UNDER THE INFLUENCE - R. THOMAS BROWN
“It’s fucking ridiculous is what it is.” Douglas sped down the freeway, the cruise control set at sixty-seven. “Look, I don’t even speed.”
“Calm down, honey.” Marie, his wife, flipped through a book on her phone.
“I will not fucking calm down. This is not fair.”
Marie set her phone in her lap. “Look, you got a ticket for talking on your phone. It’s against the law.”
“I know what the fucking law says.” He moved into the left lane to pass a white truck. His daughter in the car behind them did the same. “The point is I was not being unsafe. It’s a stupid law.”
“You’re setting a bad example for your daughter. You know, she texts all the time when she drives. They say it’s more dangerous than drinking.”
“Fuck that shit. Show me someone who can drop being drunk in their lap when they need to pay attention.” He pulled up even with the truck and looked over. “Look at this son of a bitch.” He pointed. “He’s fucking eating while he drives! From a bowl. A fucking bowl.”
“So?”
“So, there’s no law against that shit.”
Marie picked her phone up again and rolled her eyes. “They’d give him a ticket if he was driving dangerously.”
“Right, and that’s how it should be with my texting, too. I’m driving safe? Leave me the fuck alone.” He flipped his middle finger to the truck driver who balanced his bowl and returned the gesture.
“Doug, don’t do that. Driving angry doesn’t do anyone any good. Just relax.”
“I’ll relax when I fucking feel like it.” He passed the truck and took a deep breath. “Fucking nanny state assholes telling me what to do all the damned time.”
He glanced in his rear view mirror. “What the fuck? Now look at that douchebag.”
“What?” asked Marie.
“He’s swerving around like he’s fighting off bees or some shit. What a prick.”
“Is Stacy alright?” Marie turned around. “Doug, I’m worried.”
“See, see what I mean about real dangerous driving?”
“Not now, Doug. Stacy.”
“If he hurts her, I swear I’ll fucking kill him.”
“Just pull the fuck over, Doug.”
“What?”
“Pull over and let him get past us.”
“Fine.” Doug pulled to the shoulder and Stacy followed.
The white truck slowed next to them. The driver leaned out his window and spit on Doug’s Mercedes before driving away and laughing.
“That fucking asshat.” Doug sped off. “I just got this fucking car washed.”
Marie held onto the oh-shit handle. “Doug, what are you doing?”
“I’m gonna teach that little shit a lesson. The fucking police may be too busy giving out tickets for goddamned phone use, but this little fuckwad needs to learn.”
He was on his tail.
“Doug, back off.”
“Shut the fuck up. I’m trying to concentrate.”
The truck accelerated, but Doug had little trouble keeping up. “That’s right, run, fucker. Who’s the badass now?”
“Doug!”
He ignored Marie. “I’d bump you off the fucking road, if it wouldn’t hurt my paint job.”
“Doug, you’re scaring me.”
“Then go the fuck to sleep!”
“Doug!”
The truck made a sudden exit. Doug followed.
“What about Stacy?”
“What?”
“We’re taking our fucking daughter to college.”
“She knows how to get there.”
“Douglas Bryant, you get back on that highway!”
The truck turned right. Doug followed.
“Doug, you’re going to get someone hurt.”
“Yeah, that fucker in the truck is gonna hurt.”
Marie crossed her arms and shook her head. She placed a call. “Hi, Stacy, your father has decided to be a fucking idiot again, so we’ll be late.”
“Love you, honey,” Doug yelled.
“Yeah, bye, sweetheart.” She ended the call. “Happy?”
“I will be. As soon as this assclown learns his lesson.”
“And what lesson is that, dear?”
“To fucking drive.”
Marie sat with her mouth agape. “Unbelievable.”
Doug started to respond, when the truck hit its brakes. Doug slammed on his, and skidded around the truck. “Fuck.”
“Shit, Doug.”
Doug got his bearings back, but the truck was gone. “Son of a bitch!”
“Can we go now?”
“I guess so. Fuck!” Doug shifted the car into drive and headed back along the two land road.
“Do you know where we are?”
“Somewhere between where we exited and the college.”
“Not funny, Doug. Do you know how to get back to the highway from here?”
“Oh, I’m sure it’ll be easy enough. We’ll just drive along until we get to a major road again. I think we passed a couple.”
“You think?”
“Yeah. I wasn’t really paying attention.”
“Typical.”
Doug drove slowly, trying to pick out signs. “Get your phone out and find out where we are.”
“Fine.”
“See, phones make driving better.”
“Not now, Doug.”
He leaned forward across the wheel when the car lurched forward. “The fuck?”
The white truck sped by, the driver’s middle finger extended toward the sky.
“Oh, that is it. You are fucking dead.” Doug sped toward the truck, forty, then fifty on the speedometer.
“Doug, slow down.”
“Fuck that, he hit my car. He’s a fucking menace.”
“So are you.”
Doug ignored her as he merged back onto the highway. “See, back on the highway. No problem.” He kept pace with the truck. Seventy. Eighty. Ninety.
“Doug, slow down.”
“I’m fine.” He wove in and out of traffic.
“Shit, Doug, not again.”
“What?”
“Look behind you.”
Doug grimaced at the police cruiser lights. “Well, at least that asshole will get a ticket, too.”
Ahead, the truck slowed alongside a whiter Mercedes.
“Shit, that’s Stacy,” Marie shouted.
The truck bumped her into the guard rail.
“Fuck you.” Doug pulled up behind the truck and clipped it from behind. “You are fucking dead.”
Marie turned around. “Stacy’s still driving. She’s seems okay.” She turned back. “Let him go.”
“No fucking chance. He’s a goddamned menace, and I’m going to stop him.”
“Doug, let the police handle it.”
“Are you fucking kidding me? I stop, he’ll stop with me. Call ahead to some other shithead to stop the truck, but who knows if they’ll find him.” He rammed the truck again. “Probably too damned busy writing tickets for texting.”
“Doug, enough.”
“I’ll decide when it’s fucking enough.” He pulled up to the back corner of the truck and turned, sending it into a spin. It hit the cement wall and came to a stop. “Give me my gun.”
“Doug, I don’t...”
“Give me my fucking gun!”
Marie didn’t move.
Doug reached over her and took it. He stepped out of the car. “Come on, fucker. Get out.”
The police cruiser stopped.
The driver of the truck got out. Bowl in hand.
Doug marched closer, gun extended. “You almost killed my daughter, you jackass.”
The driver tossed his bowl at Doug. “Why don’t you cry about it, old man?”
Doug tasted the wet, sweet, gummy contents. “Oatmeal? You fucking threw oatmeal at me?” He leveled his pistol at the driver’s head.
“What, are you gonna shoot me, old man?”
Doug fired a shot over him.
“Shit!” The truck driver fell to the ground.
“Put down the weapon,” the officer ordered.
Doug looked back. “This asshat almost ran my daughter off the road. Twice.” He kicked the bowl. “Because of his fucking oatmeal.”
“Put down the weapon.”
Doug shook his head. “No, I’m not the bad guy. This little shit is who you need to fucking arrest.”
“I won’t warn you again. Put the weapon down.”
Doug stared at the pistol.
He heard tires squeeling.
He saw Stacy crash into his car.
He saw Marie tossed from the car over the side of the highway to the underpass below.
He saw the semi drive out with Marie on the hood.
He heard the tires screech and the engine rumble.
He dropped the gun and ran toward the crash.
The officer yelled something he didn’t hear.
He ran to Stacy.
Blood was everywhere. Her limbs broken and at odd angles. Her eyes lifeless.
He glanced down and saw the half written text message.
He didn’t fight when the officer shoved him to the ground.
BIO: R Thomas Brown reviews crime fiction at his blog rthomasbrown.blogspot.com and crime novels at Crime Fiction Lover. His writing appears around the web and he has a novel coming in 2012 from Snubnose Press.
Friday, October 7, 2011
Interlude Stories - Dana C. Kabel
WRITER’S CELL BLOCK - DANA C. KABEL
Pete woke up kissing cold concrete and his head felt like it was splitting in half and the bottle of whatever he drank the night before was trying to crawl out.
“What the fuck?” he said in a broken glass voice.
Someone laughed. Springs creaked.
He peeled his sore eyes open and focused on the vagrant that was sitting on a metal cot trying to light a used cigarette. Next to the cot was a steel toilet with no lid, and the only door in the room was made of steel bars.
“Oh shit...shit...shit...”
“Good morning, sunshine...” the vagrant sang, laughing.
“Shut up,” Pete said.
“Hello, how do you do-ooh...”
“I said SHUT THE FUCK UP!”
The vagrant laughed harder. The smoke from his lit cigarette butt smelled like burning shit.
Pete rolled onto his back and tried to conjure up his last memory. He was sweating and shaking and bile burned in the back of his throat. A jail cell was the last place in the world he wanted to detox.
The last semi-sober memory he had was the visit from his agent, Derrick, in his favorite bar in the Village.
“You must be done with the book if you’re in here celebrating at ten in the morning.”
Pete threw back his sixth shot of Jim Beam and tossed the glass over his shoulder.
“Classy,” Derrick said. “What have you got for me?”
“Sit down. Have a drink. Party just started.”
“Godamnit, Pete! Do you know what a deadline is anymore? There’s money invested in you. A book tour lined up. You were given an advance on the next Jake Bracer novel. Give me something...anything!”
Pete signaled for the bartender to bring another drink.
“I got nothing, Derrick. The well is dry. Jake Bracer is as fucked as my liver.”
It went real fuzzy from there. Pete knew that his agent threw a fit and grabbed him by the shirt. He reached down to feel where it had ripped, but he was wearing an orange jumpsuit now.
“Fuck Jake Bracer,” Pete said to the cold concrete floor.
“Holy shit,” the vagrant said. “That’s who you are! I knew I recognized you.”
He jumped up from the cot as if it were on fire and grabbed onto the bars.
“Guard! I want out! You can’t lock me up with this maniac!”
“Shut up, old man. You’re the only maniac in here,” Pete said.
The vagrant started laughing again. He slapped his hand on his knee and bounced back onto the cot.
“I read one of your books. Mostly I seen them Jake Bracer movies. Every time they make another one your picture is all over the local news. What’d you do to get in here?”
“I don’t know.” Pete rubbed his head and tried to remember more.
“All right,” Derrick had said as he followed the stumbling writer out of the bar. Pete looked past him at the building they had just exited. Could have sworn they were in the Village, but now it looked more like Queens.
“We can work around this. I’ll make some calls, get you in rehab and use the publicity to promote the next book. The public eats that shit up.”
“I told you I’m done with Jake Bracer. Not...writing...one more...fucking...wordaboutim.”
“Yeah, yeah...you’ll feel different when you get out of rehab. And we’ll keep making money off of Bracer. We’ll hire an up-and-comer to write the next Bracer under, ‘Pete Bishop’s Jake Bracer.’ You know, like Patterson does.”
“Like Patterson...” Pete snorted sarcastically. “Guess I really am at the end of my career. Listen to this, Derrick. I brought Bracer into this world and I will be the only one who takes him out. The day I go pimping my characters out to so-called up-and-comers is the day I go back to digging ditches.”
“Then you need to get your drunken ass behind the keyboard and write it out yourself. Because we have a contract and Milton House owns the rights to Jake Bracer, in case you’ve forgotten. If we want to, we can have someone write a Jake Bracer versus the vampires from Twilight and there’s not a goddamned thing you can do about it.”
Derrick fell out of step because he was at his car by the curb. Pete stopped, swaying side to side in his tracks. There was someone in the passenger seat of the car.
“Who the fuck is that?”
The agent’s mouth curled into a malicious grin.
Then Pete noticed that they were standing in front of his apartment complex in Tribeca, which was fucking impossible because he had barely taken a dozen steps out of the bar in Queens.
“His name’s Tommy Tuller. I introduced you to him at the Manhattan Project Suspense Writer’s conference a couple of months ago. He’s been doing a lot of ghost writing for Milton House for the past couple of years. Great writer...he just needs a name,” Derrick said.
“The fuck is he doing here?”
“He’s going to be writing the next Jake Bracer book while you’re getting yourself cleaned up.”
“Like fuck he is...”
Pete swung at his agent. He could have sworn that he saw the Tuller asshole laughing his ass off in the car. The punch caught air and he stumbled. Before he knew what was happening, Derrick was steadying him on his feet and clapping him on the back.
“There, there...you can do this,” Derrick said.
But they were standing inside Pete’s apartment, both Derrick and him. Tommy Tuller was there too...duct taped to a chair in Pete’s dinette, his eyes wide with terror.
Pete looked down at the baseball bat in his hands. It was a wooden Louisville Slugger, just like the one he had as a kid.
“You can do this,” Derrick said again. “Come on...you’re not seriously going to let this little fucker write the next Bracer book, are you? You brought Jake Bracer into this world...you’re the only one who should be able to take him out.”
Pete’s hands were sweating. He was starting to shake. Oh God, when was the last time he had anything to drink. He didn’t want to get the DT’s.
“Now take him out! Take him out!” Derrick shouted.
The Tuller kid shook his head furiously side to side. Little shit was going to steal his character...his creation...his whole...life!
“DO IT!” The agent said. “DO IT NOW!”
Then the bat was in both of their hands, like they were fighting over it. Not for possession of the club, but to push it into the other’s grasp.
The Louisville Slugger whistled through the air and Tommy Tuller shrieked through the duct tape as it cracked his head open like a thick egg. Something warm and wet splattered across Pete’s face. He swung the bat again and again and again...
“Bishop! Visitor!” The hulking guard shouted through the bars.
Pete looked down at his hands. No bat there...no blood...But he suddenly began to remember some of the in-betweens as he scrambled shakily to his feet.
Derrick had been on his ass for months about a new Bracer book. The publishing house had the rights to Jake Bracer and Pete just didn’t have it in him to write another one. He finally agreed to meet with one of the young “up-and-comers” Derrick had been pushing. The agent had suggested meeting right at Pete’s apartment for an informal discussion.
“Sit at the table and talk to your visitor on the telephone. You have fifteen minutes,” the guard said.
Pete sat down and picked up the phone on his side of the booth. His agent picked up the other one.
Derrick was grinning from ear to ear.
“Goddamn, dog...you are something. Wait till you see the publicity from this shit. You are all over the news...you can’t buy this kind of advertising. As soon as you get processed and transferred to Riker’s, I’ll have a laptop ready for you so you can start the next Bracer book.”
“Fuck you,” Pete said.
“Come on, Pete...the well can’t be dry anymore. Aside from all the publicity, you got some new experiences to draw on. Murder...prison...institionalization...Your blood alcohol was to the fucking moon. Our lawyer says you’ll do a short involuntary manslaughter ticket with some time in the nut house and in rehab. You’ll dry out and have all the time you need to get back to work.”
Pete looked down at his hands. He didn’t know if he had swung the bat into Tommy Tuller’s skull or if Derrick had.
The agent hung up the phone on the other side of the booth and got up to walk out into the free world. Pete tried desperately to remember who really swung the bat. He wondered if it even mattered.
BIO: Dana C. Kabel’s stories have appeared in A Twist of Noir, The Flash Fiction Offensive, Muzzleflash, Mysterical-E, Out of the Gutter, Powder Flash Burn, and Yellow Mama. Dana blogs at http://www.thenonstopbullet.blogspot.com/.
Pete woke up kissing cold concrete and his head felt like it was splitting in half and the bottle of whatever he drank the night before was trying to crawl out.
“What the fuck?” he said in a broken glass voice.
Someone laughed. Springs creaked.
He peeled his sore eyes open and focused on the vagrant that was sitting on a metal cot trying to light a used cigarette. Next to the cot was a steel toilet with no lid, and the only door in the room was made of steel bars.
“Oh shit...shit...shit...”
“Good morning, sunshine...” the vagrant sang, laughing.
“Shut up,” Pete said.
“Hello, how do you do-ooh...”
“I said SHUT THE FUCK UP!”
The vagrant laughed harder. The smoke from his lit cigarette butt smelled like burning shit.
Pete rolled onto his back and tried to conjure up his last memory. He was sweating and shaking and bile burned in the back of his throat. A jail cell was the last place in the world he wanted to detox.
The last semi-sober memory he had was the visit from his agent, Derrick, in his favorite bar in the Village.
“You must be done with the book if you’re in here celebrating at ten in the morning.”
Pete threw back his sixth shot of Jim Beam and tossed the glass over his shoulder.
“Classy,” Derrick said. “What have you got for me?”
“Sit down. Have a drink. Party just started.”
“Godamnit, Pete! Do you know what a deadline is anymore? There’s money invested in you. A book tour lined up. You were given an advance on the next Jake Bracer novel. Give me something...anything!”
Pete signaled for the bartender to bring another drink.
“I got nothing, Derrick. The well is dry. Jake Bracer is as fucked as my liver.”
It went real fuzzy from there. Pete knew that his agent threw a fit and grabbed him by the shirt. He reached down to feel where it had ripped, but he was wearing an orange jumpsuit now.
“Fuck Jake Bracer,” Pete said to the cold concrete floor.
“Holy shit,” the vagrant said. “That’s who you are! I knew I recognized you.”
He jumped up from the cot as if it were on fire and grabbed onto the bars.
“Guard! I want out! You can’t lock me up with this maniac!”
“Shut up, old man. You’re the only maniac in here,” Pete said.
The vagrant started laughing again. He slapped his hand on his knee and bounced back onto the cot.
“I read one of your books. Mostly I seen them Jake Bracer movies. Every time they make another one your picture is all over the local news. What’d you do to get in here?”
“I don’t know.” Pete rubbed his head and tried to remember more.
“All right,” Derrick had said as he followed the stumbling writer out of the bar. Pete looked past him at the building they had just exited. Could have sworn they were in the Village, but now it looked more like Queens.
“We can work around this. I’ll make some calls, get you in rehab and use the publicity to promote the next book. The public eats that shit up.”
“I told you I’m done with Jake Bracer. Not...writing...one more...fucking...wordaboutim.”
“Yeah, yeah...you’ll feel different when you get out of rehab. And we’ll keep making money off of Bracer. We’ll hire an up-and-comer to write the next Bracer under, ‘Pete Bishop’s Jake Bracer.’ You know, like Patterson does.”
“Like Patterson...” Pete snorted sarcastically. “Guess I really am at the end of my career. Listen to this, Derrick. I brought Bracer into this world and I will be the only one who takes him out. The day I go pimping my characters out to so-called up-and-comers is the day I go back to digging ditches.”
“Then you need to get your drunken ass behind the keyboard and write it out yourself. Because we have a contract and Milton House owns the rights to Jake Bracer, in case you’ve forgotten. If we want to, we can have someone write a Jake Bracer versus the vampires from Twilight and there’s not a goddamned thing you can do about it.”
Derrick fell out of step because he was at his car by the curb. Pete stopped, swaying side to side in his tracks. There was someone in the passenger seat of the car.
“Who the fuck is that?”
The agent’s mouth curled into a malicious grin.
Then Pete noticed that they were standing in front of his apartment complex in Tribeca, which was fucking impossible because he had barely taken a dozen steps out of the bar in Queens.
“His name’s Tommy Tuller. I introduced you to him at the Manhattan Project Suspense Writer’s conference a couple of months ago. He’s been doing a lot of ghost writing for Milton House for the past couple of years. Great writer...he just needs a name,” Derrick said.
“The fuck is he doing here?”
“He’s going to be writing the next Jake Bracer book while you’re getting yourself cleaned up.”
“Like fuck he is...”
Pete swung at his agent. He could have sworn that he saw the Tuller asshole laughing his ass off in the car. The punch caught air and he stumbled. Before he knew what was happening, Derrick was steadying him on his feet and clapping him on the back.
“There, there...you can do this,” Derrick said.
But they were standing inside Pete’s apartment, both Derrick and him. Tommy Tuller was there too...duct taped to a chair in Pete’s dinette, his eyes wide with terror.
Pete looked down at the baseball bat in his hands. It was a wooden Louisville Slugger, just like the one he had as a kid.
“You can do this,” Derrick said again. “Come on...you’re not seriously going to let this little fucker write the next Bracer book, are you? You brought Jake Bracer into this world...you’re the only one who should be able to take him out.”
Pete’s hands were sweating. He was starting to shake. Oh God, when was the last time he had anything to drink. He didn’t want to get the DT’s.
“Now take him out! Take him out!” Derrick shouted.
The Tuller kid shook his head furiously side to side. Little shit was going to steal his character...his creation...his whole...life!
“DO IT!” The agent said. “DO IT NOW!”
Then the bat was in both of their hands, like they were fighting over it. Not for possession of the club, but to push it into the other’s grasp.
The Louisville Slugger whistled through the air and Tommy Tuller shrieked through the duct tape as it cracked his head open like a thick egg. Something warm and wet splattered across Pete’s face. He swung the bat again and again and again...
“Bishop! Visitor!” The hulking guard shouted through the bars.
Pete looked down at his hands. No bat there...no blood...But he suddenly began to remember some of the in-betweens as he scrambled shakily to his feet.
Derrick had been on his ass for months about a new Bracer book. The publishing house had the rights to Jake Bracer and Pete just didn’t have it in him to write another one. He finally agreed to meet with one of the young “up-and-comers” Derrick had been pushing. The agent had suggested meeting right at Pete’s apartment for an informal discussion.
“Sit at the table and talk to your visitor on the telephone. You have fifteen minutes,” the guard said.
Pete sat down and picked up the phone on his side of the booth. His agent picked up the other one.
Derrick was grinning from ear to ear.
“Goddamn, dog...you are something. Wait till you see the publicity from this shit. You are all over the news...you can’t buy this kind of advertising. As soon as you get processed and transferred to Riker’s, I’ll have a laptop ready for you so you can start the next Bracer book.”
“Fuck you,” Pete said.
“Come on, Pete...the well can’t be dry anymore. Aside from all the publicity, you got some new experiences to draw on. Murder...prison...institionalization...Your blood alcohol was to the fucking moon. Our lawyer says you’ll do a short involuntary manslaughter ticket with some time in the nut house and in rehab. You’ll dry out and have all the time you need to get back to work.”
Pete looked down at his hands. He didn’t know if he had swung the bat into Tommy Tuller’s skull or if Derrick had.
The agent hung up the phone on the other side of the booth and got up to walk out into the free world. Pete tried desperately to remember who really swung the bat. He wondered if it even mattered.
BIO: Dana C. Kabel’s stories have appeared in A Twist of Noir, The Flash Fiction Offensive, Muzzleflash, Mysterical-E, Out of the Gutter, Powder Flash Burn, and Yellow Mama. Dana blogs at http://www.thenonstopbullet.blogspot.com/.
Interlude Stories - Sue Harding
IMPASSE - SUE HARDING
Kramer climbed the stairs. The treads were old but the plush carpeting muffled any creaking. He leaned back against the wall and craned his head upwards, staring into the gloom. A thin shaft of light cut across the ceiling on the landing, tracing a line diagonally from the closed door. From behind that same door came a noise that Kramer recognised. Indeed, it was a noise he had come to loathe; it echoed around him, invading his dreams and his waking thoughts alike.
“Now I’ll have you,” he thought, a smile puckering deep inside his cheek, his jaw clenched tight in determination. “It ends tonight.”
He stepped higher, his head adjusting to the new angle as he kept his eyes on the line of light that pointed towards his target. Progressing up the stairs, he reached the open landing and inched his way along the wall. He knew the layout well; the floor plan was ingrained in his memory. Three paces brought him level with a bathroom. The door was slightly ajar, but the dimness assured him it was unoccupied. Kramer knew that. The woman was away, and Medway was the sole occupant of the house.
He passed the bathroom and moved on, silent footsteps giving no hint of his presence. Now he stood at the doorway, a thin strip of light that escaped along its opened edge giving a brief description of the shapes and colours that lay beyond. Again, that staccato noise interrupted the silence.
He laid his hand gently on the door, counting the beats of his heart, waiting until he sensed the moment was right, and closed his other hand firmly around the gun. On the third beat he pushed the door smartly open, raising the gun swiftly, locating the back of the man’s head.
Inside, the bright light made his eyes smart slightly, but he quickly adjusted his vision to compensate. He focused on Medway’s collar, his gun tracing a bead two or three inches higher, his hand tightening its grip, caressing the trigger.
“You’d better come in, Kramer.” Medway’s voice was clear and concise, but his head remained turned away from the doorway, as if he was preoccupied with matters more pressing than the gun that was aimed at his own head.
Kramer was slightly bemused, but his experience had taught him that giving over too much brainpower to deal with the unexpected often resulted in making unwise decisions. Snap judgements and gut feelings moved the action along – hesitance inevitably brought too many variables to consider and with them, too many chances for failure. He stepped into the room, continuing to train his gun on the back of Medway’s scalp.
“I’ve been expecting you,” said Medway, the staccato tapping from his fingers pausing slightly in hesitation before briefly continuing. The last sharp rap on the keys hinted at the finality of a sentence or a paragraph and he turned his leather desk chair round to give his attention to the intruder.
Kramer squinted. He’d been planning this for a while and shared the details with no one. Just how Medway could have had an inkling about this latest development was anyone’s guess, but now he thought about it Kramer realised it wasn’t the first time Medway had surprised him.
“Put the gun down, there’s a good chap.” Medway relaxed back into his chair, idly twisting a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles between his fingers as he concentrated on the would-be assassin. He noticed the drab grey raincoat the man wore, the soft brown leather gloves encasing powerful hands. He knew exactly what those hands had been required to do over the last few years. Even the hat sat at its usual rakish and slightly off-centre style.
Kramer focussed on Medway’s portly figure slumped in the chair, noting the yellow stained hands that bore witness to the many years of devotion to nicotine. Even now, a tall column of grey-blue smoke drifted upwards from the cigarette wedged between his chubby, sausage-like fingers. Kramer wondered, again, how such stubby digits could have the dexterity to pound out chapter after chapter at such speed. Yet now, there was an uncomfortable silence.
“I know you won’t be able to fire, so you might as well put the gun away,” said Medway matter-of-factly. “I’ve known since the minute you decided to call here tonight. Like I’ve known all along that this time would come.”
Kramer lifted the gun slightly and tried to squeeze the trigger. To his surprise, nothing happened.
Medway gave the smallest of chuckles. “We’ve had a grand old time, haven’t we? But now we’ve reached the end, you and I,” he said, lifting the bottle of Bushmills and pouring himself a congratulatory drink. “I’d offer you one, but...”
“Oh, yes,” replied Kramer. A self-satisfied smile replaced the unforeseen inability to just pull the trigger and have Medway’s brains spattered across the keys of his beloved antique Remington Deluxe. “We’ve reached the end alright; I’m not going to carry on doing as you want, acting the way you dictate. I’ve been taking this crap for the last thirty years but it ends tonight; a parting of the ways, you might say. It’s the final chapter for you.”
Medway lifted his glass in salute. “Well said – mind if I use that?” he smiled, turning in his chair. “I was just looking for the right words to round things off.” Truth be told, Kramer had hung around far too long. There were new ideas Medway wanted to explore but he’d reached an impasse with Kramer; the guy bored him rigid.
With that thought, Kramer found himself rooted to the spot as Medway resumed his position over the keyboard and the final clacking of the keys sealed his fate.
But Kramer had learned well. Just when the reader thought they’d got to the end of the story, there was always that last, subtle, unexpected twist from Kelvin Medway - the master of suspense.
As Medway typed the closing sentence, the final full stop resonated in echo with the discharge from the gun. For a second he slumped slightly forward, his face slowly turning towards the smoking barrel. He watched in slow-motion surprise as Kramer’s face changed, taking on an elated look as, for once, he experienced independent thought. His finger released its pressure on the trigger and Medway saw his form slowly diffuse into thin air, exiting with an ethereal echoing laugh.
In the final seconds before his heart gave up trying to cope with the loss of blood from the wound inflicted by his own his creation, Medway realised neither of them could have survived. His eyes tracked sideward to the note he’d scribbled down earlier and he smiled.
It was the title for the final book in his ‘Kramer: PI’ series.
“Impasse”
BIO: Sue Harding has been scribbling stories all her life. Recently 'retired' from working in a library, she now has more time to concoct her own little mysteries and maybe one day her former colleagues will be putting her books on the shelf! She blogs at http://www.irefusetogoquietly.blogspot.com/, including a weekly 300-word challenge 'Thursday @ 3'. Aside from writing crime/thriller/mystery fiction, her other passions include red wine, Real Ale and knitting - the alcohol fuels the imagination whilst the knitting concentrates the mind for weaving intrigue and suspense!
Kramer climbed the stairs. The treads were old but the plush carpeting muffled any creaking. He leaned back against the wall and craned his head upwards, staring into the gloom. A thin shaft of light cut across the ceiling on the landing, tracing a line diagonally from the closed door. From behind that same door came a noise that Kramer recognised. Indeed, it was a noise he had come to loathe; it echoed around him, invading his dreams and his waking thoughts alike.
“Now I’ll have you,” he thought, a smile puckering deep inside his cheek, his jaw clenched tight in determination. “It ends tonight.”
He stepped higher, his head adjusting to the new angle as he kept his eyes on the line of light that pointed towards his target. Progressing up the stairs, he reached the open landing and inched his way along the wall. He knew the layout well; the floor plan was ingrained in his memory. Three paces brought him level with a bathroom. The door was slightly ajar, but the dimness assured him it was unoccupied. Kramer knew that. The woman was away, and Medway was the sole occupant of the house.
He passed the bathroom and moved on, silent footsteps giving no hint of his presence. Now he stood at the doorway, a thin strip of light that escaped along its opened edge giving a brief description of the shapes and colours that lay beyond. Again, that staccato noise interrupted the silence.
He laid his hand gently on the door, counting the beats of his heart, waiting until he sensed the moment was right, and closed his other hand firmly around the gun. On the third beat he pushed the door smartly open, raising the gun swiftly, locating the back of the man’s head.
Inside, the bright light made his eyes smart slightly, but he quickly adjusted his vision to compensate. He focused on Medway’s collar, his gun tracing a bead two or three inches higher, his hand tightening its grip, caressing the trigger.
“You’d better come in, Kramer.” Medway’s voice was clear and concise, but his head remained turned away from the doorway, as if he was preoccupied with matters more pressing than the gun that was aimed at his own head.
Kramer was slightly bemused, but his experience had taught him that giving over too much brainpower to deal with the unexpected often resulted in making unwise decisions. Snap judgements and gut feelings moved the action along – hesitance inevitably brought too many variables to consider and with them, too many chances for failure. He stepped into the room, continuing to train his gun on the back of Medway’s scalp.
“I’ve been expecting you,” said Medway, the staccato tapping from his fingers pausing slightly in hesitation before briefly continuing. The last sharp rap on the keys hinted at the finality of a sentence or a paragraph and he turned his leather desk chair round to give his attention to the intruder.
Kramer squinted. He’d been planning this for a while and shared the details with no one. Just how Medway could have had an inkling about this latest development was anyone’s guess, but now he thought about it Kramer realised it wasn’t the first time Medway had surprised him.
“Put the gun down, there’s a good chap.” Medway relaxed back into his chair, idly twisting a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles between his fingers as he concentrated on the would-be assassin. He noticed the drab grey raincoat the man wore, the soft brown leather gloves encasing powerful hands. He knew exactly what those hands had been required to do over the last few years. Even the hat sat at its usual rakish and slightly off-centre style.
Kramer focussed on Medway’s portly figure slumped in the chair, noting the yellow stained hands that bore witness to the many years of devotion to nicotine. Even now, a tall column of grey-blue smoke drifted upwards from the cigarette wedged between his chubby, sausage-like fingers. Kramer wondered, again, how such stubby digits could have the dexterity to pound out chapter after chapter at such speed. Yet now, there was an uncomfortable silence.
“I know you won’t be able to fire, so you might as well put the gun away,” said Medway matter-of-factly. “I’ve known since the minute you decided to call here tonight. Like I’ve known all along that this time would come.”
Kramer lifted the gun slightly and tried to squeeze the trigger. To his surprise, nothing happened.
Medway gave the smallest of chuckles. “We’ve had a grand old time, haven’t we? But now we’ve reached the end, you and I,” he said, lifting the bottle of Bushmills and pouring himself a congratulatory drink. “I’d offer you one, but...”
“Oh, yes,” replied Kramer. A self-satisfied smile replaced the unforeseen inability to just pull the trigger and have Medway’s brains spattered across the keys of his beloved antique Remington Deluxe. “We’ve reached the end alright; I’m not going to carry on doing as you want, acting the way you dictate. I’ve been taking this crap for the last thirty years but it ends tonight; a parting of the ways, you might say. It’s the final chapter for you.”
Medway lifted his glass in salute. “Well said – mind if I use that?” he smiled, turning in his chair. “I was just looking for the right words to round things off.” Truth be told, Kramer had hung around far too long. There were new ideas Medway wanted to explore but he’d reached an impasse with Kramer; the guy bored him rigid.
With that thought, Kramer found himself rooted to the spot as Medway resumed his position over the keyboard and the final clacking of the keys sealed his fate.
But Kramer had learned well. Just when the reader thought they’d got to the end of the story, there was always that last, subtle, unexpected twist from Kelvin Medway - the master of suspense.
As Medway typed the closing sentence, the final full stop resonated in echo with the discharge from the gun. For a second he slumped slightly forward, his face slowly turning towards the smoking barrel. He watched in slow-motion surprise as Kramer’s face changed, taking on an elated look as, for once, he experienced independent thought. His finger released its pressure on the trigger and Medway saw his form slowly diffuse into thin air, exiting with an ethereal echoing laugh.
In the final seconds before his heart gave up trying to cope with the loss of blood from the wound inflicted by his own his creation, Medway realised neither of them could have survived. His eyes tracked sideward to the note he’d scribbled down earlier and he smiled.
It was the title for the final book in his ‘Kramer: PI’ series.
“Impasse”
BIO: Sue Harding has been scribbling stories all her life. Recently 'retired' from working in a library, she now has more time to concoct her own little mysteries and maybe one day her former colleagues will be putting her books on the shelf! She blogs at http://www.irefusetogoquietly.blogspot.com/, including a weekly 300-word challenge 'Thursday @ 3'. Aside from writing crime/thriller/mystery fiction, her other passions include red wine, Real Ale and knitting - the alcohol fuels the imagination whilst the knitting concentrates the mind for weaving intrigue and suspense!
Interlude Stories - Cody Kelin
BODYBUILDERS - CODY KELIN
Staring out the window, Lester suppressed a yawn, so weary of being where he was that he could have picked up a one-arm bandit in which students uncomfortably sat and heaved it through the glass. Anything to break out of the confinement, the sense of earthbound limitations these students gave him. The winter grey sky stretched over the campus like a flat dirty sheet, the sun not having cut through in days. Books dropped to the floor brought him out of self-induced stupor.
A student sat in the front row, the writing on his black T-shirt loud and clear: MANWHORE. While Giselle at the back of the class read out a passage in her halting English from Melville’s story Bartleby the Scrivener, Lester wondered what the term meant and how it applied to Nils. Did the boy sell his body? Given his Scandinavian good looks and muscularity, a rash of pimples on one cheek notwithstanding, he’d probably have customers lined up. Really, discretion and appropriateness seemed to be obsolete notions with this crowd.
Apparently oblivious to his own beauty, Nils failed to notice when eyes perused his physique. The protuberant crotch, Lester determined, was a physiological phenomenon, not a deliberate policy. Not like Max, also a body-building student, who posed and strutted, letting his hand hover over his genital region as if to draw attention to the wonder therein, stretched his legs and stared back provocatively at whoever caught his interest, including Lester who was not immune to the charms of muscle. Between Max and himself a connection had already been established when Max had sent a message unrelated to course studies via the college’s student-teacher computer communication system. What did he know about Nietzsche? Lester had replied, quite a lot, why do you ask?
And so it began, the private exchange between student and teacher this past semester, Max sending messages several times a week, pushing for more and more insight and clarification, Lester compelled to reveal his own fascination with the ubermensch of whom Max boldly asserted that he was one, or on his way to becoming one, and he had sensed, now knew, that a sympathetic Lester wanted more. More of what? Lester had queried. You will discover for yourself as you fall under my influence. Then Max began coming by the office once or twice weekly, and forcing Lester by his very presence to pay attention and to admire.
Well, Lester’s own inclination provided the force; Max simply flexed, leaned close, spoke about power and enticed the teacher’s willingness to reveal more than wise reflection would have allowed. As Max wrote in one of his emails: the submission must be given and aspired to be given with pleasure and passion...pay close attention to this idea...for when we meet, they most probably will be the central topic. Laughing over the student’s pedagogical tone, he nonetheless spent a restless night, panting in his dreams which kept waking him.
The superman-in-training did have these transfixing Germanic blue eyes and, Lester being more obvious than discreet, adjusted himself for his teacher’s all too evident astonishment. Bringing whatever Nietzschean book he was trying to read, Max introduced intriguing concepts, urged speculation about what it meant to go beyond concepts of good and evil, what transvaluing all values implied, quoting from Thus Sprach Zarathustra whose style and concepts inspired Max but which Lester thought rhetorically bloated. Just yesterday, he had dropped by in the afternoon, flushed with excitement, having to speak to someone who’d understand.
“My friend knows how to ride motorcycles. I’m on the back, see, holding on and he’s roaring down the highway faster than the speed of light. I could feel life itself shoot by me like I was on the edge of the universe. Unbelievable experience.”
“That’s what you said last week about skydiving. Then there was bungee jumping, wasn’t there? You know, Max, sensation mongering is not a sign of superiority. That’s not what Nietzsche is really talking about.”
He could tell by the wince that he had shot an arrow into the lad’s pretensions and immediately regretted the impulse to bring him down a notch. Despite having only an adolescent grasp of the philosophy, Max possessed that invigorating urge to rise above the norms, to stand alone upon the peak and look down at those who had failed to be more than what they were. He could become a great man one day if he did not muddle Nietzsche and succumb to mere narcissism. Lester, however, had failed the climb, had confined and cribbed his mind on the low-lying plains: One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star, Max had quoted Nietzsche in one of his emails.
With difficulty, Giselle finished the passage. Lester knew that Max had slept with her and she wanted to be his regular girlfriend, but Max regarded love and romance as stupid traps for the unwary and weak. He called Giselle a wieb in his messages, an insulting term in German. Surely, Nils the manwhore (was that not also an insulting term?) also slept with one or two of the prettier girls or boys in the class. Lester had even imagined himself seducing Giselle of the lustrous black hair to which he was partial in a woman, but never acted on fantasies where teacher-student affairs belonged.
“Sex is for amusement,” Max had said in his office. “I get whoever I want, it’s fun for the moment, but it’s not important. You think about it too much.”
His students skittering with hormonal energy, immersed in the entertainment and advertising world of sex, Lester wondered how they could concentrate on physics labs and English essays when cocks crowed. Now almost thirty years older than they, he had once pushed the intellectual boundaries in university, sparkled and demolished in seminars, had even slept with two professors to demonstrate insurgent powers, but in the end his brilliance had dimmed. He had made wrong choices and, having married, raised a family, sank into the bogs of conventional attitudes and morality, keeping his desires to himself. Until Max strode into the classroom at the beginning of the semester and Lester sensed a shifting of electrons in the atmosphere. As if the leaden sky cracked and sunlight roared through.
The eye contact in class with Max was thrilling, that exchange of secret knowledge by glint and nod. Max had the habit of smirking when other students spoke and revealed their primitive limitations. They had not crossed over that famous Nietzschean abyss the way Max thought he had done, for they all remained as beasts on one side of the chasm while he, and presumably Lester, had dared the balancing act on the rope leading to the other side where ubermenschen transcended the limits of ordinary humanity. Max’s physique was certainly proof of one kind of excellence.
“I need a strong body for my martial arts, to stand my ground. I will never be thrown to the floor.”
In a foolish moment, Lester had asked him to roll up his sleeve and flex his arm so he could see the strength close up.
“Yes, you need to see this.”
He refrained from touching. Max would probably allow it, but would not offer. Lester must always be the one who importuned. Max and Nils worked out together. After a fashion, the two were friends, although Max had confessed that Nils, content with external form, lacked the will to power, something Max construed to justify his own arrogance and which became a subject of their conversation that morning, biceps exposed all the time.
The difficulty lay in Max’s academic work, his recent paper being an incoherent mess cobbled together with inappropriate quotations from Nietzsche, virtually ignoring the topic and its relation to the story, and written in a style of inflated and preposterous imagery, a clumsy imitation of Zarathustra. Despite evidence of a vigorous mind, as an essay Lester had no choice but to fail it. Nils had made every effort to understand and be understood. He had followed the rules. Banality notwithstanding, his work received a passing grade.
Lester didn’t quite know what to do. Enjoying a personal connection with Max, he wanted the student to become all that he wished to be. He found himself craving the dangerous conversations with someone more than half his age, to feel the pleasure of resistance weakening. Of his professional objectivity, subject to the influence of that gaze, Lester had no doubt. Max would be angry with the mark, possibly embarrassed or humiliated, even though his teacher had written kindly and instructively about the paper’s weaknesses. Despite his beautiful body and proud crotch notwithstanding, Nils would remain in the realm of the mediocre.
After distributing the papers, Lester waited at the head of the class while students left. Max pierced his teacher’s heart with an unsmiling glance, then disappeared. Nils fumbled with his books, wrinkling the logo on his T-shirt, then politely asked his teacher for a clarification of a comment.
“Thank you, sir. I’m really happy with the mark.”
“You deserve it, Nils, a very good effort.”
At the end of the day, disappointed that Max had not dropped by to discuss his mark, Lester locked his office door and found his way to the college pool where he swam a half hour as was his custom three times a week. He was in no hurry to pack his car into another traffic jam on slushy streets under a dead sky. Mind-numbing essays waited to be marked on his desk in his downtown Montreal apartment. Really, all this talk about overcoming and climbing peaks and strutting about in superior glory didn’t obscure the fact that he was little more than one of those pedagogues to whom Nietzsche scornfully referred as oxen.
The change room was deserted except for Max flexing and admiring himself in the long mirror at the end of one row of green lockers. Stripped to gym shorts, his body still damp from the pool and reflecting light did indeed appear imposing.
“Max! I’m glad to see you.”
“Yes, of course you are. I knew you would be here.”
Lester disliked the comment, however true, for it reminded him how much his student knew about his private thoughts. Max returned to the mirror, running a hand along one raised arm, caressing the bicep.
“About your essay, Max, I want to talk about it. You wrote a lot of interesting things, but just needed some logical order and a firmer grasp of the text.”
“Forget it. The mark doesn’t matter. Marks are for the herd.”
“Yes, well, it matters if you wish to pass the course.”
Speaking to his image in the glass where he also saw his teacher sitting on a bench, Max smiled, his eyes catching the light.
“You will pass me, you will give me a very high mark because you want to. Anyway, you have no choice. I see into your mind. I know you. Once we meet off campus, you will understand and be free to do what I want, but you’re trapped as long as you stay here. We can’t be free in the college. Look how the veins pop up when I do this.”
Taken aback by the insight, Lester attempted a rational rebuttal, shifted uncomfortably on the bench, searched his sack for his bathing trunks, and could not mount an argument. Watching the youth, he became aware of a weakening in his own mind, a compelling will to submit to the student’s power. The impulse was not philosophical, which Max must have suspected all along. Indeed, what did marks matter in the end?
Max now continued posing for his teacher, adroitly changing positions. Oh, yes, those impressive legs would in time stride across mountain peaks, indifferent to the herds below who could only look up and be amazed. Submit with pleasure and passion, Lester recalled the words from the email. The huge ubermensch loomed magnificently above him, glinting in the mirror and penetrating his teacher’s defences with those blue transcendent eyes.
BIO: This is Cody Kelin's first submission to an ezine, although it is not the first story he's written. He is interested in balances of power between people and how philosophy is often distorted to justify just about anything. He lives in Canada.
Staring out the window, Lester suppressed a yawn, so weary of being where he was that he could have picked up a one-arm bandit in which students uncomfortably sat and heaved it through the glass. Anything to break out of the confinement, the sense of earthbound limitations these students gave him. The winter grey sky stretched over the campus like a flat dirty sheet, the sun not having cut through in days. Books dropped to the floor brought him out of self-induced stupor.
A student sat in the front row, the writing on his black T-shirt loud and clear: MANWHORE. While Giselle at the back of the class read out a passage in her halting English from Melville’s story Bartleby the Scrivener, Lester wondered what the term meant and how it applied to Nils. Did the boy sell his body? Given his Scandinavian good looks and muscularity, a rash of pimples on one cheek notwithstanding, he’d probably have customers lined up. Really, discretion and appropriateness seemed to be obsolete notions with this crowd.
Apparently oblivious to his own beauty, Nils failed to notice when eyes perused his physique. The protuberant crotch, Lester determined, was a physiological phenomenon, not a deliberate policy. Not like Max, also a body-building student, who posed and strutted, letting his hand hover over his genital region as if to draw attention to the wonder therein, stretched his legs and stared back provocatively at whoever caught his interest, including Lester who was not immune to the charms of muscle. Between Max and himself a connection had already been established when Max had sent a message unrelated to course studies via the college’s student-teacher computer communication system. What did he know about Nietzsche? Lester had replied, quite a lot, why do you ask?
And so it began, the private exchange between student and teacher this past semester, Max sending messages several times a week, pushing for more and more insight and clarification, Lester compelled to reveal his own fascination with the ubermensch of whom Max boldly asserted that he was one, or on his way to becoming one, and he had sensed, now knew, that a sympathetic Lester wanted more. More of what? Lester had queried. You will discover for yourself as you fall under my influence. Then Max began coming by the office once or twice weekly, and forcing Lester by his very presence to pay attention and to admire.
Well, Lester’s own inclination provided the force; Max simply flexed, leaned close, spoke about power and enticed the teacher’s willingness to reveal more than wise reflection would have allowed. As Max wrote in one of his emails: the submission must be given and aspired to be given with pleasure and passion...pay close attention to this idea...for when we meet, they most probably will be the central topic. Laughing over the student’s pedagogical tone, he nonetheless spent a restless night, panting in his dreams which kept waking him.
The superman-in-training did have these transfixing Germanic blue eyes and, Lester being more obvious than discreet, adjusted himself for his teacher’s all too evident astonishment. Bringing whatever Nietzschean book he was trying to read, Max introduced intriguing concepts, urged speculation about what it meant to go beyond concepts of good and evil, what transvaluing all values implied, quoting from Thus Sprach Zarathustra whose style and concepts inspired Max but which Lester thought rhetorically bloated. Just yesterday, he had dropped by in the afternoon, flushed with excitement, having to speak to someone who’d understand.
“My friend knows how to ride motorcycles. I’m on the back, see, holding on and he’s roaring down the highway faster than the speed of light. I could feel life itself shoot by me like I was on the edge of the universe. Unbelievable experience.”
“That’s what you said last week about skydiving. Then there was bungee jumping, wasn’t there? You know, Max, sensation mongering is not a sign of superiority. That’s not what Nietzsche is really talking about.”
He could tell by the wince that he had shot an arrow into the lad’s pretensions and immediately regretted the impulse to bring him down a notch. Despite having only an adolescent grasp of the philosophy, Max possessed that invigorating urge to rise above the norms, to stand alone upon the peak and look down at those who had failed to be more than what they were. He could become a great man one day if he did not muddle Nietzsche and succumb to mere narcissism. Lester, however, had failed the climb, had confined and cribbed his mind on the low-lying plains: One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star, Max had quoted Nietzsche in one of his emails.
With difficulty, Giselle finished the passage. Lester knew that Max had slept with her and she wanted to be his regular girlfriend, but Max regarded love and romance as stupid traps for the unwary and weak. He called Giselle a wieb in his messages, an insulting term in German. Surely, Nils the manwhore (was that not also an insulting term?) also slept with one or two of the prettier girls or boys in the class. Lester had even imagined himself seducing Giselle of the lustrous black hair to which he was partial in a woman, but never acted on fantasies where teacher-student affairs belonged.
“Sex is for amusement,” Max had said in his office. “I get whoever I want, it’s fun for the moment, but it’s not important. You think about it too much.”
His students skittering with hormonal energy, immersed in the entertainment and advertising world of sex, Lester wondered how they could concentrate on physics labs and English essays when cocks crowed. Now almost thirty years older than they, he had once pushed the intellectual boundaries in university, sparkled and demolished in seminars, had even slept with two professors to demonstrate insurgent powers, but in the end his brilliance had dimmed. He had made wrong choices and, having married, raised a family, sank into the bogs of conventional attitudes and morality, keeping his desires to himself. Until Max strode into the classroom at the beginning of the semester and Lester sensed a shifting of electrons in the atmosphere. As if the leaden sky cracked and sunlight roared through.
The eye contact in class with Max was thrilling, that exchange of secret knowledge by glint and nod. Max had the habit of smirking when other students spoke and revealed their primitive limitations. They had not crossed over that famous Nietzschean abyss the way Max thought he had done, for they all remained as beasts on one side of the chasm while he, and presumably Lester, had dared the balancing act on the rope leading to the other side where ubermenschen transcended the limits of ordinary humanity. Max’s physique was certainly proof of one kind of excellence.
“I need a strong body for my martial arts, to stand my ground. I will never be thrown to the floor.”
In a foolish moment, Lester had asked him to roll up his sleeve and flex his arm so he could see the strength close up.
“Yes, you need to see this.”
He refrained from touching. Max would probably allow it, but would not offer. Lester must always be the one who importuned. Max and Nils worked out together. After a fashion, the two were friends, although Max had confessed that Nils, content with external form, lacked the will to power, something Max construed to justify his own arrogance and which became a subject of their conversation that morning, biceps exposed all the time.
The difficulty lay in Max’s academic work, his recent paper being an incoherent mess cobbled together with inappropriate quotations from Nietzsche, virtually ignoring the topic and its relation to the story, and written in a style of inflated and preposterous imagery, a clumsy imitation of Zarathustra. Despite evidence of a vigorous mind, as an essay Lester had no choice but to fail it. Nils had made every effort to understand and be understood. He had followed the rules. Banality notwithstanding, his work received a passing grade.
Lester didn’t quite know what to do. Enjoying a personal connection with Max, he wanted the student to become all that he wished to be. He found himself craving the dangerous conversations with someone more than half his age, to feel the pleasure of resistance weakening. Of his professional objectivity, subject to the influence of that gaze, Lester had no doubt. Max would be angry with the mark, possibly embarrassed or humiliated, even though his teacher had written kindly and instructively about the paper’s weaknesses. Despite his beautiful body and proud crotch notwithstanding, Nils would remain in the realm of the mediocre.
After distributing the papers, Lester waited at the head of the class while students left. Max pierced his teacher’s heart with an unsmiling glance, then disappeared. Nils fumbled with his books, wrinkling the logo on his T-shirt, then politely asked his teacher for a clarification of a comment.
“Thank you, sir. I’m really happy with the mark.”
“You deserve it, Nils, a very good effort.”
At the end of the day, disappointed that Max had not dropped by to discuss his mark, Lester locked his office door and found his way to the college pool where he swam a half hour as was his custom three times a week. He was in no hurry to pack his car into another traffic jam on slushy streets under a dead sky. Mind-numbing essays waited to be marked on his desk in his downtown Montreal apartment. Really, all this talk about overcoming and climbing peaks and strutting about in superior glory didn’t obscure the fact that he was little more than one of those pedagogues to whom Nietzsche scornfully referred as oxen.
The change room was deserted except for Max flexing and admiring himself in the long mirror at the end of one row of green lockers. Stripped to gym shorts, his body still damp from the pool and reflecting light did indeed appear imposing.
“Max! I’m glad to see you.”
“Yes, of course you are. I knew you would be here.”
Lester disliked the comment, however true, for it reminded him how much his student knew about his private thoughts. Max returned to the mirror, running a hand along one raised arm, caressing the bicep.
“About your essay, Max, I want to talk about it. You wrote a lot of interesting things, but just needed some logical order and a firmer grasp of the text.”
“Forget it. The mark doesn’t matter. Marks are for the herd.”
“Yes, well, it matters if you wish to pass the course.”
Speaking to his image in the glass where he also saw his teacher sitting on a bench, Max smiled, his eyes catching the light.
“You will pass me, you will give me a very high mark because you want to. Anyway, you have no choice. I see into your mind. I know you. Once we meet off campus, you will understand and be free to do what I want, but you’re trapped as long as you stay here. We can’t be free in the college. Look how the veins pop up when I do this.”
Taken aback by the insight, Lester attempted a rational rebuttal, shifted uncomfortably on the bench, searched his sack for his bathing trunks, and could not mount an argument. Watching the youth, he became aware of a weakening in his own mind, a compelling will to submit to the student’s power. The impulse was not philosophical, which Max must have suspected all along. Indeed, what did marks matter in the end?
Max now continued posing for his teacher, adroitly changing positions. Oh, yes, those impressive legs would in time stride across mountain peaks, indifferent to the herds below who could only look up and be amazed. Submit with pleasure and passion, Lester recalled the words from the email. The huge ubermensch loomed magnificently above him, glinting in the mirror and penetrating his teacher’s defences with those blue transcendent eyes.
BIO: This is Cody Kelin's first submission to an ezine, although it is not the first story he's written. He is interested in balances of power between people and how philosophy is often distorted to justify just about anything. He lives in Canada.
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Interlude: Gary Phillips At Chin Wag
If you haven’t taken the opportunity to check out Richard Godwin’s most recent Chin Wag, you really are missing something.
Gary Phillips is the subject of the interview and, having been a HUGE fan of Gary's work, I know when I found out Richard was interviewing him I had to hit the link pronto.
Among the wide variety of topics discussed the way that E-Books are affecting how writers write (especially comic book writers that are having their material printed via this platform) where it concerns pacing, whether or not sex is a driving factor in crime (and not just in the fictional world) and are writers motivated by death.
You owe it to yourself to have a look.
Gary Phillips is the subject of the interview and, having been a HUGE fan of Gary's work, I know when I found out Richard was interviewing him I had to hit the link pronto.
Among the wide variety of topics discussed the way that E-Books are affecting how writers write (especially comic book writers that are having their material printed via this platform) where it concerns pacing, whether or not sex is a driving factor in crime (and not just in the fictional world) and are writers motivated by death.
You owe it to yourself to have a look.
Monday, October 3, 2011
Interlude Stories: Christopher Black
DIRTY BEACHES - CHRISTOPHER BLACK
I pick up a broken pebble and start scratching lines into the sand. The sky is a uniform grey, so that you can’t even tell where the sun is. The sea is dirty slate, and as it froths up the beach it pushes around the thorny driftwood, the empty beer cans and plastic bags, forming new patterns to mark its lack of progress. I draw F U C K in the sand, and scuff it out with my palm. Then I change my mind and write the letters again, only this time I add T H I S underneath.
I look at my watch. It’s been two hours. Further along the tideline a couple of gulls are sifting through the trash.
‘Just wait there,’ Jimmy had said.
‘What time are they supposed to come?’ I’d asked.
‘Just wait there until they show,’ he’d said.
‘What if they don’t show?’ I’d said. ‘What the fuck am I supposed to do then?’
I stand up from my rock and shake off the sand. Hell of a day to visit the beach. Still, it could be worse. I glance at the car, parked high up, well away from the crawling, brackish sea.
If the time had gone slowly for me...
My boots sink into the drier sand as I approach the car, pulling keys from my pocket. For a moment I imagine what I’d do if she wasn’t inside, if the boot was empty as I pulled it open, but no, she’s there. Her eyes blink into the sudden light, trying to focus on my shadow looming over her.
Silver tape is stretched across her mouth. The rope around her ankles doesn’t look too bad, but around her wrists it’s pretty tight, chafing into her soft skin. Must be hell on her shoulders, I think.
She doesn’t struggle as I pull her into a sitting position, then heft her feet over the lip of the boot and pull her out onto the beach. Her legs buckle and she collapses onto the dirty sand. She’s only wearing a long Snoopy t-shirt – must’ve been wearing it in bed – and it rides up to show tight orange briefs. I figure shame is the least of her worries right now.
I help her to her bare feet and she starts shifting her weight around, trying to get the blood moving again. I lean her against the car and take a good look for the first time. She’s certainly pretty enough. Her skin is smooth and lightly tanned and pulled tight across high cheekbones and a slim, athletic body. Wavy hair drops to her shoulders. The highlights need touching up, but apart from that, you know. The t-shirt is pulled tightly across her chest, nipples standing firm.
She’s watching me, following my gaze, and I think it’s fear I can see in her big brown eyes. I used to be good at reading faces. Or maybe I only thought I was good at reading faces. I don’t know anymore. Of course she’s scared. Who wouldn’t be?
For a moment I feel the urge to grab those breasts, to force my hand between her thighs, to push her down onto the sand. But I don’t. Jimmy wouldn’t like it if I did. I think there’s another reason, something else that stops me. But I don’t think about it too hard in case I don’t like the answer I find.
Instead, I say, “Would you like some water?”
She nods, and I open the driver’s door and pull the bottle from the passenger footwell.
“Just don’t try anything,” I say, and she nods. “Don’t even fucking speak. Don’t even fucking think.”
I’m playing a little tough now, to balance the fact I’m doing her a favour. I don’t have to give her a drink. I don’t have to let her work off some stiffness in her legs. She’s not going to die in there. But I’m doing her a favour. I can let her drink, or not. I’m going to let her.
The silver tape comes off at the second attempt, and I pull the damp handkerchief from her mouth. I hold up the bottle and pour it towards her lips. She strains at it, gulping at it greedily. I watch her throat pulsing back and forth. A lot of the water spills onto her shirt, but I guess she doesn’t care.
I don’t let her have too much. Just enough to wet her throat and lips. To take away the discomfort. Then I look her over again.
“Better?” I say.
“Thank you,” she says. She really is very pretty. I mean, I guess she’s looked better. But considering everything.
She says, “My wrists...”
I raise my hand and she flinches, turns away. “I told you not to fucking try anything,” I say. But she knows I wouldn’t really hit her. She watches me from under her hair, and I think she knows I wouldn’t hurt her. I think she can see it in my eyes. I hope she can. I hope she can see something.
I pour a little more water over the handkerchief and push it back into her mouth, and replace the tape. She doesn’t struggle too much as I lead her to the back of the car, help her back into place. My hand brushes against her breast, and the image returns to my mind, of her on the sand. I push it away and slam the boot closed, leaving her safe in the darkness.
About forty minutes later, I look up into the grey and follow the calls of the gulls, and see the pair of them circling in the air. Below them on the road sits a Range Rover. It watches me for a couple of minutes, and edges along, down the short path, onto the sand, stopping in front of my own car. The driver is a slim man with stubble. He’s wearing jeans and boots, and a check shirt. Workman’s clothes, for dirty work. The other guy is heavier, with a leather jacket over a t-shirt. I wait for them to step out onto the beach before I stand up, walk over. My arms are open like they’re long lost brothers, but I’ve never seen either of them before today. I’m just telling them I don’t have a weapon. There’s no friendship, just business.
Check Shirt nods towards my car. “She in there?”
I don’t answer but toss him the keys. He looks at Leather Jacket and walks towards the back of the car, opens it, looks down at the girl. I try to remember if I pulled her t-shirt down, to cover her panties.
The two of them pull her out. She struggles a little and falls, her knees and face planted in the sand. Leather Jacket braces against the weight, and hefts her over his shoulder. She kicks a little, tries to lift her head up. I imagine she’s looking for me. She probably isn’t.
He drops her into the back of the Range Rover with a mouthful of threats and curses, and pulls a blanket over her. I figure they don’t plan on driving far, not like that.
Check Shirt pulls a small backpack from the car and tosses it towards me. I watch the sand spray up as it hits. It looks full. He watches me, I watch the bag.
“You gonna count it?” he says.
“Nah,” I say. “I figure I can trust you.”
Then I say, “Of course, if it’s not all there, Jimmy will hunt you down and kill you.”
Check Shirt nods, but there’s nothing more. They climb into the Range Rover, start the engine, pull a tight circle and drive. Back up the beach, up the short path, up the road, disappear forever.
The gulls have gone, too. I look at the bag. Part of that is mine. I think about counting it, but I don’t figure it would help. I sit back down on my rock, smooth over the words I’d written earlier. I should just drive, back to the city. Jimmy will be waiting.
Fuck Jimmy, I think. I pick up a stick and start scratching lines into the sand.
BIO: Christopher Black is an unpublished UK writer. Luckily he doesn’t do it for the money. He procrastinates inconsistently about noir and other things at availableinanycolour.blogspot.com.
I pick up a broken pebble and start scratching lines into the sand. The sky is a uniform grey, so that you can’t even tell where the sun is. The sea is dirty slate, and as it froths up the beach it pushes around the thorny driftwood, the empty beer cans and plastic bags, forming new patterns to mark its lack of progress. I draw F U C K in the sand, and scuff it out with my palm. Then I change my mind and write the letters again, only this time I add T H I S underneath.
I look at my watch. It’s been two hours. Further along the tideline a couple of gulls are sifting through the trash.
‘Just wait there,’ Jimmy had said.
‘What time are they supposed to come?’ I’d asked.
‘Just wait there until they show,’ he’d said.
‘What if they don’t show?’ I’d said. ‘What the fuck am I supposed to do then?’
I stand up from my rock and shake off the sand. Hell of a day to visit the beach. Still, it could be worse. I glance at the car, parked high up, well away from the crawling, brackish sea.
If the time had gone slowly for me...
My boots sink into the drier sand as I approach the car, pulling keys from my pocket. For a moment I imagine what I’d do if she wasn’t inside, if the boot was empty as I pulled it open, but no, she’s there. Her eyes blink into the sudden light, trying to focus on my shadow looming over her.
Silver tape is stretched across her mouth. The rope around her ankles doesn’t look too bad, but around her wrists it’s pretty tight, chafing into her soft skin. Must be hell on her shoulders, I think.
She doesn’t struggle as I pull her into a sitting position, then heft her feet over the lip of the boot and pull her out onto the beach. Her legs buckle and she collapses onto the dirty sand. She’s only wearing a long Snoopy t-shirt – must’ve been wearing it in bed – and it rides up to show tight orange briefs. I figure shame is the least of her worries right now.
I help her to her bare feet and she starts shifting her weight around, trying to get the blood moving again. I lean her against the car and take a good look for the first time. She’s certainly pretty enough. Her skin is smooth and lightly tanned and pulled tight across high cheekbones and a slim, athletic body. Wavy hair drops to her shoulders. The highlights need touching up, but apart from that, you know. The t-shirt is pulled tightly across her chest, nipples standing firm.
She’s watching me, following my gaze, and I think it’s fear I can see in her big brown eyes. I used to be good at reading faces. Or maybe I only thought I was good at reading faces. I don’t know anymore. Of course she’s scared. Who wouldn’t be?
For a moment I feel the urge to grab those breasts, to force my hand between her thighs, to push her down onto the sand. But I don’t. Jimmy wouldn’t like it if I did. I think there’s another reason, something else that stops me. But I don’t think about it too hard in case I don’t like the answer I find.
Instead, I say, “Would you like some water?”
She nods, and I open the driver’s door and pull the bottle from the passenger footwell.
“Just don’t try anything,” I say, and she nods. “Don’t even fucking speak. Don’t even fucking think.”
I’m playing a little tough now, to balance the fact I’m doing her a favour. I don’t have to give her a drink. I don’t have to let her work off some stiffness in her legs. She’s not going to die in there. But I’m doing her a favour. I can let her drink, or not. I’m going to let her.
The silver tape comes off at the second attempt, and I pull the damp handkerchief from her mouth. I hold up the bottle and pour it towards her lips. She strains at it, gulping at it greedily. I watch her throat pulsing back and forth. A lot of the water spills onto her shirt, but I guess she doesn’t care.
I don’t let her have too much. Just enough to wet her throat and lips. To take away the discomfort. Then I look her over again.
“Better?” I say.
“Thank you,” she says. She really is very pretty. I mean, I guess she’s looked better. But considering everything.
She says, “My wrists...”
I raise my hand and she flinches, turns away. “I told you not to fucking try anything,” I say. But she knows I wouldn’t really hit her. She watches me from under her hair, and I think she knows I wouldn’t hurt her. I think she can see it in my eyes. I hope she can. I hope she can see something.
I pour a little more water over the handkerchief and push it back into her mouth, and replace the tape. She doesn’t struggle too much as I lead her to the back of the car, help her back into place. My hand brushes against her breast, and the image returns to my mind, of her on the sand. I push it away and slam the boot closed, leaving her safe in the darkness.
About forty minutes later, I look up into the grey and follow the calls of the gulls, and see the pair of them circling in the air. Below them on the road sits a Range Rover. It watches me for a couple of minutes, and edges along, down the short path, onto the sand, stopping in front of my own car. The driver is a slim man with stubble. He’s wearing jeans and boots, and a check shirt. Workman’s clothes, for dirty work. The other guy is heavier, with a leather jacket over a t-shirt. I wait for them to step out onto the beach before I stand up, walk over. My arms are open like they’re long lost brothers, but I’ve never seen either of them before today. I’m just telling them I don’t have a weapon. There’s no friendship, just business.
Check Shirt nods towards my car. “She in there?”
I don’t answer but toss him the keys. He looks at Leather Jacket and walks towards the back of the car, opens it, looks down at the girl. I try to remember if I pulled her t-shirt down, to cover her panties.
The two of them pull her out. She struggles a little and falls, her knees and face planted in the sand. Leather Jacket braces against the weight, and hefts her over his shoulder. She kicks a little, tries to lift her head up. I imagine she’s looking for me. She probably isn’t.
He drops her into the back of the Range Rover with a mouthful of threats and curses, and pulls a blanket over her. I figure they don’t plan on driving far, not like that.
Check Shirt pulls a small backpack from the car and tosses it towards me. I watch the sand spray up as it hits. It looks full. He watches me, I watch the bag.
“You gonna count it?” he says.
“Nah,” I say. “I figure I can trust you.”
Then I say, “Of course, if it’s not all there, Jimmy will hunt you down and kill you.”
Check Shirt nods, but there’s nothing more. They climb into the Range Rover, start the engine, pull a tight circle and drive. Back up the beach, up the short path, up the road, disappear forever.
The gulls have gone, too. I look at the bag. Part of that is mine. I think about counting it, but I don’t figure it would help. I sit back down on my rock, smooth over the words I’d written earlier. I should just drive, back to the city. Jimmy will be waiting.
Fuck Jimmy, I think. I pick up a stick and start scratching lines into the sand.
BIO: Christopher Black is an unpublished UK writer. Luckily he doesn’t do it for the money. He procrastinates inconsistently about noir and other things at availableinanycolour.blogspot.com.
Interlude Stories: Tom Faucett
UNSPOOLED - TOM FAUCETT
“Time of death, 8:38 P.M.”
(Twelve Minutes Earlier)
Paramedics slammed the gurney through double doors; the Israeli ER doctor sprinted alongside.
“White male, 56 years old. Multiple stab wounds to the chest.”
(Seventeen Minutes Earlier)
“Where’s the money?”
“What money?”
“Don’t fuck with me. The money you stole.”
“I don’t have— ” The streetlight caught the glint of the hunting knife as the serrated blade found ribs and flesh.
(Two Minutes Earlier)
Carrying the day’s worth of trash in a Hefty bag, he stumbled out the back door. As he raised the lid of the can, a man appeared out of the darkness.
(Thirty-Two Minutes Earlier)
“Is this Feck?”
“Yes. Who’s this?”
“Quinton Feck?”
“Yes. Who is...”
The line went dead.
(Five Minutes Earlier)
Feck, slumped in his blue leather La-Z-Boy, drained his fourth Jack and Coke. He chewed on a Stouffer’s French Bread Pizza as he watched the Braves’ game. Ever since the death of his wife, he only shopped in the frozen food section. A drunk driver had plowed across the median, smashing head on into his wife’s Explorer. She and their daughter were on their way to a cake tasting for Jessica’s upcoming wedding. Sweet Jessica. He’d planned on walking her down the aisle in a wedding dress, not a casket.
(Two Years Earlier)
Leavenworth Prison, Kansas
His final appeal had been denied. Scrawling a quick note to his brother and only living relative, he fashioned a sheet into a noose, stepped up on the metal bed frame, tossed the sheet around an overhead pipe, secured it tightly and stepped off.
(One Month Earlier)
“Damn, Helms, that’s a hell of a story,” Andre Bibbs muttered, shaking his bald head. “That Feck sounds like a sadistic fucker.”
“You don’t know the half of it.”
The two sat in the big yard at Leavenworth. Bibbs was in the homestretch of a seven-year sentence for raping a Venezuelan girl in the parking lot of Cheap Seats, a sports bar in Pensacola.
“A lot of fishes come through here claiming to be innocent, but damned if you ain’t the first I actually believe,” Andre said.
(Two Years Earlier)
Camp Gannon, Marine Corps Base, Iraq
“Captain Helms. Thank you for coming.”
“I came as soon as you summoned, Colonel.”
“I’m afraid we have a situation on our hands. Hoping you can shed some light.”
“I’ll do my best, sir.”
“I’ll be blunt, Captain. The money’s been counted. We’re $400,000 short.”
“But that’s simply not possible, sir.”
“Take him to the brig,” Feck barked.
(Nineteen Hours Earlier)
Helms, in the jump seat of a sand colored Humvee barreling across Iraq, tried to catch some shuteye. The suffocating 120-degree heat, knotted road and constant fear of an ambush didn’t help. A duffle bag jammed full of 600 grand resting at his feet didn’t either.
(Three Weeks Earlier)
“I read your proposal, Captain Helms. It’s very ambitious.”
“We’re here to help, Colonel. The villagers desperately need this.”
“You realize it won’t be easy. You’ll have to trek across Iraq to the Jordanian border to procure the money from the depot and bring it back. Cash. I doubt very much the construction workers and contractors you’ll need to hire will take a personal check.”
“That thought did cross my mind, sir.”
“Very well. I’ll speak to my superiors for approval. I’ll be in touch.”
(Ten Days Earlier)
Colonel Feck, in his early 50s, looked ten years younger. He credited good genes and an intense exercise regimen. As he lay down on the bench to begin his reps, a shadowy figure entered the weight room and dropped a thin stack of 8x10 photos on Feck’s chest.
“What the-?” Feck said, sitting up. He grabbed the glossy pictures, and after quickly scanning them, stared up at the man in abject horror.
“I believe the correct term is ‘Conduct unbecoming an officer,’ sir.”
Feck flushed with rage, “What the hell do you want?”
“I think money is customary in these sorts of situations,” he stated plainly. “85 grand.”
“You blackmailing little shit. I haven’t got that kind of cash. I’ll see you court-martialed.” Feck sputtered.
Smiling, the soldier leaned forward, tapped the photos with his meaty index finger and said, “You first.”
(Five Years Earlier)
Oceanside, California
“Stop fidgeting, you’ll mess up your hair.”
“I just want them to like me.”
“Don’t worry. Mom’s a flirt and Dad’s an old softy.”
Her parents were already waiting in the restaurant foyer when they arrived.
“Mom, Dad, this is Jack.”
“So happy to meet you, Jack. Jessica talks about you all the time. Please, call me Evelyn. And this is my husband, Quinton.”
Jack Helms put out his hand to shake. “Major Feck, it’s a pleasure.”
BIO: Tom Faucett is a copywriter for advertising and design. He lives in Winston-Salem, NC with his wife, two sons, a crazy yellow dog and a hermit crab named Bill. You can find him on Twitter @tfaucett.
“Time of death, 8:38 P.M.”
(Twelve Minutes Earlier)
Paramedics slammed the gurney through double doors; the Israeli ER doctor sprinted alongside.
“White male, 56 years old. Multiple stab wounds to the chest.”
(Seventeen Minutes Earlier)
“Where’s the money?”
“What money?”
“Don’t fuck with me. The money you stole.”
“I don’t have— ” The streetlight caught the glint of the hunting knife as the serrated blade found ribs and flesh.
(Two Minutes Earlier)
Carrying the day’s worth of trash in a Hefty bag, he stumbled out the back door. As he raised the lid of the can, a man appeared out of the darkness.
(Thirty-Two Minutes Earlier)
“Is this Feck?”
“Yes. Who’s this?”
“Quinton Feck?”
“Yes. Who is...”
The line went dead.
(Five Minutes Earlier)
Feck, slumped in his blue leather La-Z-Boy, drained his fourth Jack and Coke. He chewed on a Stouffer’s French Bread Pizza as he watched the Braves’ game. Ever since the death of his wife, he only shopped in the frozen food section. A drunk driver had plowed across the median, smashing head on into his wife’s Explorer. She and their daughter were on their way to a cake tasting for Jessica’s upcoming wedding. Sweet Jessica. He’d planned on walking her down the aisle in a wedding dress, not a casket.
(Two Years Earlier)
Leavenworth Prison, Kansas
His final appeal had been denied. Scrawling a quick note to his brother and only living relative, he fashioned a sheet into a noose, stepped up on the metal bed frame, tossed the sheet around an overhead pipe, secured it tightly and stepped off.
(One Month Earlier)
“Damn, Helms, that’s a hell of a story,” Andre Bibbs muttered, shaking his bald head. “That Feck sounds like a sadistic fucker.”
“You don’t know the half of it.”
The two sat in the big yard at Leavenworth. Bibbs was in the homestretch of a seven-year sentence for raping a Venezuelan girl in the parking lot of Cheap Seats, a sports bar in Pensacola.
“A lot of fishes come through here claiming to be innocent, but damned if you ain’t the first I actually believe,” Andre said.
(Two Years Earlier)
Camp Gannon, Marine Corps Base, Iraq
“Captain Helms. Thank you for coming.”
“I came as soon as you summoned, Colonel.”
“I’m afraid we have a situation on our hands. Hoping you can shed some light.”
“I’ll do my best, sir.”
“I’ll be blunt, Captain. The money’s been counted. We’re $400,000 short.”
“But that’s simply not possible, sir.”
“Take him to the brig,” Feck barked.
(Nineteen Hours Earlier)
Helms, in the jump seat of a sand colored Humvee barreling across Iraq, tried to catch some shuteye. The suffocating 120-degree heat, knotted road and constant fear of an ambush didn’t help. A duffle bag jammed full of 600 grand resting at his feet didn’t either.
(Three Weeks Earlier)
“I read your proposal, Captain Helms. It’s very ambitious.”
“We’re here to help, Colonel. The villagers desperately need this.”
“You realize it won’t be easy. You’ll have to trek across Iraq to the Jordanian border to procure the money from the depot and bring it back. Cash. I doubt very much the construction workers and contractors you’ll need to hire will take a personal check.”
“That thought did cross my mind, sir.”
“Very well. I’ll speak to my superiors for approval. I’ll be in touch.”
(Ten Days Earlier)
Colonel Feck, in his early 50s, looked ten years younger. He credited good genes and an intense exercise regimen. As he lay down on the bench to begin his reps, a shadowy figure entered the weight room and dropped a thin stack of 8x10 photos on Feck’s chest.
“What the-?” Feck said, sitting up. He grabbed the glossy pictures, and after quickly scanning them, stared up at the man in abject horror.
“I believe the correct term is ‘Conduct unbecoming an officer,’ sir.”
Feck flushed with rage, “What the hell do you want?”
“I think money is customary in these sorts of situations,” he stated plainly. “85 grand.”
“You blackmailing little shit. I haven’t got that kind of cash. I’ll see you court-martialed.” Feck sputtered.
Smiling, the soldier leaned forward, tapped the photos with his meaty index finger and said, “You first.”
(Five Years Earlier)
Oceanside, California
“Stop fidgeting, you’ll mess up your hair.”
“I just want them to like me.”
“Don’t worry. Mom’s a flirt and Dad’s an old softy.”
Her parents were already waiting in the restaurant foyer when they arrived.
“Mom, Dad, this is Jack.”
“So happy to meet you, Jack. Jessica talks about you all the time. Please, call me Evelyn. And this is my husband, Quinton.”
Jack Helms put out his hand to shake. “Major Feck, it’s a pleasure.”
BIO: Tom Faucett is a copywriter for advertising and design. He lives in Winston-Salem, NC with his wife, two sons, a crazy yellow dog and a hermit crab named Bill. You can find him on Twitter @tfaucett.
Interlude Stories: Patricia Abbott
SHAME - PATRICIA ABBOTT
I watch Guy sleep beside me. Misery, rage, fear flood his face—like waves rushing over sand. Muted shades tint him once the guardedness he wears by day disappears.
His eyelids flutter. I gaze at the rise and fall of his chest. His foot, always the left —the one nearest me—twitches. Rustling beneath the starched sheets he insists on tucking too tight, he sighs. Now he’s turned onto his right side. It feels deliberate—this casting me aside.
No longer hypnotized by the himness of him, I slip the gun under the bed. Metaphorically, of course. The mutual shame, which binds us as tightly as lust or habit might, brings it to mind.
Guy and my sister, Shelley: the two of them that should’ve been together these years. Perhaps what they had would’ve soured by now as so often happens.
For years—seventeen of them—it was my sister Shelley and me. Side by side on her bed—our feet making toe marks on her pink wall, reading the same books, liking the same movies, music. Other girls spilled over us at school, at the pool, but never made much of a claim. Boys, even less. Less than a year separated us. She claimed she waited for me, impatient for her other half.
“I was always looking for someone.”
“You can’t remember that,” our mother said, back to us at the sink.
“I bet she can,” I said.
I liked the idea of Shelley grieving for the sister who hadn’t yet been born. Me. It felt perfect.
Our mother shook her head, finding our closeness cloying. Smiling our secret smile, we turned our faces away.
And then, there was Guy Hansen.
Or Guy Handsome behind his back. I was bewildered at how Shelley had snagged him. Shelley who’d never had a date. The one who’d waited for me hadn’t let on she’d also waited for him.
But suddenly, Guy was standing at our door. I yanked it open expecting a salesman, a Jehovah Witness, Uncle Ted.
“Shannon, right?” he said, flashing his smile.
I was speechless. She’d told him about me, but not me about him—which seemed like a betrayal, treachery. That he deserved more consideration than me. That he was privy to a deeper level of confidence. My halcyon days were at an end.
“Thanks, Shannon,” Shelley said, sidling past me, my gaping mouth. When I still didn’t move, she whispered, “I’ll take it from here.”
I’d never heard that tone before. Dismissed, I sidled off like the rodent I’d suddenly become.
And she did exactly that— took it from there—moved from being captain of the lacrosse team and president of the French Club—to dating the best catch in school. Had she taken a book out from the library telling her what to do? Listened to some talk show offering tips?
Guy was off-limits for discussion.
“So what did you and Guy do last night?”
“Nothing special.” She was fidgeting. “Do you want go in on a present for Mom for Mother’s Day? Maybe a new recording of St. Matthew’s Passion?”
So we weren’t to share Guy. I was filled with rage. Rage that Shelley was lost to me, that she made off with the school’s best offering, that she hadn’t shared her feelings.
When we lay on her bed talking about whether we’d do it with TV stars like Buffy’s Angel or Dawson Leery, she never let on her choice was Guy Hansen. If she’d confided her interest in him, things might have gone differently. If we’d shared her heart’s desire like a sweater, CDs, her deepest secrets, I might have understood.
I can’t explain why I expected Shelley to want to spend all her time with me. Why it never occurred to me that I wasn’t enough for her. That we wouldn’t go hand in hand through life. I needed preparation for such a thing—a warning.
Funny thing was, Guy and Shelley didn’t do the things—or more precisely the thing—I expected. The thing we talked about doing with Jason Priestly or James Franco.
But I knew something she didn’t know. While she read Middlemarch, I read Mom’s Harlequin romances. Knew boys wanted more than a chaste kiss at 11:30 P.M. when they were seventeen years old. That was where I’d have my in.
“The fireworks on the river are tomorrow night,” I said.
We went every year, taking a quilt our grandmother had made, a cooler with pink lemonade, lemon square cookies.
“Guy has a friend with a boat.” Shelley couldn’t even look at me. I waited for an invitation to join them that never came.
Gradually, and I don’t think I consciously planned it, I began to talk to Guy when he was waiting for Shelley, when he called and she was out.
“Oh, hi, Guy. Shelley’s working right now. Did you like What About Bob? Shelley told me you both did.” This was a patent lie. I only knew they’d seen it because I found the ticket stub in her jeans.
“Oh, yeah! Man, Bill Murray was a knockout.”
My early sullenness with Guy gave way to chattiness. He seemed relieved to have made a friend in the enemy camp where my parents treated him with wariness at best. Once my sister changed her college plans to coincide with his, there was outright hostility.
“I can’t believe you’re throwing yourself away on a nothing like him,” my father told her, looking at her for the longest time in years. “You could go to school anywhere and instead...”
My idea to get Shelley back was this: I’d put Guy in a compromising position and then threaten to expose him for what he was if he didn’t leave Shelley alone. I never doubted I could do this—that I could make Guy accept sexual favors from his girlfriend’s sister. I could detect his weaknesses and was prepared to exploit them. My father was right; she deserved better and I would provide it.
“Guy?” I was calling him from a 7-Eleven two towns away. It was a night when Shelley was babysitting and out of the picture.
“Shannon?” he said. “Hi. What’s up?”
“Wonder if you could give me a ride home. Sort of got marooned out here...”
A ride home from that convenience store, a lift from the pool. Pretty soon we shared the easy rapport of friends. But I couldn’t see what Shelley saw in him. He was ordinary, dull.
Shelley was babysitting forty plus hours a week after losing her financial aid when she switched schools in early July.
“You’ll have to come up with some of this money yourself,” Dad had told her after looking at the first tuition bill.
And then one night—when I’d asked Guy for a ride home from a graduation party—I put my head in his lap and did the down and dirty deed, the one all boys want. At first, he protested, tried to push my head away, grabbed my hair. Muttered something about Shelley.
But, in seconds, he was grabbing my hair in another way, steering me.
“That’s never going to happen again,” he said when it was over, when he’d caught his breath. “Don’t know what I was thinking.”
Strangely, he didn’t blame me, probably believing that such an act could only be a male-generated idea. When I got into my mother’s car and turned the headlights on, his face captured in the light, was filled with revulsion. A look I’d come to know well.
But it did happen again—off and on all July. Neither of us talked about it, silence seemed to be the price he demanded. My plan to expose his lechery immediately went awry as I began to be more drawn to my own awfulness, to the sinister power I wielded. Had this attracted Shelley, too?
I don’t know what I hoped for—did I hope he’d dump Shelley for me—I doubt it. I wanted to puncture the balloon of happiness that floated above her head. Wanted to force him to tell her what he’d done. Confess and take full blame as I knew he would. But not yet.
Early August. I met him at a nice spot overlooking the valley. I climbed into his car and began my routine. Our routine. There was never any kissing and he never touched me more than he had to. Never any words of love—nothing but this amazingly mechanical act. I was disgusted with myself, considering ending it because it seemed like Guy couldn’t stop. I felt shame. I didn’t know much—if anything—about boys, but apparently this could not be turned down. Why didn’t Shelley give him what he needed? Or was it I who’d created the need? Would he have been content with what she had to offer had I not come along?
Suddenly, a face loomed up behind Guy’s head.
Shelley.
I pulled away but not before she caught sight of the look on Guy’s upturned face, his open jeans, my damp face rising. And then, she was gone.
“Guy,” I said, sitting up.
“What?” His voice sounded like my father’s did when he’d been drinking. Groggy, indistinct, hoarse.
“I just saw Shelley.” I was whispering—as if she might be lurking nearby instead of thousands of feet away by then.
“What?” he said, trying to make sense of it now. “Shelley? Where?”
“Just outside. Looking in at us.”
Guy groaned, got himself together, opened the door, and leaped out. “Shelley?”
I climbed out the other side. Shelley’s, or rather my father’s car, was parked behind us. I ran over and pulled the door open. Empty except for her purse on the seat.
Guy’s cries of “Shelley” grew faint as he moved farther away.
I rummaged in the glove box for a flashlight. When I came up with one, the battery was dead. How like my father, I thought despite myself. Throwing it aside, I ran back to Guy’s car, found another one that worked, shed its rather anemic light into the night, and walked carefully around.
I heard Guy shouting. And shouting again—louder this time. Was he shouting for me? Did I have any place in the drama I’d created? Reluctantly, I ran toward the sound—which had become, ominously, the sound of sobbing. My flashlight picked him up finally, standing next to an outcropping just before the trees turned into sloping woods.
“Did you find her?”
He nodded and tilted his head toward the falloff. I crept over and pointed my light. She lay at the bottom of the hill.
I started scrambling down the hill with Guy right behind me. He was trying to talk, but our heavy breathing obscured his words. It took several minutes and a lot of slipping and sliding to reach bottom. We were muddy and bruised by tree limbs by the time we reached bottom.
“Tried to grab her hand and she fell,” Guy finally said. “Dry ground just gave way, dropping into the air, and she fell with it.” He was sobbing.
We could see from the angle of her neck it was broken. Neither of us needed to touch her, but we both did anyway. Tried to breathe life back into her limp body. After several minutes, we both fell silent and still.
“What’re we going to do?” Guy asked. “Call the cops?”
I thought for a minute. “Can you imagine telling anyone the whole story? Telling my parents—the cops—our friends what we were doing? That I was giving you…a blow job?” I winced, but got it out. “How she found us and ran away? How you pushed her off the ledge? Accidentally—but still.”
He was crying again and I resisted the urge to join him. “I didn’t push her, Shannon. I was trying to make her stop running—so I could tell her. Explain it didn’t—”
“And how will that sound? That it didn’t mean anything?”
I was thinking as quickly as I could, trying to come up with an idea before he confessed everything. I’d lost my sister. Suddenly, holding onto Guy seemed important. Guy was all I had of hers.
“So what should we say then?”
His voice had gone quiet, submissive. I could feel him working his way back to the idea of telling the truth. Thinking it might just be simpler.
“Look. Maybe we weren’t here at all tonight—you and me. Maybe she found out about us—maybe that we were eloping— something like that, and killed herself. Drove up to a place you’d come to with her and jumped.”
“Eloping?” Guy said, looking at me with repulsion. “What—and then we didn’t do it after all? Elope?”
“No, we’d have to do it. It’d put us miles away from here.”
“You and me—get married?”
“We wouldn’t have to stay married, Guy. Just long enough to put them off.” But then it occurred to me, if not to poor Guy, that I was only seventeen. I couldn’t get married without my parents’ consent.
“Don’t we need a license?”
“Not in Vegas. You can get one on the spot. It’s only a couple hundred miles away.”
“Drive there right now?” He looked incredulous, but inch by inch he was buying the idea. He was a follower at heart and I was—something else.
“No, we’d have to go home first and get birth certificates. ID, that sort of thing.”
“Won’t your parents wonder where she is?”
“They won’t check. They never do.” And perhaps that’s why we were standing where we were.
So the plan was made. We made sure my father’s car could not be seen from the road, and drove home. He picked me up an hour later and we drove from Bakersfield to Las Vegas, got our license in the courthouse, and got married. Guy never noticed the name on the license read Shelley Witt. Never noticed he was officially married to the girl of his dreams and not her slutty sister. Not until months later.
Only after it was all over, after Shelley’s body had been found, investigated, mourned, buried, did he home to me in our horrible little apartment over the drugstore and say, “I guess we can file for a divorce some time soon.”
It was then that I showed him the illegal marriage certificate, threatening to tell the whole story. “How you used me for an alibi after you and Shelley had a fight. How maybe you pushed her off the ledge. How you made me marry you.”
I could see a million ways he could rid himself of me, refute this sad story, but he couldn’t think of one. It was then I realized my father had been right about Guy. That there wasn’t much behind that smile.
“So you mean we’re just going to go ahead?” he asked me, probably measuring my neck against his hands. “Stick it out?”
“For now,” I said.
I’d gotten used to him and his ways. And, eventually, he to mine.
And so I watch him night after night. Waiting for the day he grows tired of it all. For the day he sends me to join my sister. Or joins her himself. Either one will do. I just can’t live with the shame. Not forever at least.
BIO: Patricia Abbott has published more than fifty stories in literary and crime fiction outlets. Check out more from Patti at Pattinase.
I watch Guy sleep beside me. Misery, rage, fear flood his face—like waves rushing over sand. Muted shades tint him once the guardedness he wears by day disappears.
His eyelids flutter. I gaze at the rise and fall of his chest. His foot, always the left —the one nearest me—twitches. Rustling beneath the starched sheets he insists on tucking too tight, he sighs. Now he’s turned onto his right side. It feels deliberate—this casting me aside.
No longer hypnotized by the himness of him, I slip the gun under the bed. Metaphorically, of course. The mutual shame, which binds us as tightly as lust or habit might, brings it to mind.
Guy and my sister, Shelley: the two of them that should’ve been together these years. Perhaps what they had would’ve soured by now as so often happens.
For years—seventeen of them—it was my sister Shelley and me. Side by side on her bed—our feet making toe marks on her pink wall, reading the same books, liking the same movies, music. Other girls spilled over us at school, at the pool, but never made much of a claim. Boys, even less. Less than a year separated us. She claimed she waited for me, impatient for her other half.
“I was always looking for someone.”
“You can’t remember that,” our mother said, back to us at the sink.
“I bet she can,” I said.
I liked the idea of Shelley grieving for the sister who hadn’t yet been born. Me. It felt perfect.
Our mother shook her head, finding our closeness cloying. Smiling our secret smile, we turned our faces away.
And then, there was Guy Hansen.
Or Guy Handsome behind his back. I was bewildered at how Shelley had snagged him. Shelley who’d never had a date. The one who’d waited for me hadn’t let on she’d also waited for him.
But suddenly, Guy was standing at our door. I yanked it open expecting a salesman, a Jehovah Witness, Uncle Ted.
“Shannon, right?” he said, flashing his smile.
I was speechless. She’d told him about me, but not me about him—which seemed like a betrayal, treachery. That he deserved more consideration than me. That he was privy to a deeper level of confidence. My halcyon days were at an end.
“Thanks, Shannon,” Shelley said, sidling past me, my gaping mouth. When I still didn’t move, she whispered, “I’ll take it from here.”
I’d never heard that tone before. Dismissed, I sidled off like the rodent I’d suddenly become.
And she did exactly that— took it from there—moved from being captain of the lacrosse team and president of the French Club—to dating the best catch in school. Had she taken a book out from the library telling her what to do? Listened to some talk show offering tips?
Guy was off-limits for discussion.
“So what did you and Guy do last night?”
“Nothing special.” She was fidgeting. “Do you want go in on a present for Mom for Mother’s Day? Maybe a new recording of St. Matthew’s Passion?”
So we weren’t to share Guy. I was filled with rage. Rage that Shelley was lost to me, that she made off with the school’s best offering, that she hadn’t shared her feelings.
When we lay on her bed talking about whether we’d do it with TV stars like Buffy’s Angel or Dawson Leery, she never let on her choice was Guy Hansen. If she’d confided her interest in him, things might have gone differently. If we’d shared her heart’s desire like a sweater, CDs, her deepest secrets, I might have understood.
I can’t explain why I expected Shelley to want to spend all her time with me. Why it never occurred to me that I wasn’t enough for her. That we wouldn’t go hand in hand through life. I needed preparation for such a thing—a warning.
Funny thing was, Guy and Shelley didn’t do the things—or more precisely the thing—I expected. The thing we talked about doing with Jason Priestly or James Franco.
But I knew something she didn’t know. While she read Middlemarch, I read Mom’s Harlequin romances. Knew boys wanted more than a chaste kiss at 11:30 P.M. when they were seventeen years old. That was where I’d have my in.
“The fireworks on the river are tomorrow night,” I said.
We went every year, taking a quilt our grandmother had made, a cooler with pink lemonade, lemon square cookies.
“Guy has a friend with a boat.” Shelley couldn’t even look at me. I waited for an invitation to join them that never came.
Gradually, and I don’t think I consciously planned it, I began to talk to Guy when he was waiting for Shelley, when he called and she was out.
“Oh, hi, Guy. Shelley’s working right now. Did you like What About Bob? Shelley told me you both did.” This was a patent lie. I only knew they’d seen it because I found the ticket stub in her jeans.
“Oh, yeah! Man, Bill Murray was a knockout.”
My early sullenness with Guy gave way to chattiness. He seemed relieved to have made a friend in the enemy camp where my parents treated him with wariness at best. Once my sister changed her college plans to coincide with his, there was outright hostility.
“I can’t believe you’re throwing yourself away on a nothing like him,” my father told her, looking at her for the longest time in years. “You could go to school anywhere and instead...”
My idea to get Shelley back was this: I’d put Guy in a compromising position and then threaten to expose him for what he was if he didn’t leave Shelley alone. I never doubted I could do this—that I could make Guy accept sexual favors from his girlfriend’s sister. I could detect his weaknesses and was prepared to exploit them. My father was right; she deserved better and I would provide it.
“Guy?” I was calling him from a 7-Eleven two towns away. It was a night when Shelley was babysitting and out of the picture.
“Shannon?” he said. “Hi. What’s up?”
“Wonder if you could give me a ride home. Sort of got marooned out here...”
A ride home from that convenience store, a lift from the pool. Pretty soon we shared the easy rapport of friends. But I couldn’t see what Shelley saw in him. He was ordinary, dull.
Shelley was babysitting forty plus hours a week after losing her financial aid when she switched schools in early July.
“You’ll have to come up with some of this money yourself,” Dad had told her after looking at the first tuition bill.
And then one night—when I’d asked Guy for a ride home from a graduation party—I put my head in his lap and did the down and dirty deed, the one all boys want. At first, he protested, tried to push my head away, grabbed my hair. Muttered something about Shelley.
But, in seconds, he was grabbing my hair in another way, steering me.
“That’s never going to happen again,” he said when it was over, when he’d caught his breath. “Don’t know what I was thinking.”
Strangely, he didn’t blame me, probably believing that such an act could only be a male-generated idea. When I got into my mother’s car and turned the headlights on, his face captured in the light, was filled with revulsion. A look I’d come to know well.
But it did happen again—off and on all July. Neither of us talked about it, silence seemed to be the price he demanded. My plan to expose his lechery immediately went awry as I began to be more drawn to my own awfulness, to the sinister power I wielded. Had this attracted Shelley, too?
I don’t know what I hoped for—did I hope he’d dump Shelley for me—I doubt it. I wanted to puncture the balloon of happiness that floated above her head. Wanted to force him to tell her what he’d done. Confess and take full blame as I knew he would. But not yet.
Early August. I met him at a nice spot overlooking the valley. I climbed into his car and began my routine. Our routine. There was never any kissing and he never touched me more than he had to. Never any words of love—nothing but this amazingly mechanical act. I was disgusted with myself, considering ending it because it seemed like Guy couldn’t stop. I felt shame. I didn’t know much—if anything—about boys, but apparently this could not be turned down. Why didn’t Shelley give him what he needed? Or was it I who’d created the need? Would he have been content with what she had to offer had I not come along?
Suddenly, a face loomed up behind Guy’s head.
Shelley.
I pulled away but not before she caught sight of the look on Guy’s upturned face, his open jeans, my damp face rising. And then, she was gone.
“Guy,” I said, sitting up.
“What?” His voice sounded like my father’s did when he’d been drinking. Groggy, indistinct, hoarse.
“I just saw Shelley.” I was whispering—as if she might be lurking nearby instead of thousands of feet away by then.
“What?” he said, trying to make sense of it now. “Shelley? Where?”
“Just outside. Looking in at us.”
Guy groaned, got himself together, opened the door, and leaped out. “Shelley?”
I climbed out the other side. Shelley’s, or rather my father’s car, was parked behind us. I ran over and pulled the door open. Empty except for her purse on the seat.
Guy’s cries of “Shelley” grew faint as he moved farther away.
I rummaged in the glove box for a flashlight. When I came up with one, the battery was dead. How like my father, I thought despite myself. Throwing it aside, I ran back to Guy’s car, found another one that worked, shed its rather anemic light into the night, and walked carefully around.
I heard Guy shouting. And shouting again—louder this time. Was he shouting for me? Did I have any place in the drama I’d created? Reluctantly, I ran toward the sound—which had become, ominously, the sound of sobbing. My flashlight picked him up finally, standing next to an outcropping just before the trees turned into sloping woods.
“Did you find her?”
He nodded and tilted his head toward the falloff. I crept over and pointed my light. She lay at the bottom of the hill.
I started scrambling down the hill with Guy right behind me. He was trying to talk, but our heavy breathing obscured his words. It took several minutes and a lot of slipping and sliding to reach bottom. We were muddy and bruised by tree limbs by the time we reached bottom.
“Tried to grab her hand and she fell,” Guy finally said. “Dry ground just gave way, dropping into the air, and she fell with it.” He was sobbing.
We could see from the angle of her neck it was broken. Neither of us needed to touch her, but we both did anyway. Tried to breathe life back into her limp body. After several minutes, we both fell silent and still.
“What’re we going to do?” Guy asked. “Call the cops?”
I thought for a minute. “Can you imagine telling anyone the whole story? Telling my parents—the cops—our friends what we were doing? That I was giving you…a blow job?” I winced, but got it out. “How she found us and ran away? How you pushed her off the ledge? Accidentally—but still.”
He was crying again and I resisted the urge to join him. “I didn’t push her, Shannon. I was trying to make her stop running—so I could tell her. Explain it didn’t—”
“And how will that sound? That it didn’t mean anything?”
I was thinking as quickly as I could, trying to come up with an idea before he confessed everything. I’d lost my sister. Suddenly, holding onto Guy seemed important. Guy was all I had of hers.
“So what should we say then?”
His voice had gone quiet, submissive. I could feel him working his way back to the idea of telling the truth. Thinking it might just be simpler.
“Look. Maybe we weren’t here at all tonight—you and me. Maybe she found out about us—maybe that we were eloping— something like that, and killed herself. Drove up to a place you’d come to with her and jumped.”
“Eloping?” Guy said, looking at me with repulsion. “What—and then we didn’t do it after all? Elope?”
“No, we’d have to do it. It’d put us miles away from here.”
“You and me—get married?”
“We wouldn’t have to stay married, Guy. Just long enough to put them off.” But then it occurred to me, if not to poor Guy, that I was only seventeen. I couldn’t get married without my parents’ consent.
“Don’t we need a license?”
“Not in Vegas. You can get one on the spot. It’s only a couple hundred miles away.”
“Drive there right now?” He looked incredulous, but inch by inch he was buying the idea. He was a follower at heart and I was—something else.
“No, we’d have to go home first and get birth certificates. ID, that sort of thing.”
“Won’t your parents wonder where she is?”
“They won’t check. They never do.” And perhaps that’s why we were standing where we were.
So the plan was made. We made sure my father’s car could not be seen from the road, and drove home. He picked me up an hour later and we drove from Bakersfield to Las Vegas, got our license in the courthouse, and got married. Guy never noticed the name on the license read Shelley Witt. Never noticed he was officially married to the girl of his dreams and not her slutty sister. Not until months later.
Only after it was all over, after Shelley’s body had been found, investigated, mourned, buried, did he home to me in our horrible little apartment over the drugstore and say, “I guess we can file for a divorce some time soon.”
It was then that I showed him the illegal marriage certificate, threatening to tell the whole story. “How you used me for an alibi after you and Shelley had a fight. How maybe you pushed her off the ledge. How you made me marry you.”
I could see a million ways he could rid himself of me, refute this sad story, but he couldn’t think of one. It was then I realized my father had been right about Guy. That there wasn’t much behind that smile.
“So you mean we’re just going to go ahead?” he asked me, probably measuring my neck against his hands. “Stick it out?”
“For now,” I said.
I’d gotten used to him and his ways. And, eventually, he to mine.
And so I watch him night after night. Waiting for the day he grows tired of it all. For the day he sends me to join my sister. Or joins her himself. Either one will do. I just can’t live with the shame. Not forever at least.
BIO: Patricia Abbott has published more than fifty stories in literary and crime fiction outlets. Check out more from Patti at Pattinase.
Interlude Stories: Tom Pitts
LIKE CAVEMEN - TOM PITTS
“It’s a high tech world, so we gotta be like cavemen. You understand?” asked Tony. “That means no phones. No cell phones. No pay phones. No phones period—ever. That means those goddamn pay-as-you-go phones, too. They got ways to track everything nowadays–—and it’s always changin’. It’s hard to be invisible. You gotta be on top of things. You wanna fly below the radar? You gotta know what the fuck radar is. Am I right?”
“Absolutely, Tony.”
“Are you listening?”
“Yes, Tony, absolutely,” said Tim.
“Are you? ’Cause it looks to me like you’re watchin’ that bitch’s ass bounce up the street. Should I stop? Do I need to stop so you can go to the fuckin’ bathroom a minute, so you can concentrate?” Tony’s face was starting to turn red. There were tiny beads of sweat on his fat nose.
“No ... no, Tony.”
Tony stood there breathing hard. They waited. All Tim could hear was Tony breathing, wheezing. Slowly, his breathing returned to normal and the red color faded from his face.
“I mean, we’re not kids here. This ain’t penny ante shit, you know. We handle the hard work and we are fuckin’ good at what we do, you understand?” Tony always felt the need to clarify what he was saying. Only thing was, it what hard to tell just what he was saying. He implied, he gestured, he omitted. Tony was old school and believed that there was always someone listening. In his time he had seen the methods and laws change so much that now his paranoia was starting to seem grounded.
The two of them were walking down Mission Street. They turned onto Russia Street and began trudging up the hill. Tony liked the neighborhood, it was his neighborhood. Tony’s lungs began to whistle and he waved for Tim to stop. Tony reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a half crushed pack of Marlboro Reds. They were both silent as Tony stood trying to light his cigarette in the wind.
“You think you know technology?” he continued.
Tim didn’t say anything.
“You don’t know shit. It changes by the goddamned day. By the minute. These assholes are using shit we don’t even know is invented yet. Tapping phones without wiretaps. Who needs a fucking warrant when they’re pulling shit out of the air?”
Tim wondered if this was true. He tried to remember something his lawyer had told him, but couldn’t. He must have taken his eyes off Tony for just a second.
“Hello, you listening to me? Maybe you’re wearing a fuckin’ wire and you just wanna play this back later? Listen to me then?”
“Aw, come on, Tony.”
“Stop makin’ me waste my breath, kid. You think I’m nuts? You think I’m paranoid? These cocksuckers read lips. They teach ’em all how in Quantico. I’m serious.”
Tony spat on the ground to underscore how serious he was.
“Some guys around here like to use technology. Get them before they get you, kinda thing. We ain’t those guys. We are the guys who ain’t fucking worried, because there ain’t shit down anywhere, so there ain’t shit to worry about.”
First day on the new job was always tough. It went on like this for twenty minutes. Tim started to wonder if maybe Tony was crazy. Everybody that Tim dealt with was a little nuts, but maybe Tony was a little extra. The advice went on and on.
“Your money, it goes under the mattress. No banks, no bank accounts, nothing. Safety deposit boxes? Fuck no. Listen to what I’m telling you kid and maybe you’ll last more than a few weeks.”
Tim sat there stone-faced, trying as hard as he could to wear the mask of attention. The aroma of the sausage Tony had eaten for lunch made an appearance, mixing with Tony’s sweaty cologne. Tim was glad that they were out in the open air.
“You got credit cards? Stop using ’em. Keep one, use it for alibis, shit like that. Personal use will fuck you up. Give ’em a fuckin’ road map to your life, why don’t cha.”
Tim was getting tired of Tony’s tirade. It was tough focusing on Tony’s face. When Tim looked at him, his head seemed impossibly huge, too big for his body. The head seemed to pulsate. Tony’s voice drifted off, replaced by a loud hum. Tim wondered if he was going to faint.
“If you need to reach me, don’t fuckin’ call—ever. Do it in person. Take a cab. Don’t call for one, then they got a record, just fuckin’ flag one. Okay? ... okay?”
The silence snapped Tim out of it long enough to manage a response. Then there was a pause and Tim thought he was done. Then Tony fired up again. “And get out at least two bocks away, not on the fuckin’ corner. You got it? Good. You got a car? Yeah? Get rid of it. Sell it.” Tony paused for a moment, like he’d lost his train of thought. He flicked his cigarette on the sidewalk and continued.
“Remember what I said about credit cards, no nothing. I don’t care if they’re not yours, if you know they’re good, whatever, I don’t care. Do not fuckin’ use ’em. You gotta be invisible, a caveman. You can’t just be low key; you gotta be the fuckin’ Unabomber.”
“Didn’t they get the Unabomber?” Tim immediately regretted deviating from his agreeable responses.
“Hey, fuck you. There was a rat. His own fuckin’ brother ratted him out, and that was the only way they got him. Someone should have a talk with his brother just on fuckin’ principle.” Tony looked out of breath. He’d forgotten where he was in his training speech. These little fuckers always had something to say, thought they knew better. Tony hated bringing on new guys to this job.
“You lead a different life now. Fuck how you were doing things before. Fuck your life.You thought you knew what you were doing. You didn’t know shit, not for us, not for how we do shit. We do shit different for a reason. We have fucking discipline, understand? We been doing this shit for fucking centuries—centuries. The reason we’re still doing it is ‘cause we’re doing it the same way for centuries. We are fucking cavemen my friend.”
Tim wasn’t chosen because he was smart; he was chosen because he knew how to do the work. The heavy work. Tim could take apart a body. Not everybody had the stomach for that kind of thing. Those who could didn’t have the discipline. Tim had the ability to compartmentalize. He didn’t have the dreams. He didn’t have any dreams. He didn’t need the blow; some guys needed to numb their brains afterword.
It was the money that Tim loved, but there was only so much you could spend your money on. He didn’t even know why he wanted more. He didn’t care. It just felt like he was beating someone, something. The whores were good. The whiskey was good. The food was good. But it didn’t matter, none of it. He didn’t mind shitty whiskey, and, honestly, he kinda liked ugly whores, too. To him, it was the work. The kind of thing he knew that no one else would do. The kind of thing Tony couldn’t do.
“There is absolutely not one single set of balls in this town,” Tony continued, “You cannot count on one fucking douchebag in this entire city. I guarantee you; they are all lay-down-sally motherfuckers. Do not treat friends like friends, even if you’ve seen ’em hanging down at the club, or if they seem close to me, don’t matter, they ain’t shit.”
Tim knew his life expectancy was limited. That there was no way a lifestyle like his could be maintained. Call it karma, call it the law of averages, call it Murphy’s Law, he knew that sooner or later he wouldn’t be the one calling the shots.
The wind had begun to pick up. They zig-zagged along the residential streets of the Excelsior district, pausing only when Tony was out of breath. They stood together on the sidewalk, far away from the earshot of passers by, the wind cutting right through Tim’s clothes. The wind never stopped in this city, it just got colder, thought Tim. He was a long way from the central valley, where he grew up. Not long enough, thought Tim. He knew that the abuses he’d faced as a child gave him the special skill set he needed in this business, so he didn’t dwell. It was a dark blessing, an evil inheritance.
“First thing you gotta do is see the guy downtown, the guy next to ‘you know who.’ He’ll give you the details. You know who I’m talking ’bout, the little guy. He’ll let you know about this kid. He’s the first one you’re gonna do, that fucking kid. Don’t even get me started on that piece of shit.”
Tim knew that God worked in mysterious ways. That’s why God had taken his conscience, his fear. Tony was different. Tony knew fear. He feared prison, he feared death, he feared losing his power. Tim had seen guys that sounded a lot tougher than Tony break down and weep, weep like children.
Tim knew it was all relative. He could die in prison; he could die on the street. He could sit in prison; he could sit on the beach. Happy, sad, rich, poor, it made no difference to him, really. The experience of life was just that, only an experience. He moved through it, he was not attached to it. Life held no sentimental value. To him, if you had just fucked a thousand dollar whore on silk sheets or just jerked off in a prison bunk, it made no difference. You just rolled over and went to sleep. You still had to piss, shit, eat, yawn, and wait to die.
“The long and the short of it is this, kid, we gotta be like cavemen. The only time I wanna ever hear your voice or see your face is when you’re standing in front of me, okay?”
“Okay, Tony. No problem.”
“And don’t ever use my name. I’m one motherfucker who is not offended by being called ‘hey you.’” Tony smiled for the first time. Tim figured that meant he was wrapping up.
“After this, you go see that guy we talked about and he’ll let you know how to find that asshole. Just follow the rules and you’ll be swimming in cash before the end of the summer.”
“No problem, I’m on the way.” Tim was relieved the conversation was ending. He was looking forward to getting back to work, to doing what he did best. He turned his back on Tony and walked straight down hill toward Mission Street.
As Tim followed instructions and flagged a taxi, Tony was catching his breath on the doorway of his club. Tony waved to Sammy, his closest confidant. In typical fashion, he said nothing, only pointing toward the street so Sammy would follow him outside to talk. When they were far enough away from the club Tony turned and said, “Look, after this new kid deals with that asshole downtown, and after we know he’s done a good job, I want you to put two in his fucking head and leave him in the street. He’s got a shitty attitude.”
The instructions hung there. Sammy was surprised, but not too surprised. He knew Tony, and how Tony operated. He knew better than to say anything.
“Oh, and I don’t wanna hear anything more about it; you know me, I don’t like to get my hands dirty.” With that, Tony began to laugh. The laugh quickly became a cough, the cough became a choke. It was the first laugh Tony had enjoyed in a week. He could barely suck in a breath.
BIO: Tom Pitts was born in Calgary, Canada before relocating in San Francisco in 1984. After the disintegration of his band, Short Dogs Grow, and two critically acclaimed albums on Rough Trade Records, Tom got his education in street life first hand while enduring long and near fatal bout with heroin. He remains in San Francisco with his wife; working, writing, and raising his three children. His work has appeared in Junk (a literary fix), Helix, and the upcoming Sims Review He has also read numerous times for the popular San Francisco series Lip Service West.
“It’s a high tech world, so we gotta be like cavemen. You understand?” asked Tony. “That means no phones. No cell phones. No pay phones. No phones period—ever. That means those goddamn pay-as-you-go phones, too. They got ways to track everything nowadays–—and it’s always changin’. It’s hard to be invisible. You gotta be on top of things. You wanna fly below the radar? You gotta know what the fuck radar is. Am I right?”
“Absolutely, Tony.”
“Are you listening?”
“Yes, Tony, absolutely,” said Tim.
“Are you? ’Cause it looks to me like you’re watchin’ that bitch’s ass bounce up the street. Should I stop? Do I need to stop so you can go to the fuckin’ bathroom a minute, so you can concentrate?” Tony’s face was starting to turn red. There were tiny beads of sweat on his fat nose.
“No ... no, Tony.”
Tony stood there breathing hard. They waited. All Tim could hear was Tony breathing, wheezing. Slowly, his breathing returned to normal and the red color faded from his face.
“I mean, we’re not kids here. This ain’t penny ante shit, you know. We handle the hard work and we are fuckin’ good at what we do, you understand?” Tony always felt the need to clarify what he was saying. Only thing was, it what hard to tell just what he was saying. He implied, he gestured, he omitted. Tony was old school and believed that there was always someone listening. In his time he had seen the methods and laws change so much that now his paranoia was starting to seem grounded.
The two of them were walking down Mission Street. They turned onto Russia Street and began trudging up the hill. Tony liked the neighborhood, it was his neighborhood. Tony’s lungs began to whistle and he waved for Tim to stop. Tony reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a half crushed pack of Marlboro Reds. They were both silent as Tony stood trying to light his cigarette in the wind.
“You think you know technology?” he continued.
Tim didn’t say anything.
“You don’t know shit. It changes by the goddamned day. By the minute. These assholes are using shit we don’t even know is invented yet. Tapping phones without wiretaps. Who needs a fucking warrant when they’re pulling shit out of the air?”
Tim wondered if this was true. He tried to remember something his lawyer had told him, but couldn’t. He must have taken his eyes off Tony for just a second.
“Hello, you listening to me? Maybe you’re wearing a fuckin’ wire and you just wanna play this back later? Listen to me then?”
“Aw, come on, Tony.”
“Stop makin’ me waste my breath, kid. You think I’m nuts? You think I’m paranoid? These cocksuckers read lips. They teach ’em all how in Quantico. I’m serious.”
Tony spat on the ground to underscore how serious he was.
“Some guys around here like to use technology. Get them before they get you, kinda thing. We ain’t those guys. We are the guys who ain’t fucking worried, because there ain’t shit down anywhere, so there ain’t shit to worry about.”
First day on the new job was always tough. It went on like this for twenty minutes. Tim started to wonder if maybe Tony was crazy. Everybody that Tim dealt with was a little nuts, but maybe Tony was a little extra. The advice went on and on.
“Your money, it goes under the mattress. No banks, no bank accounts, nothing. Safety deposit boxes? Fuck no. Listen to what I’m telling you kid and maybe you’ll last more than a few weeks.”
Tim sat there stone-faced, trying as hard as he could to wear the mask of attention. The aroma of the sausage Tony had eaten for lunch made an appearance, mixing with Tony’s sweaty cologne. Tim was glad that they were out in the open air.
“You got credit cards? Stop using ’em. Keep one, use it for alibis, shit like that. Personal use will fuck you up. Give ’em a fuckin’ road map to your life, why don’t cha.”
Tim was getting tired of Tony’s tirade. It was tough focusing on Tony’s face. When Tim looked at him, his head seemed impossibly huge, too big for his body. The head seemed to pulsate. Tony’s voice drifted off, replaced by a loud hum. Tim wondered if he was going to faint.
“If you need to reach me, don’t fuckin’ call—ever. Do it in person. Take a cab. Don’t call for one, then they got a record, just fuckin’ flag one. Okay? ... okay?”
The silence snapped Tim out of it long enough to manage a response. Then there was a pause and Tim thought he was done. Then Tony fired up again. “And get out at least two bocks away, not on the fuckin’ corner. You got it? Good. You got a car? Yeah? Get rid of it. Sell it.” Tony paused for a moment, like he’d lost his train of thought. He flicked his cigarette on the sidewalk and continued.
“Remember what I said about credit cards, no nothing. I don’t care if they’re not yours, if you know they’re good, whatever, I don’t care. Do not fuckin’ use ’em. You gotta be invisible, a caveman. You can’t just be low key; you gotta be the fuckin’ Unabomber.”
“Didn’t they get the Unabomber?” Tim immediately regretted deviating from his agreeable responses.
“Hey, fuck you. There was a rat. His own fuckin’ brother ratted him out, and that was the only way they got him. Someone should have a talk with his brother just on fuckin’ principle.” Tony looked out of breath. He’d forgotten where he was in his training speech. These little fuckers always had something to say, thought they knew better. Tony hated bringing on new guys to this job.
“You lead a different life now. Fuck how you were doing things before. Fuck your life.You thought you knew what you were doing. You didn’t know shit, not for us, not for how we do shit. We do shit different for a reason. We have fucking discipline, understand? We been doing this shit for fucking centuries—centuries. The reason we’re still doing it is ‘cause we’re doing it the same way for centuries. We are fucking cavemen my friend.”
Tim wasn’t chosen because he was smart; he was chosen because he knew how to do the work. The heavy work. Tim could take apart a body. Not everybody had the stomach for that kind of thing. Those who could didn’t have the discipline. Tim had the ability to compartmentalize. He didn’t have the dreams. He didn’t have any dreams. He didn’t need the blow; some guys needed to numb their brains afterword.
It was the money that Tim loved, but there was only so much you could spend your money on. He didn’t even know why he wanted more. He didn’t care. It just felt like he was beating someone, something. The whores were good. The whiskey was good. The food was good. But it didn’t matter, none of it. He didn’t mind shitty whiskey, and, honestly, he kinda liked ugly whores, too. To him, it was the work. The kind of thing he knew that no one else would do. The kind of thing Tony couldn’t do.
“There is absolutely not one single set of balls in this town,” Tony continued, “You cannot count on one fucking douchebag in this entire city. I guarantee you; they are all lay-down-sally motherfuckers. Do not treat friends like friends, even if you’ve seen ’em hanging down at the club, or if they seem close to me, don’t matter, they ain’t shit.”
Tim knew his life expectancy was limited. That there was no way a lifestyle like his could be maintained. Call it karma, call it the law of averages, call it Murphy’s Law, he knew that sooner or later he wouldn’t be the one calling the shots.
The wind had begun to pick up. They zig-zagged along the residential streets of the Excelsior district, pausing only when Tony was out of breath. They stood together on the sidewalk, far away from the earshot of passers by, the wind cutting right through Tim’s clothes. The wind never stopped in this city, it just got colder, thought Tim. He was a long way from the central valley, where he grew up. Not long enough, thought Tim. He knew that the abuses he’d faced as a child gave him the special skill set he needed in this business, so he didn’t dwell. It was a dark blessing, an evil inheritance.
“First thing you gotta do is see the guy downtown, the guy next to ‘you know who.’ He’ll give you the details. You know who I’m talking ’bout, the little guy. He’ll let you know about this kid. He’s the first one you’re gonna do, that fucking kid. Don’t even get me started on that piece of shit.”
Tim knew that God worked in mysterious ways. That’s why God had taken his conscience, his fear. Tony was different. Tony knew fear. He feared prison, he feared death, he feared losing his power. Tim had seen guys that sounded a lot tougher than Tony break down and weep, weep like children.
Tim knew it was all relative. He could die in prison; he could die on the street. He could sit in prison; he could sit on the beach. Happy, sad, rich, poor, it made no difference to him, really. The experience of life was just that, only an experience. He moved through it, he was not attached to it. Life held no sentimental value. To him, if you had just fucked a thousand dollar whore on silk sheets or just jerked off in a prison bunk, it made no difference. You just rolled over and went to sleep. You still had to piss, shit, eat, yawn, and wait to die.
“The long and the short of it is this, kid, we gotta be like cavemen. The only time I wanna ever hear your voice or see your face is when you’re standing in front of me, okay?”
“Okay, Tony. No problem.”
“And don’t ever use my name. I’m one motherfucker who is not offended by being called ‘hey you.’” Tony smiled for the first time. Tim figured that meant he was wrapping up.
“After this, you go see that guy we talked about and he’ll let you know how to find that asshole. Just follow the rules and you’ll be swimming in cash before the end of the summer.”
“No problem, I’m on the way.” Tim was relieved the conversation was ending. He was looking forward to getting back to work, to doing what he did best. He turned his back on Tony and walked straight down hill toward Mission Street.
As Tim followed instructions and flagged a taxi, Tony was catching his breath on the doorway of his club. Tony waved to Sammy, his closest confidant. In typical fashion, he said nothing, only pointing toward the street so Sammy would follow him outside to talk. When they were far enough away from the club Tony turned and said, “Look, after this new kid deals with that asshole downtown, and after we know he’s done a good job, I want you to put two in his fucking head and leave him in the street. He’s got a shitty attitude.”
The instructions hung there. Sammy was surprised, but not too surprised. He knew Tony, and how Tony operated. He knew better than to say anything.
“Oh, and I don’t wanna hear anything more about it; you know me, I don’t like to get my hands dirty.” With that, Tony began to laugh. The laugh quickly became a cough, the cough became a choke. It was the first laugh Tony had enjoyed in a week. He could barely suck in a breath.
BIO: Tom Pitts was born in Calgary, Canada before relocating in San Francisco in 1984. After the disintegration of his band, Short Dogs Grow, and two critically acclaimed albums on Rough Trade Records, Tom got his education in street life first hand while enduring long and near fatal bout with heroin. He remains in San Francisco with his wife; working, writing, and raising his three children. His work has appeared in Junk (a literary fix), Helix, and the upcoming Sims Review He has also read numerous times for the popular San Francisco series Lip Service West.
Interlude Stories: Bobbi Lurie
ASSIGNMENT - BOBBI LURIE
The way old people look: comical and useless.
I love looking at young girls. I no longer expect them to have sex with me. But I still look.
When I see an older woman, I feel repelled. Their flabby bellies, jiggling upper arms, swollen legs, drooping faces, covered with make-up.
I really shouldn’t blame it on older women. Even when I was a young stud and some broad got all dolled up for me so I’d fuck her, I’d try and sneak out before morning so I wouldn’t have to kiss her bad breath mouth or see her without make-up or make small talk at breakfast.
Still, older women are disgusting. I have to write about this because I think it might be an enjoyable part of this essay for that bitch who runs the show. She’s just like them, wearing long, shabby dresses, hair obviously colored or else the gray coming through like in “The Bride of Frankenstein.”
I see old women walking with their daughters. Their sons can’t be bothered. I mean let’s talk about sex. No, let’s not. I can’t have sex anymore myself. I can’t afford Viagra.
Oh shit, writing this, I’m sick of what appears to be reality.
My daughter tells me I’m a disgusting chauvinist but she isn’t looking too good either. Not since she had those brats. I begged her not to have kids, to keep her youth. But she knows she’ll be an old lady someday in some rest home and she’s probably just planning ahead, hoping for visitors. What she doesn’t know is: it isn’t our kids we want to visit us. Children are nothing better than any other relatives we couldn’t wait to run away from. Now my daughter wants me to act like a loving grandfather to the brats she gave birth to. Just like my dead wife: they all want you to be happy for the thing you didn’t want them to do.
The preservation of the human species is not something I’m interested in. The sooner we blow up the planet, the better.
My parents sent me to church. Sure did. Jesus died for our sins. Yeah. Yeah. All that crap about eternal life. Eternal life is exactly what I don’t want. My mother could never stop herself from talking about it, how our whole family would be reunited and live together forever with Jesus. Living with my family forever is the greatest torture I can imagine and being preached to by Jesus...
I hope to go to hell. That gives me a lot of leeway. I feel like an ass writing all this to nothing and no one. The poetry person in the prison is forcing me to write about my crimes. I can’t stand her or her class and she knows it. She disgusts me. It’s more painful than being raped to sit beside her and be forced to listen to all her optimistic crap about humanity and art when she is such a pathetic part of the shit hole.
Her poetry class and her do-gooder attitude plus this thing she has about the power of personal expression, lines and stanzas and rhymes or whatever. It was more than disgusting watching the guys who tried to rape me reading their poems about feelings. Even if they did it in what she called slam, it was still a bunch of self-pitying shit by some morons. As if you could slam your way through everything by screaming. Power is the name of the game. Not words. I have no power and it’s embarrassing writing all these words with this chewed-up pencil.
So this do-gooder with the body of a stuffed sofa, glasses, no make-up, this sexless dog who calls herself a feminist, lost her cool and told me to sit in the interrogation room and “write about your crimes if you can’t get into creativity and saving your soul through poetry. Poetry is like religion. It is holy. It could save you.” There we were again: a woman talking to me about religion.
O.K. so I was arrested for indecent exposure. I know I’m a bow-legged old fart, far from being the stud I once was. It probably was indecent being as I know how bad I look but every man knows what it’s like to show a woman his cock. I don’t care if my ass is hanging down to my ankles now or if my body is ugly as sin. I wanted some attention. It was for my mental health.
I know I’m not going to turn this paper in. Those assholes could send me back to isolation for my “bad behavior.”
Nothing is spoken straight here. It’s ridiculous that they hired this poetry bitch to squeeze the truth out of us...as if.
Even the psychiatrist is a liar. These pills are not helping me at all. They only make me tired. They blame everything on depression and maybe they’re right but I don’t know how a pill can help a man who has lost everything he ever lived for.
I was helped by wearing the proverbial raincoat and letting all the little girls see my pee pee as they might still call it. It’s like sex. It’s like having a hard cock with an unwilling virgin. All shock.
Let their boyfriends know he wasn’t the first one. That was my anti-depressant. No way they can make it up to me with pills.
I’m looking for a rope so I can hang myself in my cell but the guards are always watching us and my fat, smelly roommate is there with me 24 hours a day except for the hour with his therapist but then we often go to our therapists at the same time to talk about bullshit so it’s hard to find the time to do the deed and be done with it.
Actually, my life is easier in the cell than it was “out there” where I couldn’t afford the rent or anything else.
My daughter came to see me once. We didn’t talk. We spoke a few lame words and then she just gawked at me as if I wasn’t her father. She stayed five minutes tops and said she couldn’t leave her brood of crude little creatures at home alone with a babysitter for too long.
She had all the kids write me a card saying “we love you grandpa.”
What a pile of crap.
BIO: Bobbi Lurie is the author of three poetry collections: Letter from the Lawn, The Book I Never Read, and Grief Suite. Her poetry has been published in numerous print and on-line journals, including, Gulf Coast, New American Writing, American Poetry Review and Otoliths. She has published numerous short stories, essays, art, book and drama reviews in both Great Britain and The United States.
The way old people look: comical and useless.
I love looking at young girls. I no longer expect them to have sex with me. But I still look.
When I see an older woman, I feel repelled. Their flabby bellies, jiggling upper arms, swollen legs, drooping faces, covered with make-up.
I really shouldn’t blame it on older women. Even when I was a young stud and some broad got all dolled up for me so I’d fuck her, I’d try and sneak out before morning so I wouldn’t have to kiss her bad breath mouth or see her without make-up or make small talk at breakfast.
Still, older women are disgusting. I have to write about this because I think it might be an enjoyable part of this essay for that bitch who runs the show. She’s just like them, wearing long, shabby dresses, hair obviously colored or else the gray coming through like in “The Bride of Frankenstein.”
I see old women walking with their daughters. Their sons can’t be bothered. I mean let’s talk about sex. No, let’s not. I can’t have sex anymore myself. I can’t afford Viagra.
Oh shit, writing this, I’m sick of what appears to be reality.
My daughter tells me I’m a disgusting chauvinist but she isn’t looking too good either. Not since she had those brats. I begged her not to have kids, to keep her youth. But she knows she’ll be an old lady someday in some rest home and she’s probably just planning ahead, hoping for visitors. What she doesn’t know is: it isn’t our kids we want to visit us. Children are nothing better than any other relatives we couldn’t wait to run away from. Now my daughter wants me to act like a loving grandfather to the brats she gave birth to. Just like my dead wife: they all want you to be happy for the thing you didn’t want them to do.
The preservation of the human species is not something I’m interested in. The sooner we blow up the planet, the better.
My parents sent me to church. Sure did. Jesus died for our sins. Yeah. Yeah. All that crap about eternal life. Eternal life is exactly what I don’t want. My mother could never stop herself from talking about it, how our whole family would be reunited and live together forever with Jesus. Living with my family forever is the greatest torture I can imagine and being preached to by Jesus...
I hope to go to hell. That gives me a lot of leeway. I feel like an ass writing all this to nothing and no one. The poetry person in the prison is forcing me to write about my crimes. I can’t stand her or her class and she knows it. She disgusts me. It’s more painful than being raped to sit beside her and be forced to listen to all her optimistic crap about humanity and art when she is such a pathetic part of the shit hole.
Her poetry class and her do-gooder attitude plus this thing she has about the power of personal expression, lines and stanzas and rhymes or whatever. It was more than disgusting watching the guys who tried to rape me reading their poems about feelings. Even if they did it in what she called slam, it was still a bunch of self-pitying shit by some morons. As if you could slam your way through everything by screaming. Power is the name of the game. Not words. I have no power and it’s embarrassing writing all these words with this chewed-up pencil.
So this do-gooder with the body of a stuffed sofa, glasses, no make-up, this sexless dog who calls herself a feminist, lost her cool and told me to sit in the interrogation room and “write about your crimes if you can’t get into creativity and saving your soul through poetry. Poetry is like religion. It is holy. It could save you.” There we were again: a woman talking to me about religion.
O.K. so I was arrested for indecent exposure. I know I’m a bow-legged old fart, far from being the stud I once was. It probably was indecent being as I know how bad I look but every man knows what it’s like to show a woman his cock. I don’t care if my ass is hanging down to my ankles now or if my body is ugly as sin. I wanted some attention. It was for my mental health.
I know I’m not going to turn this paper in. Those assholes could send me back to isolation for my “bad behavior.”
Nothing is spoken straight here. It’s ridiculous that they hired this poetry bitch to squeeze the truth out of us...as if.
Even the psychiatrist is a liar. These pills are not helping me at all. They only make me tired. They blame everything on depression and maybe they’re right but I don’t know how a pill can help a man who has lost everything he ever lived for.
I was helped by wearing the proverbial raincoat and letting all the little girls see my pee pee as they might still call it. It’s like sex. It’s like having a hard cock with an unwilling virgin. All shock.
Let their boyfriends know he wasn’t the first one. That was my anti-depressant. No way they can make it up to me with pills.
I’m looking for a rope so I can hang myself in my cell but the guards are always watching us and my fat, smelly roommate is there with me 24 hours a day except for the hour with his therapist but then we often go to our therapists at the same time to talk about bullshit so it’s hard to find the time to do the deed and be done with it.
Actually, my life is easier in the cell than it was “out there” where I couldn’t afford the rent or anything else.
My daughter came to see me once. We didn’t talk. We spoke a few lame words and then she just gawked at me as if I wasn’t her father. She stayed five minutes tops and said she couldn’t leave her brood of crude little creatures at home alone with a babysitter for too long.
She had all the kids write me a card saying “we love you grandpa.”
What a pile of crap.
BIO: Bobbi Lurie is the author of three poetry collections: Letter from the Lawn, The Book I Never Read, and Grief Suite. Her poetry has been published in numerous print and on-line journals, including, Gulf Coast, New American Writing, American Poetry Review and Otoliths. She has published numerous short stories, essays, art, book and drama reviews in both Great Britain and The United States.
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