell is in the microwave?” Mrs. Parking looked up from her game show and thought for a moment.
“Oh, that’s alright dear. I was only trying to dry her.”
Story # 2
02/20/07
She Only Meant to Dry Her
It was a Wednesday when Mrs. Parking woke up to find a mess in her microwave. It took her a few minutes to identify the source of the multicolored, stinking blobs clinging to the walls, ceiling, window, and turntable of the microwave. It was the patches of white curly hair that finally tipped her off. When she felt how soft and clean they were (despite the splotches of red and grey matter splashed on them), she remembered the events of yesterday evening.
It all started when Fifi had knocked over the trashcan in the kitchen. Mrs. Parking discovered her rolling around in the almost empty tubes of denture paste, the dripping jugs of prune juice, and the crumbs of fiber crackers. After a thorough bout of scolding, Mrs. Parking swiftly swept Fifi into the bathroom and scrubbed her with raspberry scented poodle shampoo. Despite her anger, Mrs. Parking remember to remove Fifi’s pink collar studded with rhinestones and her matching bows before plunging her into the sudsy water. It was not until Mrs. Parking hauled the shivering, dripping Fifi out of the tub, that she remembered that she had lent her turbo hairdryer 2000 to the nosy redheaded lady upstairs. That was at least a week ago but the vulgar women had yet to return the appliance.
Mrs. Parking attempted to dry her miniature poodle with a vigorous toweling off but her arthritis kicked in before she could finish the job. Fifi shook violently while little goose pimples speckled the pink skin visible beneath her damp clumped curls and her itsy-bitsy toenails, which were painted fire engine red, clicked on the bathroom linoleum. Her baby blue eyes stared up at Mrs. Parking pleadingly. Fifi had been bad but Mrs. Parking was not about to let her freeze to death. She gathered up her little dog in a fresh, fluffy towel and went in search of a way to dry her. She thought about going upstairs to retrieve her hair dryer but the thought of climbing all those flights of stairs only to find that the red-haired lady wasn’t home made her decide to be resourceful instead.
Her first thought was the oven. Yet, the question of what heat setting to put it on and whether or not to preheat had her looking for a simpler option. Her second thought was the dryer but it cost a dollar fifty at the apartment Laundromat and Mrs. Parking wasn’t made of money. That’s when Mrs. Parking thought of the microwave. It was small but it would do. She coaxed the nervous Fifi into the little cube and secured the door. She meant to type in 5:00 minutes on the timer but her arthritic finger slipped on the button and added a few zeros. She didn’t check the digital display panel before pressing start. Then, she wandered back toward the bathroom to fetch Fifi’s collar and bows which were still on the kitchen sink. Before she made it down the hall, she forgot what she was doing (a thing that happened very often to poor, old Mrs. Parking). She sighed and shuffled into the living room to watch infomercials. Meanwhile, forgotten Fifi went around and around in the microwave.
After hours of infomercials (most of them missed by a dosing Mrs. Parking), the stiff, old lady got up, stretched herself, and went into the bedroom to go to bed. It wasn’t until the next morning that she found the remains of her faithful pooch exploded all over the interior of the microwave. She felt sad and a bit guilty for a moment before reminding herself that she was only trying to dry her little dog. With that comforting thought, she took her bowl of stewed prunes into the living room and watch soap operas.
It wasn’t until Saturday that Fifi was discovered again. Mrs. Parking’s eldest daughter came over, as usual, to help with the cleaning. She knew something was amiss when she didn’t her Fifi’s customary greeting of sharp little yips. Her suspicions were conformed by the stink, which was as horrible as you might imagine the four-day old fragments of an exploded poodle to be. She screamed when she went into the kitchen.
“Mother, what the hell is in the microwave?” Mrs. Parking looked up from her game show and thought for a moment.
“Oh, that’s alright dear. I was only trying to dry her.”
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Story #1 What He Did to Me (Class Workshop)
Danielle Orner
Story # 1
02/20/07
What He Did to Me
At first, I didn’t know how badly it had affected me. The relationship had only lasted a few months, after all. I waited tensely and silently for a few days after the end like a person awaiting the results of a biopsy. I moved as little as possible so as to be keenly aware of every twitch or irregularity in my body or psyche. Yet, no cravings for full cartons of double fudge ice cream, or desires to burn all the articles of clothing and the love notes he had left behind, or urges to spend the afternoon sobbing over coke advertisements in my pajamas occurred. I thought I was in the clear.
The morning after I let my guard down, I awoke to find something wet and warm beneath my left forearm. Groggily, I registered the damp sensation and sat up rubbing my eyes. There was a smudge of red liquid drying quickly on the light skin of my inner forearm. I was wiping the spot with the palm of my hand when I looked down at the wet, warm something. It was small, the size of an infant bird whose eyes have not yet opened and whose body is naked without even the beginnings of feathers. I know what a baby bird looks like because my best friend, Morgan, brought one to class in the third grade. It had fallen out of a tree by her bus stop. Even though we wrapped it in towels and fed it wet pieces of dog food like the animal control people told us to, the baby bird died before the end of the school day. The something wet and warm reminded me of that sightless infant bird in more ways than just its size. It was raw red and moved with a weak pulsing flutter. There was a purple vein quivering across the top of it which reminded me of the translucent skin of the bird and delicate veins visible beneath it. All around the something, a pool of velvet crimson liquid soaked into my white bed sheets. The pool wasn’t still; it grew the tiniest fraction in diameter as the something continued to bleed. I scooped the something up and cradled it in my palms. I could feel its shivering movements and the warmth leaving it in tiny spurts. When I glanced down at its clumsy red spot on the sheets, I noticed another slightly smaller something near my pillow. With slow realization, I moved one hand to my chest and felt a tear in my nightgown below the curve of my left breast. Tenderly working my fingers beneath it, I traced the edges of a gaping hole between my ribs. My fingertips came away stained with red.
I climbed out of bed and placed my bare feet on the carpet. Pulling back the sheets, I found five fragments of quivering, scarlet somethings each lying in their own damp dot. I pilled them in my cupped palms and carried them to the kitchen. Taking the towel from the refrigerator door and balancing the miniature heap, I managed to spread out a soft resting place on the counter to leave them. With my hands freed, I searched for the plastic Ziploc bags. I found two sizes: freezer and sandwich. I held them up side by side and tried to determine which to use. The sandwich bag seemed like it would work but the fragments would have to be squished together. The thought of their pulsing bodies squeezed against plastic made me shiver. Yet, the freezer bag seemed so large and the excess plastic would have to be wrapped around the tiny bundle to keep it from bouncing all around. I thought for a moment that I could divide the pieces and place them in separate sandwich bags. The thought passed quickly. I finally settled on the freezer bag and gently situated the fragments in a corner before zipping and wrapping. Carrying the package with me, I returned to the bedroom and dressed in a t-shirt, jeans, and a jacket. I was afraid to put on a bra since the under wire would intersect my wound. Placing the plastic bag at the bottom of my large canvas purse, I cupped my hand around the small bulge it made in the side of the purse to keep it from shifting. I head for the door but at the last moment turned back to the bedroom. I stripped the sheets off the bed and stuffed them into the hamper. The mattress was dotted with splotches of blood that had soaked through the sheets. I sprayed some foamy stain remover on each dot.
I took the subway to the hospital downtown. I sat with my canvas purse on my lap, still clutching the bag through the fabric. Pulling my jacket tightly around my body to hide the fact that I was braless, I studied the other passengers’ faces to see if the suspected anything was wrong. One black lady with kind eyes and colorful beads tied in at the bottoms of her thousand braids gave me a sympathetic smile but that could’ve been because I was scrutinizing her. The car shuttered on and on through the endless tunnels to the rhythm of shifting lights. Passengers changed around me until finally my platform appeared magically out of the moving cement wall. I struggled off the train trying not to be bumped or jostled by too many people. Gratefully, I reached the street and walked two blocks to the nondescript hospital named Mercy something. Inside the sliding doors, I filled out several clipboards worth of paperwork before choosing a chair in the corner next to the magazine rack.
I waited three and a half hours while more urgent cases, like poisoned children and auto wreck victims, were ushered in. Finally, the frazzled nurse called my name. She walked me to another room and instructed me to sit on the crinkly paper-covered bed. I took out my plastic bag and gingerly laid it on a metal tray next to the bed. A doctor with a glasses and a bald spot glanced at me and flipped through my chart before leaving the mundane task of healing me to the nurse. She chatted like a hairdresser while deftly stitching the fragments together. She paused for a moment in the middle of her monologue on her husband’s (or was it her son’s) brief flirtation with a career in dentistry to tell me to lie back and relax. Before she could finish her story, she had reinserted the stitched-up fragments and bandaged my wound. I had to sit on the table for several more minutes, while she explained what her son does for a living now, before she told me how to find my way back to the waiting room. Then I was out in the street, on the platform, on the train, on another street, and in my living room. During the entire trip, my canvas purse felt light and empty.
I washed my sheets and, while they tumbled in the dryer, I scrubbed the mattress. I made the bed, fluffed the pillows, and smoothed the comforter. Once everything was clean, I crawled into the fresh-linen scented cave of white. With one hand over my bandage, I held my body very still and concentrated on healing.
Story # 1
02/20/07
What He Did to Me
At first, I didn’t know how badly it had affected me. The relationship had only lasted a few months, after all. I waited tensely and silently for a few days after the end like a person awaiting the results of a biopsy. I moved as little as possible so as to be keenly aware of every twitch or irregularity in my body or psyche. Yet, no cravings for full cartons of double fudge ice cream, or desires to burn all the articles of clothing and the love notes he had left behind, or urges to spend the afternoon sobbing over coke advertisements in my pajamas occurred. I thought I was in the clear.
The morning after I let my guard down, I awoke to find something wet and warm beneath my left forearm. Groggily, I registered the damp sensation and sat up rubbing my eyes. There was a smudge of red liquid drying quickly on the light skin of my inner forearm. I was wiping the spot with the palm of my hand when I looked down at the wet, warm something. It was small, the size of an infant bird whose eyes have not yet opened and whose body is naked without even the beginnings of feathers. I know what a baby bird looks like because my best friend, Morgan, brought one to class in the third grade. It had fallen out of a tree by her bus stop. Even though we wrapped it in towels and fed it wet pieces of dog food like the animal control people told us to, the baby bird died before the end of the school day. The something wet and warm reminded me of that sightless infant bird in more ways than just its size. It was raw red and moved with a weak pulsing flutter. There was a purple vein quivering across the top of it which reminded me of the translucent skin of the bird and delicate veins visible beneath it. All around the something, a pool of velvet crimson liquid soaked into my white bed sheets. The pool wasn’t still; it grew the tiniest fraction in diameter as the something continued to bleed. I scooped the something up and cradled it in my palms. I could feel its shivering movements and the warmth leaving it in tiny spurts. When I glanced down at its clumsy red spot on the sheets, I noticed another slightly smaller something near my pillow. With slow realization, I moved one hand to my chest and felt a tear in my nightgown below the curve of my left breast. Tenderly working my fingers beneath it, I traced the edges of a gaping hole between my ribs. My fingertips came away stained with red.
I climbed out of bed and placed my bare feet on the carpet. Pulling back the sheets, I found five fragments of quivering, scarlet somethings each lying in their own damp dot. I pilled them in my cupped palms and carried them to the kitchen. Taking the towel from the refrigerator door and balancing the miniature heap, I managed to spread out a soft resting place on the counter to leave them. With my hands freed, I searched for the plastic Ziploc bags. I found two sizes: freezer and sandwich. I held them up side by side and tried to determine which to use. The sandwich bag seemed like it would work but the fragments would have to be squished together. The thought of their pulsing bodies squeezed against plastic made me shiver. Yet, the freezer bag seemed so large and the excess plastic would have to be wrapped around the tiny bundle to keep it from bouncing all around. I thought for a moment that I could divide the pieces and place them in separate sandwich bags. The thought passed quickly. I finally settled on the freezer bag and gently situated the fragments in a corner before zipping and wrapping. Carrying the package with me, I returned to the bedroom and dressed in a t-shirt, jeans, and a jacket. I was afraid to put on a bra since the under wire would intersect my wound. Placing the plastic bag at the bottom of my large canvas purse, I cupped my hand around the small bulge it made in the side of the purse to keep it from shifting. I head for the door but at the last moment turned back to the bedroom. I stripped the sheets off the bed and stuffed them into the hamper. The mattress was dotted with splotches of blood that had soaked through the sheets. I sprayed some foamy stain remover on each dot.
I took the subway to the hospital downtown. I sat with my canvas purse on my lap, still clutching the bag through the fabric. Pulling my jacket tightly around my body to hide the fact that I was braless, I studied the other passengers’ faces to see if the suspected anything was wrong. One black lady with kind eyes and colorful beads tied in at the bottoms of her thousand braids gave me a sympathetic smile but that could’ve been because I was scrutinizing her. The car shuttered on and on through the endless tunnels to the rhythm of shifting lights. Passengers changed around me until finally my platform appeared magically out of the moving cement wall. I struggled off the train trying not to be bumped or jostled by too many people. Gratefully, I reached the street and walked two blocks to the nondescript hospital named Mercy something. Inside the sliding doors, I filled out several clipboards worth of paperwork before choosing a chair in the corner next to the magazine rack.
I waited three and a half hours while more urgent cases, like poisoned children and auto wreck victims, were ushered in. Finally, the frazzled nurse called my name. She walked me to another room and instructed me to sit on the crinkly paper-covered bed. I took out my plastic bag and gingerly laid it on a metal tray next to the bed. A doctor with a glasses and a bald spot glanced at me and flipped through my chart before leaving the mundane task of healing me to the nurse. She chatted like a hairdresser while deftly stitching the fragments together. She paused for a moment in the middle of her monologue on her husband’s (or was it her son’s) brief flirtation with a career in dentistry to tell me to lie back and relax. Before she could finish her story, she had reinserted the stitched-up fragments and bandaged my wound. I had to sit on the table for several more minutes, while she explained what her son does for a living now, before she told me how to find my way back to the waiting room. Then I was out in the street, on the platform, on the train, on another street, and in my living room. During the entire trip, my canvas purse felt light and empty.
I washed my sheets and, while they tumbled in the dryer, I scrubbed the mattress. I made the bed, fluffed the pillows, and smoothed the comforter. Once everything was clean, I crawled into the fresh-linen scented cave of white. With one hand over my bandage, I held my body very still and concentrated on healing.
Alyssa Duran- Week Two- Story Three
I Was Sick
Three days ago I was sick. Why’s that so important to you that you had to haul me down here? I was with my wife and my two kids when they weren’t in school. You ask her, she’ll say I was sick. It was the kind of sick you don’t get out of bed for days. The flu, I guess. I didn’t go to work, I stayed in bed. Yes, I’m over it now. I had a fever but it’s been gone since this morning. You ask her, she’ll say. I felt good ‘til you brought me down here to this dump. Sorry, but it is.
No, I know what I’m here about. You want to know about that damn robbery, dontcha? Well, I’ll tell you everything but you should know that I was sick. Henry and Stew came down for a visit near two weeks ago. I gave ‘em coffee and we watched the game. Yes, the football game, man, will you listen? They came by and made a proposal like, you know, we’re planning a loot will yah do it with us? What did I say? Well, hell, I can’t say I didn’t think about it. I’m a damn janitor at my kids’ elementary school. I got three of ‘em, they’re still young, and a little freakin’ house. You take a guess as to whether or not I said yes.
Well, I took a look at my life and sure it’s a shithole, sorry for my words, but I’m the one that makes the money. My family would be nowhere without me so I said no instead. Stop staring at me like that. I don’t appreciate it. I’m helping you all I can here. Where’d I get what? Oh, this? Nice little trinket ain’t it? This little timepiece was, well, given to me. Yeah, given to me. By who? My…wife, for Christmas, you ask her and she’ll tell you she got me this and I was sick. How do I know she’d say that? How do I know? Are you crazy? Of course I know, I know ‘cause I said I know, okay?
Okay, I apologize. I’ll go on. Yes, hold your horses, where was I? Right, well, Henry and Stew, they’re big men from up the road and they were none too happy about me sayin’ no. I’m the fast one, you see. I don’t get to eat much on account of my family needs to eat first. No, I eat of course, but my kids are growin’ and they get more, I get less. So I’m the runner, they’re the scary burglars. That’s their plan. I told them boys sorry I couldn’t do nothing, but if I wanted more money I’d make it the honest way. Yes I’m serious! What? A man as poor like me can’t have a good and moral head on his shoulders?
Well, no. They told me when and where the burglary would be. I was damn well aware. Well, sure I could of reported the damn thing, but they, well, yah see, they told me if I said anything they’d kill me. Yes, they’d kill me. What is it with you, what I say isn’t good enough? Well I tell yah now, the robbery happened two weeks later just like I said and it was them boys that did it and not me. You ask my wife, I was home with my damn kids, in bed, with the flu. You hear? I was sick and Henry and Stew did it. And that’s all I’m saying ‘til I get myself a damn lawyer, that I was sick.
Three days ago I was sick. Why’s that so important to you that you had to haul me down here? I was with my wife and my two kids when they weren’t in school. You ask her, she’ll say I was sick. It was the kind of sick you don’t get out of bed for days. The flu, I guess. I didn’t go to work, I stayed in bed. Yes, I’m over it now. I had a fever but it’s been gone since this morning. You ask her, she’ll say. I felt good ‘til you brought me down here to this dump. Sorry, but it is.
No, I know what I’m here about. You want to know about that damn robbery, dontcha? Well, I’ll tell you everything but you should know that I was sick. Henry and Stew came down for a visit near two weeks ago. I gave ‘em coffee and we watched the game. Yes, the football game, man, will you listen? They came by and made a proposal like, you know, we’re planning a loot will yah do it with us? What did I say? Well, hell, I can’t say I didn’t think about it. I’m a damn janitor at my kids’ elementary school. I got three of ‘em, they’re still young, and a little freakin’ house. You take a guess as to whether or not I said yes.
Well, I took a look at my life and sure it’s a shithole, sorry for my words, but I’m the one that makes the money. My family would be nowhere without me so I said no instead. Stop staring at me like that. I don’t appreciate it. I’m helping you all I can here. Where’d I get what? Oh, this? Nice little trinket ain’t it? This little timepiece was, well, given to me. Yeah, given to me. By who? My…wife, for Christmas, you ask her and she’ll tell you she got me this and I was sick. How do I know she’d say that? How do I know? Are you crazy? Of course I know, I know ‘cause I said I know, okay?
Okay, I apologize. I’ll go on. Yes, hold your horses, where was I? Right, well, Henry and Stew, they’re big men from up the road and they were none too happy about me sayin’ no. I’m the fast one, you see. I don’t get to eat much on account of my family needs to eat first. No, I eat of course, but my kids are growin’ and they get more, I get less. So I’m the runner, they’re the scary burglars. That’s their plan. I told them boys sorry I couldn’t do nothing, but if I wanted more money I’d make it the honest way. Yes I’m serious! What? A man as poor like me can’t have a good and moral head on his shoulders?
Well, no. They told me when and where the burglary would be. I was damn well aware. Well, sure I could of reported the damn thing, but they, well, yah see, they told me if I said anything they’d kill me. Yes, they’d kill me. What is it with you, what I say isn’t good enough? Well I tell yah now, the robbery happened two weeks later just like I said and it was them boys that did it and not me. You ask my wife, I was home with my damn kids, in bed, with the flu. You hear? I was sick and Henry and Stew did it. And that’s all I’m saying ‘til I get myself a damn lawyer, that I was sick.
Story #12: Revise a Story
Story #12: Your job is to revise a story you have already written, expanding it substantially, so a 1-pager becomes 6 pages long, a 3-pager becomes 12 pages long, ballpark. My recommendations on how to start: If it is a story with one scene, plot it out so it has 5 scenes. If it has one location, give it one or more additional locations. If it has just one character, come up with an antagonist for that character to play off of. Class time till the end of the term will be spent critiquing these expanded stories. If you are ready to have yours workshopped, bring it in today. If not, aim for next week or the week after. This will be the “big” story that you will take away from this workshop, so do it right, revise it well, put your all into it.
Story #11: The Big Symbol Story
Story #11: The Big Symbol Story: read Raymond Carver’s "Why Don't You Dance?" and think about how the ordinary things of the story become symbols of the emotional action. Thus, the man, clearly recently broken up, has put everything from the inside of his house out on the lawn. The young couple, newly in love, represents his past as he represents their future, and they inhabit his exteriorized interior, putting together their life together from the objects that represent his broken life. The big symbol in this story is the house as a relationship/marriage. Similarly, in”A Story about the Body,” the big symbol is the blue bowl of rose petals covering dead bees. Can you decipher it? Now write your own 1-3 page story with a big symbol like this, in which an object, a setting, a repeated descriptive element, comes to take on special meaning that ties into the emotional situation in the story.
Story #10 (3 Options):
Story #10 (3 Options): Either write a new “short” of 1-3 pages or rewrite any story you have written this semester so that it has one or more of these elements: exaggeration of description (as in Boyle, “...so stripped of vegetation it looked as if the air force had strafed it”); so that it parodies one of its characters (as in “Bullet” and “Dip”); or so that the plot twists at the end in such a way as to revise your understanding of everything that you thought you knew before about the story (as in both of the Dahl stories). If this doesn’t inspire you, try doing What If? exercise # 86, “Write a Story Using a Small Unit of Time,” using “Bullet in the Brain” as your model.
Story #9: 3-5 page story with a character “swerve” or “turn”--or Story in Imperative Mode
Story #9: 3-5 page story with a character “swerve” or “turn.” Read Bernard Malamud’s “The Model,” and notice how partway through the story the power dynamic changes from the artist having power as employer painting a nude, exposed woman, to the model taking power from the artist, turning the tables. Notice also how the question of whether the artist is in fact simply a pervert hiring a nude or actually a painter dispassionately painting a model is problematic in the story. He seems to admit that he’s not a real artist, but then chooses to paint her face after she leaves, as if the painting were really the point of the visit. Thus there is a swerve, turn, or arc in his character, depending on your interpretation, and also in her character, from passive, dispassionate model, to active, angry, passionate avenger, from model to artist. Write a story in which you suggest a character is one sort, but then reveal him or her to be another partway through the story, in which you have a balance of power shift from one character to another, or in which the character develops along a character arc, changing from beginning to end of story.
Story #9 (2nd Option): if the previous exercise doesn’t inspire you, try this: read Lorrie Moore’s “How to Become a Writer” and Junot Díaz’s “How to Date a Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl, or Halfie” in Doubletakes. Notice how each story is told entirely in the imperative mode, like a cookbook: do this, do that, go here, put that there. Try either rewriting a story you have already written in the imperative mode, making whatever changes you think necessary in order for it to work, or write a new one in this mode.
Story #9 (2nd Option): if the previous exercise doesn’t inspire you, try this: read Lorrie Moore’s “How to Become a Writer” and Junot Díaz’s “How to Date a Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl, or Halfie” in Doubletakes. Notice how each story is told entirely in the imperative mode, like a cookbook: do this, do that, go here, put that there. Try either rewriting a story you have already written in the imperative mode, making whatever changes you think necessary in order for it to work, or write a new one in this mode.
Story #8: 1-4 page metafictional story.
Story #8: 1-4 page metafictional story. Read Margaret Atwood’s “Happy Endings” in handout. Now like she does, write a story that self-consciously analyzes itself as it goes along. You might wish to break the 4th wall of the theater by directly addressing the reader–always a shocking move, even 80 years after the height of Modernism!
Story #7: 1-4 page anti-story story.
Story #7: 1-4 page anti-story story. Read Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried” in Doubletakes and think about how he has structured his story in an unusual way–through rhetorical repetition and variation, instead of through traditional storytelling plot. This is more usual in poetry, especially poetry influenced by the Bible, like that of Walt Whitman. Now read Clarice Lispector’s “The Fifth Story” in handout and notice how her story is a story that is written against plot. It tells one different event in 5 different ways, so that there is no one plot, no one meaning to take from the story. The story remains open, because the plot vacillates and shifts. Now you do something similar: take a conventional element of fiction (plot, voice, setting, character, the suspension of disbelief, etc.) and warp it, break it, break the rules with which one is suppose to treat it. In this sort of story, a good trick is to deny traditional narrative pleasures while at the same time gesturing towards them. The tension that is created by suggesting traditional narration and then withdrawing it creates this pleasure.
Story #6: 1-4 page surreal story.
Story #6: 1-4 page surreal story. Read Fernando Sorrentino’s “There’s a Man in the Habit of Hitting Me on the Head with an Umbrella”and Woody Allen’s “The Kugelmass Episode” in handout and write a story takes a ridiculous premise and treats it “straight,” as if it were perfectly normal, or at least follows out what happens when this strange thing starts happening. Take any wacky premise that appeals to you (I shrunk Godzilla and keep him in a fish tank under my bed; my girlfriend turns into a giant python at night; my fingers and toes are starting to rot and fall off; whatever) and run with it. Hopefully it will take you to a surprising place!
Story #5: 1-4 page magical transformation story
Story #5: 1-4 page magical transformation story. Read Barry Yourgrau’s “By the Creek”in handout. Yourgrau’s story takes the idea that boys turn into their fathers and literalizes it, so that a boy actually begins wearing his father’s head in the story. This is a variation on the literalizing metaphor exercise you did for Story #1. In your new story, think of one thing turning into another, like Kafka’s Gregor Samza waking up as a cockroach, then write your own metamorphosis.
Story #4: 1-3 page implicit plot story.
Story #4: 1-3 page implicit plot story. Read Gabriel García Márquez’s “One of These Days” in handout. Notice how the whole story focuses on one small incident: the mayor has his tooth pulled. However, the dentist’s reluctance to pull his teeth, the mayor’s threat to kill him, the dentist pulling out his own gun, and other moments in the story, such as the mentioning of the 12 dead men for which the mayor should suffer, all suggest that something unusual is going on here. We are in a world of violence, machismo, frontier justice, and something awful has happened offscreen that is merely alluded to in the story. The real plot happens offstage, but the very fact that it is glancingly mentioned without being dramatized actually gives this story drama. Your job is to break several beginning fiction writing rules: tell a story without telling it, suggest a plot without dramatizing it, and somehow or other–how you do this I leave up to you–get away with it!
Story #3: 1-3 page dramatic monologue.
Story #3: 1-3 page dramatic monologue. Like Ron Carlson’s story “Bigfoot Stole My Wife,”Jamaica Kincaid’s story “Girl”(also in handouts) and David Foster Wallace’s, “Brief Interviews with Hideous Men” are dramatic monologues. All 3 stories center on unreliable narrators, through whose eyes we see the fictional world. They are talking to us, but what we hear is not necessarily what they say, because we don’t fully trust them. Write a story with a very strong voice, based on a character who is not you. The story should consist entirely or almost entirely of this voice speaking, not of traditional omniscient narration. As in a lyric poem, we the reader overhear the person speaking. One question you might ask is, what relation, if any, does the listener have to the speaker? Are we as listeners also characters in the story, and if so, what is our role?
Story #2: 1-3 page story about a curse, monster, or urban myth.
Read Spencer Holst’s excellent and strange story “On Hope” and Ron Carlson’s story “Bigfoot Stole My Wife,” in the handouts. Now go to the internet and look up “urban myths” and “curses.” Your job is to write a story that incorporates a monster, curse or urban myth. Part two of this assignment: notice how good Ron Carlson’s title and first sentence is. Notice how good Spencer Holst’s first six lines are, his ironic ending, and the pun in his title. These openings hook the reader, and pull them bodily into the story. In this story pay particular attention to your first sentence, last sentence, and title. One good trick is to read through the story after you write it, find the best sentence in the story, and rearrange the story so it begins or ends on that sentence. Consult “First Sentences: Beginning in the Middle” writing exercise #1 in What If for good examples of first sentences. Write 5 first sentences for this story, choose the best to begin with, and append the rest at the end of the story.
Story #1: 1-3 page story that describes one thing as another
Story #1: 1-3 page story that describes one thing as another. Read Dino Buzzati’s “The Falling Girl” in handout. The story starts within the conventions of realism: setting, character, description, action, but then shifts into the fantastic. This shift happens because of a central, controlling metaphor that is never explicitly acknowledged in the story. Notice how falling girl’s life is described as a fall from high up on a building. It is an extended metaphor, so she ages as she falls, will die when she hits. The exercise is to take a metaphor (“life is like falling from a building to your death”) and then to literalize it into fiction. As you write, think of how to map this point by point onto that, so that the attributes, characteristics, and connotations of one thing transfer from one to the other. Decide how realistic you want your story to be. You might have to move into the realm of fantasy, fairy tale, dreams, surrealism, and/or magic realism to make this work. Remember that if you use apt metaphors, the story will be serious. If you use inapt metaphors the story will be parodic, strange, and humorous.
Tecumseh's Revenge
Swirling formless overhead, Tecumseh tugs at my locks with his tomahawk and attempts to free them from my well-taught and well-groomed head. Next, his hands wrench apart my death-locked jaw in order to severe my tongue and wipe out the lies of the white man. And as the glistening red river runs across my lips and down my front, my vision can only grasp that bronze countenance that burns like the mistrust of hundreds of years.
I could dream a million ways for this ghost to kill me but it only ever ended with my awakening, alone and sweat-drenched. His words had conquered my thoughts like the armies that William Henry Harrison led against the chief. There was a certainty with which I knew that Tecumseh, of the Shawnee, would bring his curse down upon my head. History was on his side and no Warren Harding is going to stop him.
Tecumseh placed the curse on William Henry Harrison after suffering defeat at the battle of Tippecanoe. The curse offers each United States President elected in an even year and divisible by twenty as a sacrifice to appease the chief’s dead nation. Now, this may seem a bit absurd for a world leader to put much faith in an old wives’ tale but it is more than simply fascinating, it is absolutely true! It began with Harrison, followed by Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley. All have died in office and I am next.
From my oval office windows, I gaze out across the rose gardens and notice the bustle on Pennsylvania Avenue. All the people, coming and going, without the burden of a nation on their shoulders. But it is not this country, or the welfare of my family, or even my own image of presidential prestige that concerns me.
The real horror of this curse lies not in the simple fact of death –that is no cause to be fearful as it is utterly unavoidable. But the mystery within this curse, that which makes an unhappy individual into an assassin or turns a man’s health from fair to poor, torments my mind incessantly. The constant evaluation of every situation, in an attempt to preserve my own ass, has greatly worn my nerves.
Without fail, I see the face of Tecumseh in every mirror and behind every corner. Even as my wife and I make love, the only visage I can catch is that of the fallen chief. In every cabinet meeting, I spend more time looking over my shoulders than at the papers in front of me. I can barely raise my voice above a whisper in public because of the fears that consume me.
My wife frets and does her best to remind me of my duties to both the country and to her. I suppose I haven’t quite been fulfilling either of them but who could with such weighty things on the brain? She complains constantly and badgers me for attention but I simply remind her that all of us have more important things to be concerned with. And now, just meager months into my presidency, I am completely ineffectual. The fear which consumes me has already killed me. It may have been my wife who put the arsenic in my tea but it was Tecumseh who put me in my grave.
I could dream a million ways for this ghost to kill me but it only ever ended with my awakening, alone and sweat-drenched. His words had conquered my thoughts like the armies that William Henry Harrison led against the chief. There was a certainty with which I knew that Tecumseh, of the Shawnee, would bring his curse down upon my head. History was on his side and no Warren Harding is going to stop him.
Tecumseh placed the curse on William Henry Harrison after suffering defeat at the battle of Tippecanoe. The curse offers each United States President elected in an even year and divisible by twenty as a sacrifice to appease the chief’s dead nation. Now, this may seem a bit absurd for a world leader to put much faith in an old wives’ tale but it is more than simply fascinating, it is absolutely true! It began with Harrison, followed by Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley. All have died in office and I am next.
From my oval office windows, I gaze out across the rose gardens and notice the bustle on Pennsylvania Avenue. All the people, coming and going, without the burden of a nation on their shoulders. But it is not this country, or the welfare of my family, or even my own image of presidential prestige that concerns me.
The real horror of this curse lies not in the simple fact of death –that is no cause to be fearful as it is utterly unavoidable. But the mystery within this curse, that which makes an unhappy individual into an assassin or turns a man’s health from fair to poor, torments my mind incessantly. The constant evaluation of every situation, in an attempt to preserve my own ass, has greatly worn my nerves.
Without fail, I see the face of Tecumseh in every mirror and behind every corner. Even as my wife and I make love, the only visage I can catch is that of the fallen chief. In every cabinet meeting, I spend more time looking over my shoulders than at the papers in front of me. I can barely raise my voice above a whisper in public because of the fears that consume me.
My wife frets and does her best to remind me of my duties to both the country and to her. I suppose I haven’t quite been fulfilling either of them but who could with such weighty things on the brain? She complains constantly and badgers me for attention but I simply remind her that all of us have more important things to be concerned with. And now, just meager months into my presidency, I am completely ineffectual. The fear which consumes me has already killed me. It may have been my wife who put the arsenic in my tea but it was Tecumseh who put me in my grave.
Hurrying For A Deadend
The hunched-up shoulders paused on the marble steps; they seemed to climb endlessly. The chandeliers and finished wood banisters gave the old place an elegance that Augusten thought had gone out of style with the acceptance of convenience as a replacement for taste. But the large, poorly-lit and cobwebbed lobby possessed a spirit of dissonance that tasted of lost souls. As Augusten lightly placed his soles on the slabs in front of him, he felt as if his whole life was before him.
Augusten would have barely glanced at the pile of rags on the third floor landing if it had not emitted a fragile whisper of a cough; the sort of whisper that could only catch Augusten by surprise in a seemingly abandoned stairwell. The man had a grizzled mane of unwashed and unkempt hair. His face, barely visible through the dirt and grime of ages spent in undesirable places, had most unremarkable features except for his eyes. These emeralds sat deep and far apart as they shined on the no-longer distinguishable articles of old brown cloth. Augusten moved his hand to his front right pocket, searching for his wallet.
“No thanks, friend,” the old man offered. “I’ve seen enough change for a lifetime after eons of scraping and shivering in the tunnels and basements of this earth. No change has ever helped me climb out. I’ve done what I could to help humanity but there’s no helping those who won’t be helped. And besides, you couldn’t possibly get me to move now…”
Augusten heard the old man trail off as he continued up the stairs. He took the old man’s words to heart as there was nothing to be done but continue. The pungent odors of mold and rot drifted to Augusten’s nose but he kept his eyes glued to the marble stairs. And of course, because Augusten was not paying attention, he collided directly with the young carpenter as he strode up to the fifth floor.
All Augusten had time to notice about the man was his incredibly striking eyes. They had the same intensity as the old man’s but these irises burned with a sapphire brightness. Augusten stared up into his eyes as the carpenter from the floor, which was in the midst of repairs.
“Oh yes, I’m fine”, the carpenter answered Augusten’s unasked question hastily. “Excuse me; I still have many floors to cover”.
Augusten, surprised by the urgency at repairing an empty building, was not even left time to respond. The carpenter ran off up the stairs, seeming to vanish as Augusten struggled onward.
As Augusten reached the twelfth floor, he wondered where the time had gone. He felt old and used up but as he looked over the railing, he realized there was nowhere left to climb. He had expected a door, or at the very least, a sign pointing him in the right direction but the old man and the carpenter had left him unprepared for this. Neither of them had warned Augusten that he was heading for a dead end. A crack in the old dry-wall allowed a single ray of sunlight to pass in front of Augusten as he sat on the marble stairs, making him think of all the small things he had never noticed.
Augusten would have barely glanced at the pile of rags on the third floor landing if it had not emitted a fragile whisper of a cough; the sort of whisper that could only catch Augusten by surprise in a seemingly abandoned stairwell. The man had a grizzled mane of unwashed and unkempt hair. His face, barely visible through the dirt and grime of ages spent in undesirable places, had most unremarkable features except for his eyes. These emeralds sat deep and far apart as they shined on the no-longer distinguishable articles of old brown cloth. Augusten moved his hand to his front right pocket, searching for his wallet.
“No thanks, friend,” the old man offered. “I’ve seen enough change for a lifetime after eons of scraping and shivering in the tunnels and basements of this earth. No change has ever helped me climb out. I’ve done what I could to help humanity but there’s no helping those who won’t be helped. And besides, you couldn’t possibly get me to move now…”
Augusten heard the old man trail off as he continued up the stairs. He took the old man’s words to heart as there was nothing to be done but continue. The pungent odors of mold and rot drifted to Augusten’s nose but he kept his eyes glued to the marble stairs. And of course, because Augusten was not paying attention, he collided directly with the young carpenter as he strode up to the fifth floor.
All Augusten had time to notice about the man was his incredibly striking eyes. They had the same intensity as the old man’s but these irises burned with a sapphire brightness. Augusten stared up into his eyes as the carpenter from the floor, which was in the midst of repairs.
“Oh yes, I’m fine”, the carpenter answered Augusten’s unasked question hastily. “Excuse me; I still have many floors to cover”.
Augusten, surprised by the urgency at repairing an empty building, was not even left time to respond. The carpenter ran off up the stairs, seeming to vanish as Augusten struggled onward.
As Augusten reached the twelfth floor, he wondered where the time had gone. He felt old and used up but as he looked over the railing, he realized there was nowhere left to climb. He had expected a door, or at the very least, a sign pointing him in the right direction but the old man and the carpenter had left him unprepared for this. Neither of them had warned Augusten that he was heading for a dead end. A crack in the old dry-wall allowed a single ray of sunlight to pass in front of Augusten as he sat on the marble stairs, making him think of all the small things he had never noticed.
Monday, February 26, 2007
Average
I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want to do it. Please believe me. I didn’t know I could. I’m not the kind of person who is violent. Honest to God, I’ve always fallen in line, I’ve always tried to be good. It’s her fault. It’s their fault, not mine. They always push me. Women, I mean. I try and I try and I try, but it never does any use. I even stroked her hair and told her everything’d be all right as she ruined my favorite jeans. I didn’t drop her in a ditch somewhere. I buried her in a churchyard, her arms crossed over the hole in her chest. I tried not to. Lord knows I did. But I just.. I just lost myself. Somehow I hope that she’ll know now that I truly didn’t mean any of it. I hope she understands now. I’m sorry. Wait. Please sit.. I’ll explain things; maybe I can put this into some perspective for you…
As you can see, I’m not particularly good looking. I’m pretty average, at least I consider myself that way. And you live here. There’s not many options for guys like me. I mean, I’m a nice enough guy but women out here don’t tend to pay guys like me much mind. They usually can’t look past our pockmarks, or our slight guts, or our plain brown eyes, or our rough hands, or our sidelong leers of knowing they’ll never accept us or give us the time of day. I’ve never been in a fight or hit a woman in my entire life, which is more than I can say for half the guys I’ve worked with. I mean, I’m a social worker and some of the people I’ve been employed with can’t seem to follow the advice they give to the beaten welfare mothers they see on a daily basis. But anyway. The place I was working for at the time had a changing of the guard in management, and some guys lost their jobs so I got their unfinished cases dumped on my desk. I was so exhausted I took the bus downtown to a bar instead of driving to it. I don’t even drink often, except when the occasion permitted; you know, birthdays and marriages and the like. But I was on a mission that night to forget about that day of work sorting through hundreds of broken lives…
Look. I lied to you a bit back there and I might as well fess up. I didn’t go to just a bar. I went to a strip club. I still don’t believe I did that. I’ve prayed so hard that God can forgive me for that; to have wallowed in sin for hours. I guess it was my frustration manifesting itself in some kind of lust for drink and skin.
I was beyond being tipsy or drunk that night. I’d taken a seat somewhere towards the back of the room, watching the women take and leave the stage, listening to the announcement of the next songs through the smoky PA system. My main concern, then, was to not be seen by any of the people whose cases I’d been working on if they happened to be in the place that night. I saw her at the bar section: leaned over talking, her tits flopped, resting, on the bar top, to some horned-out Chinese man. He wasn’t even talking to her face. But in the red light of the place, it was all I could distinctly make out. She looked bored with having her tits being stared at in widescreen by the slant-eye, and she looked up at me. I finished my drink and turned away, faking a sour face. I turned back to the stage and a few moments later she was next to me. My nose let me know that before my eyes did; she smelled amazing. Kind of like those chocolates with the cherry in the middle, with that syrup. She asked me if I came to this kind of place a lot. I tried not to stare at her natural breasts. I said I didn’t have any money. She didn’t look disappointed. She was so gorgeous. A real blonde, striking green eyes, perfect rounded chin, long eyelashes with light amounts of glitter in them. She said she had noticed me when I came in – it might have been a lie but I didn’t really care – and that she liked the way I carried myself. She said she didn’t care for any of the deadly handsome guys who always showed up on Friday nights, that they always treated the other girls and her like they were their slaves. I asked her why she was doing it and she said she had not ever had anything she liked as much as stripping. She said the lifestyle was one where she could be free. I liked that. I asked when she was done working. She didn’t seem like a bad person. She’d gotten off of work about the time I came in – that’s what she said, but again, she could have been lying to me – and that she was waiting for her friend to pick her up (She must have been trying to pick up a couple of bucks off the regulars as she waited). But she waited around for me. I’m sure of it. I don’t remember much except thinking I was going to Hell as I awoke with a small hand toying with the patches of hair on my chest. I was nice to her. She liked me. She said so. As she pulled her thong back on and dressed her alabaster body, I sat up and stared across my bed into the picture of water running over black pebbles. It reads “Tranquility” under it. She kissed me before she turned the corner and out of my apartment.
Now, I visit my church often. Three times a week, in fact, just so I can get on. But after that morning I didn’t go. I should have made a bee-line for the confessional, I should have picked up my rosary and prayed for hours, I should have recited Hail Mary’s until my tongue went numb and the sweet languid taste of her mouth was exorcized from mine. But I didn’t. I wanted more. I wanted her. I couldn’t think. I didn’t want to be sitting alone, naked, with half a hard-on on my bed in my crumby apartment staring at some stupid picture. I wanted her to be with me right then.
I went looking for her. I went back to the skin bar in a high collared jacket and asked when she was working again. They told me the wrong times. I know they did because they said she’d be back in two nights, but I was there the next night and saw her. I couldn’t even look at her on stage. She was mine and here she was naked and open for all the sleazes in the room to see. I waited until her set was over before I approached her. She smiled like she did that morning she left. She was glad to see me again. I said I wanted to see her outside of her work and outside of me being plastered. She laughed and I convinced her to let me take her to dinner.
We continued like that for some time. Three days. I’d go in and wait in the back for her sets to be over, averting my eyes every time, and then we’d go out and eat and then make love everywhere in my sparse apartment. On the fourth night, I came in just like I always did, and I saw her. But she was leaving, smiling her smile I thought was only for me at some tall skinny European-looking godless swine.
She didn’t struggle much. She just stared at me with those amazing emerald eyes and screamed obscenities and hurled curses on me. She couldn’t do much. After I buried the business end of my Bowie in the euro prick’s neck, I wrestled her to the ground and bound her hands. She said I was nuts. That it was just fucking. That it was just for fun. I had been watching the road intensely, only looking back periodically in the rearview to make sure she hadn’t gotten out of her bindings. We were heading east towards Barstow. She fucking used me. She didn’t give a shit about me. She said I was special and not like the other guys. She said I was that guy she wanted. Lies. I hadn’t said a word since I’d bound her feet, too, and threw her in the back of my Camry, but as I pulled up to the roadside Church of God I told her that this was the retribution of God for living a life of sin and bewitching the heart of a God-fearing man; for drawing a good man into her Jezebel lifestyle.
I told her I hoped that she should writhe in Hell forever. I don’t hope that now. I don’t want that now. Not for her. I love her. I wish it had been me in back of that church. I wish I could tell her to her face that I’m sorry. But there it is. What’s done is done and I implore you to please do what I ask.
The old man sitting across the room, under the picture of tranquility, in the fold-up chair the young man had been kind enough to excavate from under the piles of moldy clothes and Carl’s Jr. wrappers nodded. The old man curled his long moustache with his index finger and sighed. He didn’t want to do this. He kept this to himself as he drew the black gun from the breast pocket of his jacket and slowly screwed down the silencer onto the barrel.
I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want to do it. Please believe me. I didn’t know I could. I’m not the kind of person who is violent. Honest to God, I’ve always fallen in line, I’ve always tried to be good. It’s her fault. It’s their fault, not mine. They always push me. Women, I mean. I try and I try and I try, but it never does any use. I even stroked her hair and told her everything’d be all right as she ruined my favorite jeans. I didn’t drop her in a ditch somewhere. I buried her in a churchyard, her arms crossed over the hole in her chest. I tried not to. Lord knows I did. But I just.. I just lost myself. Somehow I hope that she’ll know now that I truly didn’t mean any of it. I hope she understands now. I’m sorry. Wait. Please sit.. I’ll explain things; maybe I can put this into some perspective for you…
As you can see, I’m not particularly good looking. I’m pretty average, at least I consider myself that way. And you live here. There’s not many options for guys like me. I mean, I’m a nice enough guy but women out here don’t tend to pay guys like me much mind. They usually can’t look past our pockmarks, or our slight guts, or our plain brown eyes, or our rough hands, or our sidelong leers of knowing they’ll never accept us or give us the time of day. I’ve never been in a fight or hit a woman in my entire life, which is more than I can say for half the guys I’ve worked with. I mean, I’m a social worker and some of the people I’ve been employed with can’t seem to follow the advice they give to the beaten welfare mothers they see on a daily basis. But anyway. The place I was working for at the time had a changing of the guard in management, and some guys lost their jobs so I got their unfinished cases dumped on my desk. I was so exhausted I took the bus downtown to a bar instead of driving to it. I don’t even drink often, except when the occasion permitted; you know, birthdays and marriages and the like. But I was on a mission that night to forget about that day of work sorting through hundreds of broken lives…
Look. I lied to you a bit back there and I might as well fess up. I didn’t go to just a bar. I went to a strip club. I still don’t believe I did that. I’ve prayed so hard that God can forgive me for that; to have wallowed in sin for hours. I guess it was my frustration manifesting itself in some kind of lust for drink and skin.
I was beyond being tipsy or drunk that night. I’d taken a seat somewhere towards the back of the room, watching the women take and leave the stage, listening to the announcement of the next songs through the smoky PA system. My main concern, then, was to not be seen by any of the people whose cases I’d been working on if they happened to be in the place that night. I saw her at the bar section: leaned over talking, her tits flopped, resting, on the bar top, to some horned-out Chinese man. He wasn’t even talking to her face. But in the red light of the place, it was all I could distinctly make out. She looked bored with having her tits being stared at in widescreen by the slant-eye, and she looked up at me. I finished my drink and turned away, faking a sour face. I turned back to the stage and a few moments later she was next to me. My nose let me know that before my eyes did; she smelled amazing. Kind of like those chocolates with the cherry in the middle, with that syrup. She asked me if I came to this kind of place a lot. I tried not to stare at her natural breasts. I said I didn’t have any money. She didn’t look disappointed. She was so gorgeous. A real blonde, striking green eyes, perfect rounded chin, long eyelashes with light amounts of glitter in them. She said she had noticed me when I came in – it might have been a lie but I didn’t really care – and that she liked the way I carried myself. She said she didn’t care for any of the deadly handsome guys who always showed up on Friday nights, that they always treated the other girls and her like they were their slaves. I asked her why she was doing it and she said she had not ever had anything she liked as much as stripping. She said the lifestyle was one where she could be free. I liked that. I asked when she was done working. She didn’t seem like a bad person. She’d gotten off of work about the time I came in – that’s what she said, but again, she could have been lying to me – and that she was waiting for her friend to pick her up (She must have been trying to pick up a couple of bucks off the regulars as she waited). But she waited around for me. I’m sure of it. I don’t remember much except thinking I was going to Hell as I awoke with a small hand toying with the patches of hair on my chest. I was nice to her. She liked me. She said so. As she pulled her thong back on and dressed her alabaster body, I sat up and stared across my bed into the picture of water running over black pebbles. It reads “Tranquility” under it. She kissed me before she turned the corner and out of my apartment.
Now, I visit my church often. Three times a week, in fact, just so I can get on. But after that morning I didn’t go. I should have made a bee-line for the confessional, I should have picked up my rosary and prayed for hours, I should have recited Hail Mary’s until my tongue went numb and the sweet languid taste of her mouth was exorcized from mine. But I didn’t. I wanted more. I wanted her. I couldn’t think. I didn’t want to be sitting alone, naked, with half a hard-on on my bed in my crumby apartment staring at some stupid picture. I wanted her to be with me right then.
I went looking for her. I went back to the skin bar in a high collared jacket and asked when she was working again. They told me the wrong times. I know they did because they said she’d be back in two nights, but I was there the next night and saw her. I couldn’t even look at her on stage. She was mine and here she was naked and open for all the sleazes in the room to see. I waited until her set was over before I approached her. She smiled like she did that morning she left. She was glad to see me again. I said I wanted to see her outside of her work and outside of me being plastered. She laughed and I convinced her to let me take her to dinner.
We continued like that for some time. Three days. I’d go in and wait in the back for her sets to be over, averting my eyes every time, and then we’d go out and eat and then make love everywhere in my sparse apartment. On the fourth night, I came in just like I always did, and I saw her. But she was leaving, smiling her smile I thought was only for me at some tall skinny European-looking godless swine.
She didn’t struggle much. She just stared at me with those amazing emerald eyes and screamed obscenities and hurled curses on me. She couldn’t do much. After I buried the business end of my Bowie in the euro prick’s neck, I wrestled her to the ground and bound her hands. She said I was nuts. That it was just fucking. That it was just for fun. I had been watching the road intensely, only looking back periodically in the rearview to make sure she hadn’t gotten out of her bindings. We were heading east towards Barstow. She fucking used me. She didn’t give a shit about me. She said I was special and not like the other guys. She said I was that guy she wanted. Lies. I hadn’t said a word since I’d bound her feet, too, and threw her in the back of my Camry, but as I pulled up to the roadside Church of God I told her that this was the retribution of God for living a life of sin and bewitching the heart of a God-fearing man; for drawing a good man into her Jezebel lifestyle.
I told her I hoped that she should writhe in Hell forever. I don’t hope that now. I don’t want that now. Not for her. I love her. I wish it had been me in back of that church. I wish I could tell her to her face that I’m sorry. But there it is. What’s done is done and I implore you to please do what I ask.
The old man sitting across the room, under the picture of tranquility, in the fold-up chair the young man had been kind enough to excavate from under the piles of moldy clothes and Carl’s Jr. wrappers nodded. The old man curled his long moustache with his index finger and sighed. He didn’t want to do this. He kept this to himself as he drew the black gun from the breast pocket of his jacket and slowly screwed down the silencer onto the barrel.
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