1031's Fiction

Chasing Amy? (for lack of a better title)

2006-12-05T11:26:00.000-06:00

"You ever wonder what it would be like to be dead?" she asked, her voice thick and heavy with dope.

I was sitting in a small, cramped apartment in downtown Chicago, near Boystown, the city’s famous rainbow flag-lined gay district. It was her apartment, the stoned girl lying languidly on a cat hair and cocaine dust-coated black futon, a wisp of marijuana smoke forming a perverse joke of a halo around her head.

The acrid smell from the multi-colored glass pipe she took a hit from every few minutes tickled the back of my throat and burned my red-tinged eyes. I was blinking constantly and had to remove my glasses to rub them more than once.

As I sat in the dim single-bulb light watching my friend get wasted, a solitary thought continuously ran through my mind, like a hamster spinning his wheel in a futile effort to escape his cold, metal prison: I drove five-hundred miles for this?

We met in high school, Amy and I, through our intertwined circles of friends, toward the beginning of my senior year. She was a sophomore, but most of her friends were older, so she was never hassled by school security for being on the wrong side of the building. They simply assumed she belonged there.

I don't remember the first time we spoke, or what we talked about. Trivial high school nothings, I'm sure. Our first date was a concert at a local club, a real shithole of a dive, one of Omaha's finest, a smoke-filled bar-slash-bowling alley filled with horny chain-smoking teenagers wearing flannel shirts or black goth fetish gear in a painful attempt to look cool.

We had been eying each other for a couple weeks, flirting in our group's usual way, an innocent ass grab or poke of a boob, when I found myself with an extra ticket to the show. With a feigned casualness that I hoped masked my sweaty palms and racing heart, I asked her if she wanted to go.

I don't think she cared what bands were going to be performing. The important thing was that it gave us our first opportunity to be alone together. We stayed for the first band that played, and maybe the second, exchanging meaningful glances throughout (as meaningful as they can be at that age, anyway), the whole time the bass pounding through our bodies like constant waves crashing against the shore. Neither of us cared to hear the headlining band.

I don't know how long we made out in my car, parked in her father's driveway. At the time, it seemed like hours, to which to fog that clung to the inside of the car's windows could attest. All I know for sure is that by the time I left, after one last furtive kiss, I had a new girlfriend.

"Wanna go shopping?" she chirped, alert and bubbly, as if the haze that had been clouding her mind had suddenly lifted.

I glanced up from Amy's battered copy of Catcher in the Rye, which I had found on her bookshelf. She was sitting up on the futon now, taking one last hit from her oft-used pipe. Her dark brown hair, once long and soft, cool to the touch, was now a short, stringy mess. The hazel eyes that used to look at me with warmth and affection were dull and lifeless, streaked with crimson. She was looking at me, but she might as well have been looking through me.

"Uh, sure," I said, thinking the fresh air might do her some good. "What do you wanna buy?"

"Movies," she replied, stretching her thin arms over her head, which caused her rumpled shirt to rise up slightly, revealing an unfamiliarly gaunt belly.

"Okay," I said, replacing Holden Caulfield's struggle toward adulthood on the bookshelf. "And maybe we can grab a bite to eat while we’re out?" When I had gotten to Amy’s apartment earlier that afternoon, I did a cursory examination of the kitchen, the cupboards and refrigerator, and found nothing but empty cereal boxes and bottles of wine cooler.

Amy stood up and sort of sashayed toward the bathroom, swaying back and forth, as she walked. I wanted to jump up and steady her, but I knew she'd bat me away with a swipe of her arm. I just sat on the floor beside the bookshelf and watched.

"I'm just gonna hop in the shower real quick," she said.

"Don't forget to brush your teeth," I mumbled under my breath, frightened by what I might smell on hers.

She whirled around and caught hold of the doorframe.

"What?"

I shrugged and shook my head.

Amy glared at me for almost a minute before backing into the bathroom and closing the door. “Out in a minute,” she called. I heard the squeak and rattle of the building's old water pipes before a steady, if weak, stream started flowing from the showerhead.

I sighed and leaned my head back against the bookshelf. I closed my eyes and waited for the water to stop.

The door opened some time later, twenty minutes, maybe a half hour. Amy walked out in a rush of steam, wrapped in a threadbare green towel, her wet hair hanging down over her eyes. She looked better, was moving more steadily. Across from the futon, which doubled as her bed, was a stocky wooden dresser. I can't deny feeling a twitch in my jeans when she bent down to open the drawer that contained her bras and panties, the thin towel riding up her backside, revealing a still-curvy bottom.

She glanced over her shoulder and caught me watching. "Like the show?" she laughed, wiggling her rear at me.

I shifted uncomfortably against the bookshelf, self-consciously resting my hands in my lap. "It's not like it isn't anything I haven't seen before," I replied.

"True," she said as she let the towel fall around her ankles.

I sat there and watched her get dressed. Then we went shopping.

Amy only cheated on me once while we dated; at least, once that I know of. I had been sitting in the commons between classes and heard some friends talking about her. At the sound of her name, I piped up and asked what they were talking about.

"Sorry, Jeff, we didn't see you sittin' there," said Milo, whose lanky frame was curled over a deck of "Magic" cards. He and Benny were comparing and organizing their collections.

"What were you sayin' about Amy?" I asked, leaning forward with my hands clasped under my chin.

Milo and Benny first looked at each other, then the floor, then the wall, anywhere but at me.

"Nothin', man. Just a, you know, a rumor or whatever. It's probably nothin'," stammered Benny as he shuffled through his own deck of cards.

"Guys, what is it?" I asked, quickly growing tired of their evasions.

Milo sighed, set his cards down and tried to look me right in the eye, but his gaze kept darting around my head, to my nose, my ears, my forehead. I hadn't seen him this nervous since the time he tried to ask out the uber-popular (and way out of his league) Stacy Kingman when we were freshmen.

"I saw Amy hanging around with Tim the other day."

"And?" My eyebrows rose expectantly.

"They were, um, kinda makin' out a little," Milo said in a rush, eager to end the line of questioning so he could get back to his cards.

My heart began to thud in my chest. I stood up and walked outside into the crisp autumn air. I took a deep breath in a vain attempt to clear my head, but it didn't work. I was ruined for the rest of the day, unable to stop thinking about Amy, wondering what I had done wrong.

I confronted Tim that night, at a park near school where kids from my school would hang out, smoke and drink. He was a big fella, at least half a foot taller than my five-foot-ten, if not more. When I got to the park, he was standing in a circle of kids, holding court over this or that.

I didn't know what I was going to say to him as I walked down the gentle slope from the parking lot toward the park. I thought about the past couple months with Amy, the time we spent together, what she told me about her parents, her mother in particular, and I knew that getting angry wasn't the way to go. This girl has been through enough, I thought, and she doesn't need me complicating things. I walked up to Tim and asked if I could talk to him for a minute.

"I thought you were gonna try and pick a fight that night," he'd later tell me. Fighting, however, was the furthest thing from my mind; for many reasons, not the least of which was the fact that he could wipe the floor with me.

"This is her choice," I told him. "Not mine. Not yours, either. Whoever she wants to be with, it's up to her, okay? Take care of her."

Tim said he would with a bemused expression on his face. We shook hands and I walked back to my car, content in the delusion that Amy was gone from my life, that she was someone else's problem now.

We rode the 'L' train in silence. Amy listened to her iPod while I covertly watched the other passengers, silently wondering what their stories were, the haggard mother of three rambunctious children, or the shaggy-looking, unshaven man wearing an old, worn military jacket and clutching to his chest a bottle wrapped inside a paper bag as though it were a life-preserver. I glanced at Amy as she sat with eyes closed, calm and peaceful in her drug-induced haze, and felt bizarrely proud with the certainty that their histories couldn't come close to that of the girl sitting beside me.

The train slowed at our stop and we disembarked. We walked along the graffiti-decorated platform and out into the cool night air. There was a Best Buy a couple blocks from the station. When it was in sight, Amy pointed at the big yellow sign and said, "Mmooovies."

After Amy and I had been dating for a couple weeks, she told me about her parents.

"They met in a mental hospital," she said one night as we lay cuddling on the beat-up, old, dog-gnawed couch in my parents' basement. I was lying on my back with my head propped up on some pillows and she was on top of me, her head resting on her hands, which she clasped over my heart. I held her against me, my hands gently caressing her lower back underneath her treasured Kurt Cobain T-shirt. Her skin felt warm, comforting, like a soft flannel blanket on an icy winter night.

We had been watching some stupid "reality" show on MTV because, as Amy told me, "it's great, it's like watching a car wreck in slow motion." At the end of the show, one of the roommates, a bleach blond valley girl whose bra size was bigger than her IQ, tearfully confessed to having cheated on her boyfriend back home by sleeping with some yutz she met at a bar the night before. Amy chuckled, her body quivering against mine.

It's not that she delighted in other people's misfortunes or miseries. I think she instead held herself up to them, as though their lives were a mirror against which she measured herself and defiantly stated that she had survived worse.

She turned her face away from the television and looked at me, still smiling from the banality of the show. Her breath smelled of mint, with a hint of tomato sauce from the pizza we had shared earlier. Her eyes flickered from light brown to green and back again in the shimmering light of the television.

"A mental hospital," I repeated quizzically, squinting my eyes and furrowing my brow while searching her face for some clue as to whether she was kidding or not.

"Mmhmm," she said, lifting her head slightly in order to free one of her hands so she could mute the TV with the remote that sat on the coffee table in front of the sofa and tuck a few stray strands of long brown hair behind her ear. Before she set her head back down, she inched forward and gave me a quick kiss on the lips.

I licked my lips and tasted her chapstick. "Seriously?" I asked, still incredulous. After all, my friends and I had been joking for years that our parents were nuts, when, of course, none of them actually were.

"My mother was a patient. My dad, you know how I told you he's a drug rep, a door-to-door salesman for some pharmaceutical company? Well, one day he knocked on the door of the place my mother was in."

"What was she in for? I mean, why..."

Amy turned her head again, this time toward the back of the couch, resting her cheek on her hands.

"Depression," she said quietly. "She'd tried to kill herself a couple times. You know, her wrists, and maybe pills once, I don’t remember."

I didn't know what to say. I wanted to say, "Wow, that's pretty fucked up," but instead I swallowed the words and continued to rub her back. I was pretty sure she knew how fucked up it was and didn't need me reminding her.

She grinned slightly, to herself, and let out a little chuckle.

"What're you smilin' about, missy?"

She turned back to me and stared for a minute or two, as if trying to pierce my soul through my eyes.

Amy smiled softly again, and laid her head back on her hands, facing the back of the couch. "The only person I've ever told about my parents is Rachel, and I really only told her because she's my best friend and she was around when...when..." Her voice cracked, just barely, and I felt her choke back a lump in her throat. Her heart was like a jackhammer against my stomach.

"Hey, it's okay," I said, pulling one of my hands free of her shirt. I started to stroke her hair. "Whatever it is, you don't have to..."

She cut me off. "No, I do. I want to." She looked at me again and her eyes and cheeks were wet. "I don't know why, but you...you help. Just being around you, you make me feel better."

I gently placed my thumb on her cheek and wiped away the tears. "And I'm not goin' anywhere. I'll always be here."

She gave me a wan smile. "Promise?"

I leaned forward, kissed her and tasted the salt of her tears on her skin. "I promise."

Amy seemed to take comfort in my clumsy high-school-romance platitude. Her heart stopped racing and her body relaxed against mine. She rested her head on her hands again and when she spoke, it was with a certainty that hadn't been there moments earlier.

"When I was ten, I found my mother slumped over the steering wheel of her car. I didn't know what was going on, y'know? I just slapped the button next to the door to open the garage door. I don't know how long she’d been there, but she survived."

"God, that's horrible, sweetie," I said, unable to stop myself.

"Oh, I'm not done yet," she half-laughed. "A few years later, I guess I was thirteen, maybe not quite thirteen, I found her again. She was sprawled out on the floor of the bathroom, random pills scattered around her like she had dropped an open bag of Skittles."

Amy shuddered at the memory and I felt her body tense against mine. It must have been five minutes before she spoke again.

"That's when I started cutting myself," she said softly. "I mean, what was I supposed to do, y'know? There's no instruction guide for something like that. So I stole one of my dad's razor blades and just..."

I stayed quiet, unsure of how to respond.

"You probably think I'm a freak now." Her voice wavered. I had never seen anyone so vulnerable before. I wanted to hold her in my arms until the pain stopped, even if it took forever.

"No, no, no," I said, my mind racing, searching for the right words that might magically make everything okay again. "I, uh, I've always thought you were kind of a freak. That's why I like you."

Amy looked at me for a moment, her wet eyes glistening in the light from the TV. It started slowly, a low rumble in her belly. She tried to stifle it, tried to keep looking at me with a straight face, but it was a losing battle. Amy burst into laughter, her body convulsing with every breath she took. It was contagious and before I knew it, I was laughing right along with her.

She wiped her eyes free of tears, these ones from laughing so hard, and playfully punched me in the stomach. "Jerk," she managed between guffaws. The waves of laughter started to subside and she rested her head back on my chest, an occasional spasm of giggles rippling through her.

"I probably looked like a half-wrapped mummy at Mom’s funeral," Amy said when her breathing finally returned to normal, "because of all the bandages." This image in her head brought on a whole new round of mild laughter.

"I was, you know, all dressed in black except where you could see my arms and legs," she said. "It helped, kind of. The cutting. Took my mind off...everything else." She shifted her head and peeked at me from under droopy eyelids. "But now I have you for that."

I hugged Amy close to me, wrapping my arms around her prone body, and, smiling, said, "That's what I'm here for, sweetie."

Amy wandered aimlessly, it seemed, through the store, stopping occasionally to pick up a DVD, glance at its packaging and replace it, giggling to herself all the while. She was still high, of course. I lagged behind her slightly, watching her, and wondered if anyone else could tell.

"'Tombstone!'" she squealed. She ran up to me holding a DVD in front of her face. "I have two guns," she drawled, quoting Val Kilmer's Doc Holliday from the movie, "one for each of you."

She giggled and clutched the movie to her chest. "I love this movie," she said in a singsong voice. "We're going to watch this movie."

"Okay," I said. I couldn't help but laugh. Her enthusiasm was infectious, even if her preferred method of attaining it was not.

When we got back to the apartment, she handed me the DVD and told me to unwrap it. She went to the dresser and pulled something out, hiding it from view. "I'll be out in a sec," she said, heading toward the bathroom.

I set our Chinese take-out on the low table in front of the futon, then cut the plastic wrapping off the movie and placed the DVD in the player that sat atop the television. I grabbed the remote and settled onto the futon. I opened a container of orange chicken and wondered what was taking Amy so long.

She finally emerged from the bathroom about ten minutes later, a calm smile planted squarely on her face. She walked with a looseness I couldn't place, as if all the muscles in her body had gone slack. She was holding a hand to the inside of her elbow, gently fingering a small red dot of skin as she plopped down beside me. She was so relaxed she practically oozed against me, melting into me, her head resting on my shoulder. I put my arm around her and pressed PLAY on the remote.

"This is nice," she said dreamily, her voice leaden with sleep. Soon she was snoring gently, lost in her drug-fueled dreams.

"Yeah," I sighed, pulling a blanket around us. "Real nice."

...Chasing Amy?

2006-10-31T23:39:00.000-06:00

"You ever wonder what it would be like to be dead?"

I was sitting in a small, cramped apartment in downtown Chicago, near Boystown, the city’s famous rainbow flag-lined gay district. It was her apartment, the stoned girl lying languidly on a cat hair and cocaine dust-coated black futon, a wisp of marijuana smoke forming a perverse joke of a halo around her head.

The acrid smell from the multi-colored glass pipe she took a hit from every few minutes tickled the back of my throat and burned my eyes. I was blinking constantly and had to remove my glasses to rub my red-tinged eyes more than once.

As I sat in the dim single-bulb light watching my friend get wasted, a solitary thought continuously ran through my mind, like a hamster spinning his wheel in a futile effort to escape his cold, metal prison: I drove five-hundred miles for this?

We met in high school, Amy and I, through our intertwined circles of friends, toward the beginning of my senior year. She was a sophomore, but most of her friends were older, so she was never hassled by school security for being on the wrong side of the building. They simply assumed she belonged there.

I don't remember the first time we spoke, or what we talked about. Trivial high school nothings, I’m sure. Our first date was a concert at a local club, a real shithole of a dive, one of Omaha’s finest, a smoke-filled bar-slash-bowling alley filled with horny chain-smoking teenagers wearing flannel shirts or black goth fetish gear in a painful attempt to look cool.

We had been eying each other for a couple weeks, flirting in the usual way that was common to our group, an innocent ass grab or poke of a boob, when I found myself with an extra ticket to the show. With a feigned casualness that I hoped masked my sweaty palms and racing heart, I asked her if she wanted to go.

I don't think she cared what bands were going to be performing. The important thing was that it gave us our first opportunity to be alone together. We stayed for the first band that played, and maybe the second, exchanging meaningful glances throughout (as meaningful as they can be at that age, anyway), the whole time the bass pounding through our bodies like constant waves crashing against the shore. Neither of us cared to hear the headlining band.

I don't know how long we made out in my car, parked in her parents' driveway. At the time, it seemed like hours, to which to fog that clung to the inside of the car's windows could attest. All I know for sure is that by the time I left, after one last furtive kiss, I had a new girlfriend.

"Wanna go shopping?"

I glanced up from Amy's battered copy of Catcher in the Rye, which I had found on her bookshelf. She was sitting up on the futon now, taking one last hit from her oft-used pipe. Her dark brown hair, once long and soft, cool to the touch, was now a short, stringy mess. The hazel eyes that used to look at me with warmth and affection were dull and lifeless, streaked with crimson. She was looking at me, but she might as well have been looking through me.

"Uh, sure," I said, thinking the fresh air might do her some good. "What do you wanna buy?"

"Movies," she replied, stretching her thin arms over her head, which caused her rumpled shirt to rise up slightly, revealing an unfamiliar gaunt belly.

"Okay," I said, replacing Holden Caulfield's struggle toward adulthood on the bookshelf. "And maybe we can grab a bite to eat while we’re out?" When I got to Amy's apartment earlier that afternoon, I did a cursory examination of the kitchen, the cupboards and refrigerator, and found nothing but empty cereal boxes and bottles of wine cooler.

Amy stood up and sort of sashayed toward the bathroom, swaying back and forth, as she walked. I wanted to jump up and steady her, but I knew she’d bat me away with a swipe of her arm. I just sat on the floor beside the bookshelf and watched.

"I’m just gonna hop in the shower real quick," she said.

"Don't forget to brush your teeth," I mumbled under my breath, frightened by what I might smell on hers.

She whirled around and caught hold of the doorframe.

"What?"

I shrugged and shook my head.

Amy glared at me for almost a minute before backing into the bathroom and closing the door. "Out in a minute," she called. I heard the squeak and rattle of the building's old water pipes before a steady, if weak, stream started flowing from the showerhead.

I sighed and leaned my head back against the bookshelf. I closed my eyes and waited for the water to stop.

The door opened some time later, twenty minutes, maybe a half hour. Amy walked out in a rush of steam, wrapped in a threadbare green towel, her wet hair hanging down over her eyes. She looked better, was moving more steadily. Across from the futon, which also doubled as her bed, I would later learn, was a stocky wooden dresser. I can’t deny feeling a twitch in my jeans when she bent down to open the drawer that contained her bras and panties, the thin towel riding up her backside, revealing a still-curvy bottom.

She glanced over her shoulder and caught me watching. "Like the show?" she laughed.

I shifted uncomfortably against the bookshelf, self-consciously resting my hands in my lap. "It’s not like it isn't anything I haven't seen before," I replied.

"True," she said as she let the towel fall around her ankles.

I sat there and watched her get dressed. Then we went shopping.

Amy only cheated on me once while we dated. At least, once that I know of. I was sitting in the commons between classes and heard some friends talking about her. At the sound of her name, I piped up, asked what they were talking about. A friend of a friend had seen Amy kissing this other kid whose clique circumnavigated our own. I was crushed, heartbroken, but strangely not mad. I felt peaceful, like I had been expecting this to happen, the other shoe to drop.

I confronted this other kid that night, at a park near school where kids from my school would hang out, smoke and drink. He was a big fella, at least half a foot taller than my five-foot-ten, if not more. When I got to the park, he was standing in a circle of kids, holding court over this or that. I walked up to him and asked if I could talk to him for a minute.

"I thought you were gonna try and pick a fight that night," he’d later tell me. Fighting, however, was the furthest thing from my mind; for many reasons, not the least of which was the fact that he could wipe the floor with me.

"This is her choice," I told him. "Not mine. Not yours, either. Whoever she wants to be with, who am I to stop her? Take care of her."

He said he would. He was surprised, I think, by my tone, my...civility. We shook hands and I walked back to my car, content in the delusion that Amy was gone from my life, that she was someone else’s problem now.

We rode the 'L' train in silence, Amy listening to her iPod, I covertly watching the other passengers, silently wondering what their stories were, bizarrely proud with the certainty that their histories couldn’t come close to that of the girl sitting beside me.

The train slowed at our stop and we disembarked. We walked along the graffiti-decorated platform and out into the cool night air. There was a Best Buy a couple blocks from the station. When it was in sight, Amy pointed at the big yellow sign and said, "Mmooovies."

She wandered aimlessly, it seemed, through the store, stopping occasionally to pick up a DVD and glance at its packaging. She was still high, of course. I lagged behind her slightly, watching her, and wondered if anyone could tell.

"Tombstone!" she squealed. She ran up to me holding a DVD in front of her face. "I have two guns," she drawled, quoting Val Kilmer’s Doc Holiday from the movie, "one for each of you."

She giggled and clutched the movie to her chest. "I love this movie," she said in a singsong voice. "We're going to watch this movie."

"Okay," I said. I couldn't help but laugh. Her enthusiasm was infectious, even if her preferred method of attaining it was not.

When we got back to the apartment, she handed me the DVD and told me to unwrap it. She went to the dresser and pulled something out, hiding it from view. "I’ll be out in a sec," she said, heading toward the bathroom.

I cut the plastic wrapping off the movie and placed the DVD in the player that sat atop the television. I grabbed the remote and settled onto the futon, wondering what was taking Amy so long.

She finally emerged from the bathroom, a smile planted squarely on her face. She walked with a looseness I couldn’t place, as if all the muscles in her body had gone slack. She was holding a hand to where her arm where it bends at the elbow as she plopped down beside me. She was so relaxed she practically oozed against me, melting into me, with her head resting on my shoulder. I put my arm around her and pressed PLAY on the remote.

"This is nice," she said dreamily, her voice heavy with sleep. Soon she was snoring gently, lost in her drug-fueled dreams.

"Yeah," I said, pulling a blanket around us. "Real nice."

The Morning After

2006-10-31T23:33:00.000-06:00

Warren woke with a muffled start, his face buried in a cheerful yellow-clad pillow. When it was decided that she would move in, Maya had declared his apartment too drab and dreary, a "geek’s hovel," in her words, and she went about purchasing things, or bringing them over from her old room at her parents, little knickknacks, to "give the place a woman’s touch." The bedroom was one of the first places she touched ("since we’ll be spending so much time in there," she giggled), draping the bed with blindingly yellow sheets and pillowcases.

"Maya," Warren spoke into the pillow, "honey, what time is it?"

There was no answer.

Warren untangled his right arm from the sheets trapped beneath his contorted body and patted the Maya-shaped vacuum beside him, his fingers outstretched as he grasped nothing but air and rumpled canary-colored fabric, cool to the touch. "Maya?"

He lifted his head and saw what his fingers had discovered, that he was alone. Warren rolled over and stretched with a groan, extending his arms and legs as far as they would go in every direction, from one side of the bed to the other, reclaiming territory that had once been only his.

After his morning piss, Warren shuffled out of the bathroom and headed toward his hovel’s small kitchen. He stopped midway through the living room and looked at the movie posters tacked to the wall with care. Maya had wanted him to get rid of them. She said they were "childish," that a grown man shouldn’t wallpaper his home with "fantasies." Warren had stood firm and the posters stayed. Shortly after that discussion, however, a small table appeared beneath the posters, adorned with wooden and crystal ponies and unicorns. More of that "woman’s touch" Maya mentioned.

Warren picked up one of the small, carved figurines and held it close to his face. "And she says I’m childish," he whispered, squinting at it as if trying to discern its secrets.

He replaced the wooden horsie and continued to the kitchen. If Maya were here she’d no doubt be concocting some experimental breakfast for him, Eggs Benedict or some kind of strange omelet or burrito stuffed with tofu or shrimp, some recipe she’d come across in one of the magazines that started appearing at his address about a week after she’d moved in.

Warren shuddered at the thought as he pulled a bowl down from a cabinet and filled it with Fruit Loops from the box on the counter. He yanked open the refrigerator and looked for the carton of milk, finding it behind Maya’s diet soda and iced tea.

Warren settled down in his favorite chair and flicked the television on with the remote. The familiar Sportscenter theme song blared from the speakers as he contentedly crunched his cereal-shaped sugar and watched last night’s highlights.

That’s where Maya found him when she came home later that afternoon.

"Hi, honey, you’re home," Warren sing-songed from the chair. "Where’ve you been all day?" he asked without diverting his eyes from the television.

Maya grimaced as she gingerly shucked her coat and hung it by the door. She was grasping a small, white prescription bag from the local pharmacy.

"Out," she said, clutching a hand to her barren stomach. "Just out."

The Decision

2006-10-03T14:37:00.000-05:00

"I'm pregnant."

The words hung in the air like a pungent odor, thick and stifling. Warren slowly looked up from his newspaper, its pages ruffling quietly as his hands began to tremble ever so slightly.

"You’re...what?" he choked out, his throat suddenly feeling tight and constricted.

Maya wouldn't look at him. She gazed out the window into the darkening twilight. Red and gold sunlight streamed through branches of the tree that stood tall and crooked outside their second-floor apartment, casting the room in a crisscross pattern of shadow and light.

"Pregnant," she said, wistfully, as though imagining how wonderful life would be with a child. Maya didn’t have any brothers or sisters of her own. Her mother had raised her after her father left them before Maya was born. Growing up, she never envied the other kids who had siblings at home, waiting to pick on them and call them names. No, Maya was content to be the only object of her mother’s affection and attention. Now she was going to be a mother to a child of her own.

Warren folded the newspaper and set it on the scratched, stubby coffee table in front of him. He ran his hands through his hair before burying his face in them. "Pregnant," he repeated, his voice muffled and distorted.

He spread his fingers and looked at Maya through the narrow slits. She was still just sitting there, on his favorite chair, a beat-up, old, red recliner with cracked and peeling leather that his mother had given him when he moved out, legs folded beneath herself, looking out the window, looking as though she didn’t have a care in the world.

Warren lowered his hands, clasping them under his chin, elbows resting on his knees. "What, uh, what are we, I mean, what do you want to..." he trailed off, unsure of what he wanted to say.

Maya turned her emerald eyes toward him, her short auburn hair glinting in the fading sunlight. Her voice, when she spoke, was carefully bottled anger, quiet and dangerous. "What do you mean, what do I want to do? It's our child, War. Yours and mine."

Her gaze made Warren’s blood run cold. He hated when she looked at him like that, icy and unemotional. He averted his eyes and shifted in his seat, crossing and uncrossing his legs, before stiffly standing up. He started pacing around the room like a caged beast. He examined the ceiling, the cheap, stained carpet, the curling movie posters on his "Wall of Shame," he looked everywhere but at Maya.

"I, uh, you know..." Warren sputtered as he looked at his Plan 9 from Outer Space poster. He heard Maya's legs unfurling, the denim of her jeans rustling as she stood up. "We've only been together for a...a few months, is all, and..."

"Look at me," Maya whispered in his ear. She was close enough that the fruity scent of her shampoo tickled his nostrils. She smelled clean, fresh, like a newborn.

Warren inhaled slowly and counted to five before exhaling. He turned around. Maya was standing with her arms crossed gently beneath her breasts, her head tilted slightly to one side, grinning impishly.

"Kidding," Maya said. "I'm only kidding. I just wanted to see how you’d react." She quickly wrapped her arms around him, resting her head on his shoulder so he couldn't see her stifling back tears.

The Magician (longer version)

2006-09-26T15:45:00.000-05:00

I heard my son scampering home moments before he flung open the front door, his small, wooden shoes clomping loudly on the cobblestone road outside.

"Papa, Papa!" Blake cried over and over as he whirled through the house searching for me. He quickly found me upstairs in my study. I turned away from my writing just in time to see him trip over his own two feet when he spied me. As he stumbled forward, I reached out to steady him and he breathlessly tumbled into my arms. "Look, Papa, look," he gasped between big gulps of air, "there’s a ‘gician comin’ to town." He thrust his little hands toward me. He was clutching a thin scrap of paper.

"Calm down, son," I said. "Breathe, nice and slow. That’s it." I gently rescued what turned out to be an advert from the town newspaper from his stubby, newsprint-stained fingers. "Now, what do you have here?"

I leaned back in my chair and arranged the boy comfortably in my lap. I positioned the piece of paper in front of us and began to read: "Presenting, for the first time in over twenty years, the Inexplicable Erskine, Europe’s most prominent and prodigious prestidigitator, performing phenomenal feats certain to fascinate and captivate. One night only."

Erskine, I thought. Erskine...from where do I know that name?

"A real live ‘gician, Papa," Blake squealed as he squirmed around to face me. "Can we see ‘im?" His eyes were bright and round, hungry with anticipation and excitement.

I lightly tousled his fair, almost white, hair. "Well, I don’t see why not. Why don’t we ask your mother during dinner tonight? Speaking of which, go wash up. She’ll be home from the market shortly."

Blake hopped off my lap as if his rear was on fire. "Yay! I get to see the ‘gician! I get to see the ‘gician!" he chanted as he hurried off to wash basin.

I was never that young, I chuckled softly to myself and turned back to the desk. I looked at the advert again, trying to remember where I knew the name of the magician from, this Erskine. "For the first time in twenty years..."

When my wife Kaelyn returned from the market Blake helped her unload her purchases and prepare dinner, all the while nattering on and on about the magician.

"What kinds of tricks do you think he’ll do? Will he wear a top hat and cape like in my picture book? The ‘gician in my picture book made a lion disappear," said Blake, wide-eyed with wonderment.

"It’s pronounced ‘magician,’ sweetheart," Kaelyn corrected our son. "It certainly sounds like it will be an interesting performance. The ‘Inexplicable Erskine’ must be quite good."

"Have you ever seen a m‘gician, Papa?" Blake asked between mouthfuls of bread.

"I...don’t know, son," I said with uncertainty. The advert that still lay on my desk upstairs nagged at my memories. "Seems like something one would remember, doesn’t it, but I can’t say for sure."

Blake jumped up on his chair, arms held wide. He held his fork in one hand, like a magic wand, waving it around his head. "We’ll see the ‘gician together, Papa. He’ll do all sorts of tricks for us an’ we’ll always remember it."

"Absolutely, son," I said, laughing, as Kaelyn seated the boy properly in his chair and urged him to finish his meal. Though I wished to be, I wasn’t nearly as certain as feigned.

Later that evening, after putting Blake to bed, my wife found me seated in front of our closet, rummaging through old, dusty boxes that once belonged to my father.

She kneeled behind me, kissed the top of my head and began to rub my shoulders. "What are you doing, dear?"

I leaned back into the ministrations of her nimble fingers and sighed. "That advert, the one Blake brought home, I don’t know, every since I read it I’ve been haunted by it. By Erskine. I think I’ve seen him perform before, but it’s hazy, like my mind’s been clouded over with a thick fog. I’m looking for something, a playbill, anything that my father might have kept from when...if," I corrected myself, "if we might have seen him."

"My poor husband," Kaelyn said, folding her legs underneath herself and laying my head in her lap. She continued to rub my scalp and forehead with her expert touch. "It will come to you, in time. You cannot force the memories to surface. You will remember when your mind is ready."

"I know." I opened my eyes and looked at her upside-down face, her fiery red tresses framing her head like a scarlet halo, lightly tickling my face as they would brush against me. Her eyes, verdant as a lush summer meadow, soothed and calmed my nerves. I felt the day’s tension melt from my body.

"Come to bed, love," Kaelyn said. "Let Erskine trouble you no longer this evening."

I awoke with a start, shivering, and my body covered with gooseflesh. I had been dreaming. Horrible, though faint, images danced macabrely behind my eyes, taunting and teasing, just barely without my grasp. I clutched my hands to my face in a futile attempt to ward off the darkness, but to no avail. "Er...Erskine..." I muttered through clenched teeth, for I knew it was he who filled my mind with such terrors.

Sleep eluded me the remainder of the night. After the initial fright, I simply lay in bed, trying desperately to remember the magic show of my youth, despite Kaelyn’s earlier counsel. I envied her peaceful slumber beside me.

I stared at the walls and ceiling, calmed by their security and protection; moonlight coruscated through the window, shapes forming and dissolving in the shadows quicker than my mind could recognize them. The ceiling...

That was his trick, his final trick. It came to me in a flash, as if lightning had struck my brain. I roused Kaelyn. "I remember! Not all of it, of course. Most is just bits and pieces, fragments, but I remember the final trick!"

We were sitting toward the rear of the great theatre, in one of its highest balconies. We needed my father’s field glasses to see the stage, but I didn’t care. I was overjoyed at the idea of seeing a real, live magician.

We sat through an evening’s worth of hoaxes and illusions that remain obscured by time, waiting for Erskine’s grand finale: the disappearance of the grand theatre itself. Yes, he pledged to displace the walls and ceiling, to expose us to the elements, all while we sat comfortably in our plush velvet chairs. A most audacious and improbable feat, my father had said. That is why we were there. My father wanted to laugh and crow and jeer when the trick surely failed, as he wholeheartedly believed it would.

The lights dimmed and we were plunged into near complete darkness, save for a narrow shaft of light that illuminated the wizened old man on stage. My mother cried out in alarm before my father could reassure her it was all part of the performance. Erskine stood nearly immobile on stage, a strange, thunderous language I’d never heard before or since enveloping us like a warm blanket on a cold winter’s eve. Using the field glasses, I could barely see his lips moving, yet the strange tongue boomed and echoed all around us.

The rhythmic cadence mesmerized me. I leaned back in my chair and felt as though I were floating. I stared at the ceiling, transfixed by what appeared to be tiny swirling lights amongst the ornate carvings. I tried to point them out to my father, but he shushed me, staring at Erskine, intent on discovering the truth of the trick.

I blinked rapidly, trying to chase away the small, undulating pinpricks of light, but each time I opened my eyes there were more of them. The ceiling began to take on a translucent quality. It would fade away slightly, as if out of focus, before becoming whole once again.

Erskine slowed his strange speech and it became little more than a murmur. Then he started again, faster and faster, building to a deafening crescendo. I started to raise my hands to my ears, but stopped short. There, above my head, I saw the moon, bright and full. I grabbed at my father’s arm, to show him, but he ignored me, still fixated on the stage. I looked around, to grab the attention of another patron, but none would pay me any heed. All around me people were focused on Erskine himself and nothing else.

In awe, my mouth agape, I realized I was the only one who was noticing. To my left, where a sturdy wall had once been, I could see the marketplace down the street. To my right, the church spire jutted tall, overlooking the town. Behind Erskine, where once had been a curtain of the deepest blue, I could now see the lake, the moon reflected in its calm surface.

Erskine suddenly stopped his chanting. He had a strange, bemused look on his wrinkled, weathered face. The lights came up and everyone started booing. I didn’t understand. Had they not seen what I saw? How could they not have? My father stood up, threw one final epithet toward the stage and ushered my mother and I outside and away from all the "foolishness."

I tried to explain to my father what I had seen, but he derided me, told me I was imagining things, to stop lying. But I knew. I knew what I saw. I knew what Erskine had done, even if nobody else did…

"He made the building disappear, Kaelyn," I said, standing by the window, watching her reaction in its reflection. "I know he did. But why...why had I forgotten about it until now, until Blake resurrected the memories with that advert?"

Kaelyn was sitting up, cross-legged under our comforter, illuminated by the moonlight that shone through the window. She beckoned me to sit beside her. She took my hands in hers, her thin, lithe fingers entwining with my own, and leaned forward and kissed me with more passion than I’d ever felt before or hence. She pulled back after what felt like an eternity and looked at me. I wanted to lose myself in her gaze, her emerald eyes burning in the darkness. "It’s time, my love. Time for you to learn the truth."

The Magician (short version)

2006-09-23T17:53:00.000-05:00

I heard my son scampering home moments before the front door was flung open, his small, wooden shoes clomping loudly on the cobblestone road outside.

"Papa, Papa!" Blake cried over and over as he whirled through the house searching for me. He quickly found me upstairs in my study. I turned away from my writing just in time to see him trip over his own two feet when he spied me. As he stumbled forward I reached out to steady him and he breathlessly tumbled into my arms. "Look, Papa, look," he gasped between big gulps of air, "there's a 'gician comin' to town." He thrust his little hands toward me. He was clutching a thin scrap of paper.

"Calm down, son," I said. "Breathe, nice and slow. That’s it." I gently rescued what turned out to be an advert from the town newspaper from his stubby, newsprint-stained fingers. "Now, what do you have here?"

I leaned back in my chair and arranged the boy comfortably in my lap. I positioned the piece of paper in front of us and began to read: "Presenting, for the first time in over twenty years, the Inexplicable Erskine, Europe’s most prominent and prodigious prestidigitator, performing phenomenal feats certain to fascinate and captivate. One night only."

"Erskine," I said to myself. "From where do I know that name?"

"A real live 'gician, Papa," Blake squealed as he squirmed around to face me. "Can we see 'im?" His eyes were bright and round, hungry with anticipation and excitement.

"I actually think I’ve seen this magician before, this Erskine," I said.

"You have?" Blake said, mouth agape.

"I haven’t thought about it in years, but reading that advert has made it all came back to me. I saw him when I was about your age, Blake. I remember my parents and me getting all dressed up in our best clothing and walking downtown to the theatre. There was a huge crowd of people; it seemed like the entire town was there, all dressed in their finest clothing, men in suits and top hats, the women in gowns and heels.

"Our seats were toward the back of the theatre. The crowd was buzzing and murmuring as all crowds do when, suddenly, the lights went out. Real quick, like someone had thrown a pillowcase over your head. It was blacker than midnight. The murmuring turned to surprised outbursts. People weren’t sure if this was part of the show. Then a booming voice rang out in a language I didn’t understand, followed by a bright flash of light and smoke, and there he was, the Inexplicable Erskine, standing onstage, his arms held wide apart in welcome.

"Time has clouded my memory regarding the specifics of most of that evening. I remember being enthralled, enraptured, by the wizened old man on stage, by his witty patter with the crowd, by the ease with which he made it all look. Except..." I paused, unsure if my mind was playing tricks on me.

"What, Papa, what happened?"

"His last trick," I continued. "It didn’t work. He was going to...he said he was going to make the building, the entire theatre disappear from around us, exposing us to the elements. He spoke in that strange tongue he used at the beginning of the evening, waved his arms around and plunged us into darkness again. There were no panicked cries this time. We all knew it was part of the show, but when the lights came back up we were still seated inside the theatre. Rather, the theatre was still enclosing us. Erskine looked confused, unsure of himself. He kept looking out over the crowd with this bemused, bewildered face.

"Then the laughter started. Just a small, stifled chuckle at first, but soon it overcame the entire audience. Everyone was laughing and jeering, deriding that poor man just because one trick out of many failed to work properly. I felt bad for him. He vanished shortly after that performance. No one knew what happened to him."

"That’s sad, Papa. Why was everyone laughing at him?"

I sighed. "I guess because they found it amusing that he had failed for some reason. I don’t really know, son."

"When we see him we’re gonna cheer for him, right, Papa? No matter what happens?"

I smiled and wrapped my arms around my boy. "That’s right, son. No matter what happens."

Public Embarrassment

2006-09-04T21:57:00.000-05:00

Every exquisite, handcrafted, plush velvet seat in the Grande Theatre sold out mere days after the announcement of the performance, his first in nearly twenty years. “Witness the Return of the Inexplicable Erskine!” announced the signs that were plastered on seemingly every building in town, in finely-written cursive script. The entire populace was abuzz with gossip and rumor about the old magician.

“He was locked away in an asylum,” whispered the withered busybodies in the tea shop.

“He was captured and tortured in the king’s dungeon, he was, for bein’ a witch,” argued the men in the taverns.

“I heard,” a small, freckled boy named Hadley squeaked, “he was locked in mortal combat with a fiery demon from the Underverse for ages and ages until he finally vanquished the creature with a glowing sword made of pieces of the brightest star in the sky and now he’s returned to us.”

None of these stories were true, of course, but the townspeople discussed and dissected each tale as if it were gospel. The return of the Inexplicable Erskine was, quite simply, a Big Deal.

The night of the performance arrived quickly and the theatre was packed with all the gentlemen and ladies of the town, earnestly dressed in their finest clothes. The crowed murmured to one another, “What sort of trick do you think he’ll perform for us tonight,” and, “How exciting,” while the musicians in the orchestra pit were tuning their instruments. (Just one musician, actually, an African man named Kiano, whom the magician had befriended many years ago during an expedition.)

Backstage, an elderly man was twisting and contorting himself into a tuxedo made of the richest, blackest fabric you’d ever seen. It was like staring into midnight. Thousands of tiny, almost invisible sequins were embedded in the pants and jacket so that when the light hit just right you were dazzled by their radiance.

Twenty years have passed since the Inexplicable Erskine last dazzled anyone. As he fumbled with the buttons of his shirt with thin, bony fingers, he thought about the last time he performed his magic for a crowd. It was a disaster.

He had been at the height of his popularity, a master of legerdemain, but when the time came for his final prestidigitation, a brilliant set piece in which he was to make the entire building, the same theatre he was to perform in that very evening, disappear from around the audience, he failed. The old, stoic theatre stubbornly remained where it was. His once-loyal fans and admirers scoffed and laughed and derided his efforts. They told him to make himself disappear, that it might be easier for him, and so he did. With his shoulders slunk down and head held low he awkwardly shuffled off the stage, cheeks aflame with embarrassment and anger.

The Inexplicable Erskine pledged there and then that he would not return to the stage until he had perfected his craft. He would journey to the farthest reaches, study with the grand masters, and only then, when he was truly ready, would he attempt another conjuration.

Now, tonight, he was ready. He would show them something they’d never forget.

Where I Grew Up

2006-08-28T18:01:00.000-05:00

I don't think I have much time left. They're close. I can smell them, their rotten, peeling flesh and putrid, stale breath, like something crawled down their throats and died. Which isn't too far from the truth, I suppose. But I should be safe here, for now, huddled in the comforting darkness of what once was probably a nice suburban neighborhood, the kind of block where everyone knew one another and young children played safely in the street.

In the fading twilight, the house had looked fairly intact, a white two-story building halfway down a hill with a tall tree growing in the front yard, an oak, maybe. I quickly snuck around the perimeter, jumping over the slatted, wooden fence rather than risk the loud creaking I was sure would emanate from the copper-colored gate hinges. My cursory inspection yielded no broken windows or shattered doors, which I took as a good sign. I made my way back around to the front, careful not to disturb what was left of the rose bushes that once lined the south side of the house. Respect for the dead, maybe?

I wrapped my hand in a once-fluffy baby blue towel I scavenged from a nearby mall and jabbed at a narrow pane of etched glass to the right of the front door, cracking it until it gave way with a slight tinkling sound, like a glass wind chime in a stiff breeze. I scraped my arm on a jagged shard when I reached inside to unlock the door, but it's just a scratch. I can barely see it in the dim light of my laptop monitor.

The door, its red paint long faded, groaned when I pushed it open, like someone in pain from being forced to stretch muscles they had long forgotten about. The last slivers of sunlight glinted off a gold-colored doorknocker as I stepped inside the musty house, the faint outline of a surname barely noticeable in the gloom. "Sorry about the window," I muttered to the ghosts of the family that once lived here, as I closed the door behind me. I turned the deadbolt and it made a satisfying thunk, locking me inside a stranger’s home.

Not wanting to risk alerting anything to my presence, I left my flashlight in my backpack, choosing instead to allow my eyes to adjust to the gathering darkness. After a few minutes of standing with my back to the door I began to make out shapes in the open room to my left, some chairs, a sofa, a tall bookcase. To my right was an ominous stairway leading to the second floor.

I walked forward, where I saw a rectangular wooden table surrounded by matching chairs, overturned, as if someone had left in a hurry. I flicked the light switch on the wall next to me, but nothing happened. Not that I was actually expecting anything. Most cities stopped generating power years ago, which is why I steered clear of the large refrigerator that stood ominously against the wall. There was no telling what had gone rotten in there in the aftermath.

I walked back to the front door and paused for a moment, looking up into the gaping nothing of the staircase. Convinced that I was alone in this house, I pulled out my flashlight and flicked it on, the bright halogen beam giving me little comfort in the emptiness. The steps, I noticed, were carpeted in the same vibrant green as the living room, now covered with a thick coating of grey dust. I started up the stairs, each creak magnified by the utter silence that surrounded me.

Family pictures hung on the wall to my right. I tried not to look. I didn’t particularly want to know whose home I was invading, but the glow of the flashlight cast garish shadows as I trudged up the stairs, eerily illuminating at least three generations of dead people. A large family portrait greeted me at the top of the stairs. Parents, grandparents and countless grandchildren stared at me with tired, vacant eyes and fake, toothy smiles, the kind you get when you’ve been posing all day and just want to be done with it. Nice-looking family, I thought.

The top floor consists of three bedrooms, each with clothes and books haphazardly strewn about, abandoned, and the corner office I’ve claimed as my own. It’s the room least cluttered by reminders, save for the Pittsburgh Steelers memorabilia placed with obvious care on the desk and bookshelves.

I hear movement outside, vague scratches at the door and windows, and I silently pray they haven’t picked up my scent. Then I hear pounding on the door and I remember the scratch on my arm. They’ve found me.

I'm back!

2005-10-29T10:42:00.000-05:00

The thing that turned me on most about Heather, I think, was the screaming.

She was pretty enough, sure, with those piercing grey eyes and model’s smile, pointy, upturned nose, and lips like crushed velvet, soft and warm against my skin. And that body! Man, I know women who’d have killed for a body like Heather’s. Thin, but not too thin, and curvy in all the right places. Her tits were probably fake, though.

But when she opened those perfect lips and let out one of those high-pitched, glass-shattering, soul-rattling screams...that is what did it for me every, single time.

I'm not talkin' about those little, muffled whimpers you hear from some gals. You know, where they’re all weak and inhibited, afraid to let you know how they really feel. Afraid to feel at all, if you ask me.

But not Heather.

Christ, she would just let herself go. It was totally wild, her hair thrashing back and forth, her chest heaving with the effort, those perky boobs jiggling up and down and left and right. It was almost enough for me to cream my shorts without even trying.

The best part, you know, the part that really got me going, was when she’d beg for me to stop, like she'd had enough. It'd start out as this quiet, cute, almost-schoolgirl-innocent plea, "N-n-n-no...no more, please," which was a nice touch, you know? Maybe I can get her to dress up like a naughty schoolgirl for Halloween...

Inevitably, though, she’d return to the screaming, and I'd get hard all over again.

Do women realize, you think, the power they have over us guys? The way they walk, talk, dress, cook, clean, suck, fuck, scream...somewhere, there's a guy who's into the way they do all of it, no matter how bizarre or pedestrian, and if they're both really lucky, they'll find each other in this crazy, fucked-up world of ours.

Like me and Heather.

Every once in a while some fellas come around lookin' for her. They want to take her away from me, I know. They think I'm a bad influence or something. What do they know? They wouldn't know love if it wrapped its lips around their weak cocks and bit 'em off. Heather's into me. She came on to me, know what I'm sayin'?

God, I can remember the first night we met. It was like fate or somethin'. She was a waitress at this titty joint downtown, and when she'd bring me a new drink, she'd linger, just a little, at my table, slyly running a hand across my hand, or my arm, before moving on to the boozehounds that surrounded the stage, drooling like retarded children at the barely-clad-cowgirl inexpertly twirling her lasso.

I knew what she wanted. I could tell. I’d seen the signs before. The club, though, had a policy about the girls hooking up with customers, so Heather couldn't come right out and say it, y'know? Stupid, I know, but what are ya gonna do? But, boy, was she good at dropping hints.

Closing time came around and Heather asked if I wanted one for the road. I told her "no, thanks" and dropped a twenty on her tray; she'd been working hard all night. She squeezed my shoulder and flashed me one of those great smiles I mentioned earlier. I knew where she was going with this.

The club closed up and the girls started leaving, headin' home to their boyfriends or whatever. I had sat myself down on a bench across the rain-slicked street, to stay out of the way. I didn't want any of the other girls to know that Heather was involved in a customer. She eventually came out of the joint, waved to her co-workers, and started up the street; towards her apartment, I would soon discover.

Nervous, I got up and started to follow her. She knew I was there, of course. Her signals in the bar were pretty darn clear, you ask me.

We walked past alley after alley, rain thumping down in hard, heavy drops. I did my best to stay a discreet distance back, in case any of her co-workers lived in this area, too.

"Spare a dolla', miss?" Fucking bums. They were everywhere in this shithole of a town, and now one of 'em was accosting Heather. Rage bubbled up from within like I had never felt before. So this must be what love feels like, I remember thinking.

I hung back, my heart racing, waiting for Heather to get out of earshot. Before the bum could get the word "spare" out of his mouth, I shoved him to the pavement. "You stay the fuck away from her," I spat, and kicked him in the ribs. He moaned, and tried to mumble something, an apology, maybe. I didn’t want to hear any of it. I kicked him again. Harder. And again. Fucking bums! Get a job! Stay away from our good and decent women!

Shit! Where was Heather? In my haste to protect her honor, I lost sight of her. I quickly, but quietly, jogged up the street, leaving the battered and bloody bum crumpled in the alleyway, scanning the street for Heather's silhouette. I knew she'd never forgive me for ditching her, even if it was to keep her safe. She was probably shaking, scared out of her wits by that damned, worthless piece of garbage. Anger began to well up inside me again, and I had to fight the urge to go back and kick the bum again. I had to find Heather.

There she is! Thank God. I caught up to her just as she was opening the front door of her building, a rundown, decrepit place. She lives here? I thought as I slowly crossed the street. I turned around and looking up and down the street, making sure no one would see me go inside. I didn't want Heather to get in trouble back at work.

There was no elevator, and when I pulled open the door to the stairwell, I could hear Heather's heels clicking on the wooden slats above me. I'd hate to lose her now that I was so close. I stepped slowly, carefully, on each wooden board, trying not to make a sound. I didn't want to wake the neighbors or anything.

I heard a door open a floor above me, so I quickened my pace, taking the stairs two at a time. In my haste, my excitement, I tripped, slamming my knee against the wood. I stifled a cry, and tried to keep still, my ears straining to hear if Heather had heard me.

"H-hello? I-is someone there?" Her voice was muffled through the door, and I could hear the rattling of keys. I had to hurry, or she'd get inside her apartment and I wouldn’t know which one it was.

I made my way to the fourth floor landing and slowly pulled open the door, just a crack. The few bare light bulbs that hung from the ceiling flickered, barely giving off enough light, but I managed, seeing Heather a few doors down on the left side of the hallway, fumbling with her keys. I could tell she was shaking. That damned bum must have frightened her more than I thought.

Quietly, I slipped into the hallway and made my way towards her. I didn't want to rattle her any more than she already was. I promised myself that I'd kill that bum for scaring Heather like this.

Her head was down, her thin, delicate fingers still trying to fit the right key into the lock. I walked up beside her just as she was able to unlock the door. My heart was pounding so hard in my chest, I was sure she could hear it.

"Heather," I whispered, "I'm here."

That's when I heard her amazing scream for the first time.

That's when I knew I was in love with her.

Dead Body Layin' There

2005-05-20T00:18:00.000-05:00

Deputy Sheriff Steven Johnson had only been on the job for two weeks before finding the body. It was lying on the floor in the middle of the small police station, between two desks, in a pool of drying blood, face up and spread eagle. It was his boss, Sheriff Bradley Metzger.

After Johnson vomited in the waste basket underneath his desk, he set about examining the crime scene.

The front door to the station had been locked when Johnson arrived that morning, and nothing appeared out of place. In fact, with the exception of the dead body on the floor, the office looked exactly as it did the night before when he locked up for the night.

Game Over

2005-02-15T14:30:00.000-06:00

"Take that, you fucker! You won't get away from me that easily!"

"Honey? Who are you talking to? Are you talking to the video game again?"

"Um...what? Of course not, don't be-"

"Honestly, I don't understand those things. And try and keep your voice down. The kids are in bed. I don't want them waking up to your cursing. They'll think it's okay to do."

"I know. Sorry, babe. I just get so int-"

"Oh, did you remember to take the trash out?"

"What? Yeah, I...Honey, I'm in the middle of somethi-"

"You forgot last week, is all. I just don't want it piling up for another week."

"Honey, I got it. Don't worry about the...the thing. Can...can we talk about this later? I'm almost to the final b-"

"Jesus, I'm just trying to have a conversation here. You'd rather yell at the TV than talk to me."

"You know that's not true. I just, you know, I was working all week an-"

"Right, exactly. You were working all week and the first thing you do on the weekend is turn that stupid game on."

"It's not stupid. It helps me rela-"

"Relax, right. That's what you said last week. And the week before that...are you avoiding me?"

"What? Honey, c'mon. What kinda question is th-"

"An honest one. You come home, play with the kids for five minutes before tucking them in, and spend the rest of the night playing that stupid game. You don't talk to me. You hardly look at me anymore."

"That...that's not true. We went out to dinner with Joe and Susan last weekend. That was fun, right? And th-"

"And after dinner, we came right home and you plopped down in front of the television."

"..."

"Are you even paying attention to me?"

"What? Yeah, I...this guy is really hard to beat. I-"

"Oh my God. You can't put that controller down for ten minutes so we can have a conversation. I'm talking about our marriage here, Paul."

"You...you're overreacting is what you're doing. Here, I'm at a save point. I can save it and we'll ta-"

"Overreacting? Fine, forget it. Play your damn game. I'm going to bed."

"Okay, if you're sure. I'll be up in a few minutes. Love you."

Ho ho ho

2004-12-14T03:33:00.000-06:00

Smallish city. Kids have been disappearing for years without a trace, but only around December. One year, after weeks of what her parents know is pointless searching, given the town's recent history, a little girl is found by the side of the road, bleeding, with torn clothing.

She doesn't say a word. Shock trauma, the psychologist says. It will possibly take years of therapy before she's ready to relate what happened to her.

One night, after she's been released from the hospital and is back home with her parents, her father wakes up to a strange sound coming from his daughter's room. Curious, he slowly makes his way towards her room, straining to make sense of the sound.

He slowly pushes open the door and sees his daughter sitting up in bed, staring out the window at the Christmas decorations next door. She's mumbling something very quietly, and her father inches closer.

"Sweetheart," he asks, "are you okay? What's that you're saying?"

Her body stiffens at the sound of his voice, and she stops talking. Her head slowly turns away from the silent night, and the light from the streetlamp outside illuminates her face in an otherworldly, soft glow. Her eyes are moist, yet no tears fall. She doesn't blink, and as she sits there, staring at her father, she shivers.

"It's okay, honey. What is it? You can tell me," her father speaks slowly, softly, not wanting to upset his little girl. A fragile emotional state, something else the psychologist had told her parents.

Her lips move, but no sound escapes her mouth.

"I didn't hear you, honey. What was that?" her father sits on the edge of her bed, concern and worry etched into his face.

She takes a deep breath, as if steeling herself against something unpleasant. Her voice, barely more than a whisper, trembles a little, but this time her father hears her.

"Ho ho ho."

A-muse-ing

2004-11-04T13:37:00.000-06:00

The keys of the typewriter clicked and clacked with thunderous speed, pounding their various ink-stained letters against the pure, white paper. A great cackle could be heard as, with a sudden rip, the sheet of paper was snatched from the machine.

Slowly, however, the cackle grew distant and mournful, and the laughter gave way to choked back tears and despair. With an angry cry, the page was crumpled between two cracked and bitter hands. The ball sailed over his shoulder and landed with a whisper behind him, the latest addition to the Mountain of Bad Writing that seemed to have sprung up in the past few weeks, around the little trash can in the corner of the office.

Anger gave way to frustration, and the man shoved the typewriter away from him in disgust. He nearly spat upon it, coughing and hacking, filling his mouth with vile phlegm, but he thought better of it. He slowly swirled the mucus around with his tongue before letting it ooze back down his throat.

He wasn’t an old man, though time and circumstance had taken their toll on him. A mere forty-two years old, he appeared closer to fifty, with thin, stringy hair, more gray than his original brown, clinging to his ever-damp scalp. He wore wire-rim glasses upon a large, crooked nose, peering out from behind them with small, dark eyes.

Wearily, he rose from his desk, giving the typewriter one last, good swat across its side, signaling the end of his work day. He pulled open the top right drawer and grasped a half-empty box of cigarettes. Slowly, almost reverently, he slid one of the cigarettes from the case and stuck it between dry, chapped lips.

A chrome lighter was produced from his pants pocket and with a flick of the wrist, a bright flame danced before his eyes, reflected off his glasses. He lit the cigarette, breathing in its acrid air as if it were life-giving, and set the lighter down next to the typewriter.

He lived in on the second floor of a rundown, two-story building in the middle of downtown. The first floor was occupied by a bar, which was one of the reasons he moved in twenty years ago, and was a major reason why he still lived there to this day. It wasn’t a very popular bar, even when he first moved in, so it was always quiet. He had thought it would make an excellent place to write, and, indeed, he had finished his first play, The Devil I Am, while sitting at one of the beer-stained tables. Over time, however, the thought of becoming the first of a new wave of Beat writers, the next Kerouac or Ginsberg, abated. His next two works, a second play, Paradise Never, and a collection of short stories, Minor Thoughts, were written without the aid of alcohol, upstairs in his office.

He had gone on to write six more plays and four novels, the last of which saw publication over five years ago. The fourth book had done so well, both commercially and critically, that his agent used to call him once or twice a week, to inquire about a follow-up. Gotta strike while the iron’s hot, his agent would say.

“It’s coming, it’s coming,” the writer would say, but nothing ever did. In those first few months, he often feared that the well had finally run dry, that the ideas had finally stopped coming, and panic had so tightly gripped him that he had a heart attack at the age of thirty-eight.

After he recovered, his agent made a few courtesy calls to see how he was feeling, and to ask when he might be getting back to work. When the writer wasn’t very forthcoming, the calls came more and more infrequently, on his birthday, around the holidays, before they stopped completely.

It wasn’t that he couldn’t write, necessarily. Words and phrases still flowed smoothly from his fingertips, but they were awful, trite things that wouldn’t have been acceptable in a child’s grade school primer. “See Spot Run” was ingenious when compared to the drivel he found himself spewing forth.

The writer stood behind his desk, his past successes nothing more than distant memories, almost as if they had happened to someone else, and he stared out the large window before him, the cigarette smoke curling around his head like a dirty halo in the gray light. Rain softly pelted the glass, and he could hear the occasional car sloshing through the street below.

Splitting Heirs

2004-09-20T21:43:00.000-05:00

It's the story of a son or daughter of a king and queen, or, to comtemporize a bit, perhaps the parent is a financially successful businessman. Either way, the child is expected to follow in the parent's footsteps and enter the family business, be it running a kingdom or a business or whatnot. The child doesn't want to do this, instead, he/she wants to be free to live his/her own life and do what he/she wants to do.

Somehow, the child devises a way to create a copy of him or herself, or maybe there are two children to begin with, or perhaps there is a heretofore unknown twin like in The Parent Trap...

Either way, one child follows his/her heart, while the other follows the parent's wishes, and we see which one is happier by the story's end.

Or something like that.

Snappy title, though, huh?

9/11 - A Remembrance

2004-09-11T17:58:00.000-05:00

The following is a piece I wrote after my niece, Charlize, was born. Today is her third birthday:

Falling asleep the night of September 10th, I was certain of a couple of things: that my brother and his wife were expecting a baby any day now and that I didn’t have to work the next day. I was going to be able to sleep in.

I worked at a comic book store in Omaha, NE at the time. Not the most exciting of jobs, I know, but it was fun some days. But when no one comes into the store the days were long and dull and I was glad of not having to work that Tuesday.

My brother, Bill, and his wife, Luann, had been married for about a year and a half. They had just gotten a nice, big house in Broomfield, Colorado, a Denver suburb. From what I heard, it was a good house in which to have Bar-B-Qs and raise children.

As I said, the baby was due at any time and my father was all ready to throw Mom in the car and head out to Colorado at the slightest hint of labor. He was looking forward to meeting his granddaughter.

He had just become a grandfather for the first time a mere three and a half months earlier, when my sister, Leslie, and her husband, Brian, welcomed my nephew into the world. That happened in town, so, obviously, it was much easier on my parents.

I awoke Tuesday morning to the sound of my father knocking on my door. I’m still unsure of the time, but I vaguely remember hearing him say something about a plane hitting one of the World Trade Center towers. I mumbled a reply and fell back asleep.

A short time later, there was another knock on my door, “A second plane has hit the other tower.” A thought flashed in my mind of some stupid Michael Bay film, but why would Dad wake me to tell me about a movie? I grabbed my glasses and bolted out of bed.

The moments that followed have all become a blur. Jumbled images from different TV stations, helplessly watching as plane after plane after plane slam into the Towers. It seemed like it happened a thousand times, but in reality, only twice.

Reports started coming in from all the stations. Eyewitnesses came forth covered in soot and ash. Every station had its own “Exclusive” footage showing the same nightmare over and over and over. I silently prayed that I was still asleep and dreaming.

Throughout the morning, we saw the Pentagon attacked, and a rural Pennsylvania countryside become Hell. And somewhere, amidst all the reporters and horrifying images, the phone rang. Numbly, I answered. It was my brother.

It was around ten-thirty. He was at the hospital, on his cell phone. He and Luann had been there since three that morning, when Luann went into labor. They had been in the delivery room this whole time, unaware of the destruction thousands of miles away.

“Oh my God,” I said, “So you don’t know what’s happened?” He had heard a few rumors from nurses throughout the morning, but couldn’t really pay much attention. He was having a baby. I handed the phone to Dad and went back to staring at the TV.

“Should we leave now,” I heard him ask, “Oh, we can’t. Your mother won’t be home from work ‘til three.” They talked for a few more minutes until finally deciding to wait until my brother called back, when he would finally be a father.

The day wore on. There were no more attacks. The President stopped by, Air Force One being diverted to nearby Offutt Air Force Base. How surreal was that? Knowing one of the most strategic sites in the nation is a mere thirty miles from home.

Mom got home from work shortly after 3:30. Dad told her to pack, to get ready to go to Colorado. But they couldn’t. Not yet. My brother hadn’t called. Not knowing became a theme for the day. Who attacked us? And what’s going on in Colorado?

Hours crawled by and I remained rooted in front of the TV. What else could I do? Half a country away from the people who needed the help and five hundred miles in the other direction, in some hospital near Denver, my niece was being born. Or so I hoped.

Close to ten hours had passed since Bill called. Dad repeatedly tried to reach him on his cell phone. No answer. Darkness had fallen across what soon would be known as Ground Zero, yet it was lit up like Christmas. They continued to search for survivors.

“Let’s just go. We’ll get in the car and go,” but it was late, past ten and we still hadn’t heard anything from Bill. Dad had grown increasingly nervous and frustrated as the day dragged on. He began looking up hospitals around Denver online.

People in New York had already begun circulating flyers with names and pictures of missing loved ones.

“Golbitz,” he’d say, “Or Chandler (Luann’s maiden name)?” The nurse asked him to wait, and after calling four hospitals, Dad had found the right one. Luann’s mother came on the line and told us what was going on. Luann had had a C-section.

My father had wonderful timing as it turned out. Not twenty minutes earlier, my niece came into the world. The procedure went fine and both mother and daughter were doing well. My brother came to the phone and talked to Dad while I wondered: Just what kind of world has this child come into?

The next morning, Mom, Dad, my sister, and her three and a half month old son left for Denver. I had to work. It was Wednesday, after all. New Comic Day. Slowly but surely, my customers trickled in. Some wanted to talk about it. Some didn’t.

To my customers and co-workers, I proudly announced I became an uncle again, the night before. Reaction was generally good and pleasant, congratulations all around, but more than one person commented on the state of the world: Is it really such a great place to bring a child into?

I had no answer.

In the weeks and months that passed, I decided my answer was “yes.” There may be those in this world who hate and care nothing for life, who despise people different from them, but, God-willing, those people, however many of them there are, will be taken from this world, so my niece and nephew and all children can grow up knowing such hatred only from history books.

Our nation has been brought together by the hatred that caused the needless, senseless destruction of September 11, 2001. That date will be forever burned into our country’s collective mind. It is as much a part of who we are now as Pearl Harbor and the day Kennedy was shot. It is a day of incredible pain and sadness, but also of strength and resolve that we shall overcome this too, in time. And for my family and I, it is not only a day of intense national pride and mourning, it is the day the newest member of our family was born.

Tuesday, September 11, 2001

Happy Birthday, Charlize Delenn Golbitz

And yes, her middle name is taken from a character on “Babylon 5.” Don’t Ask.

All Aboard

2004-08-08T01:08:00.000-05:00

After grabbing a can of Red Bull and a newspaper, I walked out to the platform to await my train. The night air felt cool against my skin as I walked towards an empty bench. The platform was mostly empty, just a few college-age kids sitting beside a pile of musical equipment - instruments, amps, mic stands - the guys pretending they were Bruce Lee, poorly-executed kicks and punches being thrown at one another, and the girls laughing and giggling and talking into cell phones.

I was never that young, I thought, even when I was their age.

I placed my newpaper and can on the bench and sat down beside them, sliding up the sleeve of my leather jacket so I could look at my watch. The face read 9:06, and the train to Los Angeles wasn't due to arrive until 9:30, though it's almost always late, like clockwork. I figured I had about an hour to kill.

I slid the Red Bull into the left pocket of my jacket, saving it for later. Once I got to L.A., I was sure I'd need a boost. I shook open the paper and scanned the headlines: Terror, Economy, Terror, Health Care, Tax Cuts, Terror. Didn't anything good happen in the world anymore?

"Dude, someone lost their Visine!"

Glancing up from the paper, I noticed two of the college kids standing at the edge of the platform, pointing.

"I'll get it," a third called out, setting down his guitar case and hurrying over to his friends. He jumped down between the rails and bent over. His friends helped him back onto the platform and he held his prize aloft, a little tube of Visine, those eyedrops that the teacher from "Ferris Bueller" used to shill for in those commercials.

I shook my head and turned back to the sports page. My team, the St. Louis Cardinals, had a ten game division lead heading into the weekend. Another couple months of playing like that and we'll have another World Series to celebrate.

Something moved in the corner of my eye and my head jerked to the right. I saw three people settling into a bench further down the platform, two women, probably mid-forties, prototypical "soccer moms" in their Softer Side of Sears finery, and a younger girl, maybe sixteen or seventeen, wearing a heavy, black coat and jeans, with dirty sneakers, which once may have been white. Her legs were stretched out as she lounged on the bench. The two women were babbling back and forth about Uncle Paddy's liver disease, "a shame, really," and little Johnny's report card, "his teacher said he might be gifted."

But the girl simply sat there, huddled between the other two, hunched over and unmoving, though she appeared to be favoring her right arm. She just stared straight ahead with her head bowed, like a puppy who's been yelled at for shitting on the carpet.

As the women prattled on, the one closest to me would wave her arms in the air to illustrate her point, and I'd catch quick glimpses at the girl. She had unkempt reddish-brown hair, cut just above her shoulders, and was wearing a big, heavy coat. She just sat there and the women's voices floated above her head, and she looked utterly miserable.

"Dude, go long!" One of the college kids called out, and I turned back to see one of them, a guy with long, blonde hair, wearing a Chargers jersey, motioning down the platform, holding the tube of Visine in his hand. One of his friends, a kid with dark hair, wearing shorts and sandals, started jogging towards me, his head cocked over his shoulder.

The blonde guy reared his arm back and let the Visine fly. I watched it arc end-over-end, wobbling through the air. I followed its path as it soared over my head and I knew the blonde had thrown it too hard. His buddy was barely past my bench. I glanced past him and saw the two women still sitting there, talking, oblivious to the UFO heading their way. I winced as I realized where the Visine was going to land.

"Ow!" The woman farthest from me yelled out as the projectile fell out of the sky and landed, pointy-end first, in her eye. Her hands, which appeared to have been showing the proper technique to twirl pasta on a fork, flew to her face. A string of obscenities I hadn't heard since my military days spewed forth from her mouth and the other woman whipped her head around and glared at the college kids, who had run back to their group of friends, barely trying to restrain themselves from laughing.

Standing up, the injured woman said "Don't move from this spot, young lady, you hear me?" and the girl nodded her head almost imperceptibly. The two women stalked off in search of a restroom, leaving me an unobstructed view of the girl.

I must have spaced out, my mind wandering while my eyes stayed transfixed on the girl, because, suddenly, she was looking at me. I hadn't even noticed her moving. I couldn't turn my head away, having been caught, so we sat there looking at each other.

She was older than I initially thought. Nineteen or twenty, now that I had gotten a better look at her face. She had pale skin and bright, green eyes, and it was her eyes that made me think twice about her age. There was something in there, something far older than her youthful appearance would suggest. Below her right eye, I thought I noticed a bit of discoloration, like a bruise that's nearly healed.

I wanted to look away. She was making me uncomfortable under her unblinking gaze, but I was frozen. My mind flashed with a thousand thoughts all at once, Who is she? Who are those two women? Who hit her? Did she run away from home?

Her eyes stayed locked on mine until I heard the inane babbling returning, the two women walking back onto the platform, one with a bag of ice over one eye. The young girl snapped her head forward, looking exactly as she did before she women left. The sudden movement broke her spell over me and I was able to return my eyes to the newspaper in my lap, but my thoughts stayed with her.

The rumble of the approaching train rattled me back to the business at hand. I glanced at my watch again: 9:34. On time for once, I thought as I stood and risked another glance at the girl, trying to make eye contact one last time. I didn't know why, but it seemed important. Her head was still down and the two women chirped away. Not their train, I mused.

I walked towards the train as it slowed to a halt, and I felt the warm air rush out as the door slid open. I turned back once more, wanting to see her eyes. She was looking right at me, her twin emerald eyes shone with a wetness that hadn't been there before. I opened my mouth, but no sound escaped my lips. What could I have said?

I slowly turned my head back to the waiting train compartment and climbed aboard, fighting the urge to rush over to the bench and knock the two women aside, and ask the girl what happened to her. It was none of my concern, and yet, as I felt her eyes boring into me, I knew she needed help.

A loud cry erupted from the platform, and I spun around in time to see the woman with the ice bag fall to the platform, cubes spinning this way and that. The girl had pushed off the injured woman, launching herself towards the train. The other woman was taken completely off-guard and she could only sit there and watch, her mouth agape, as her charge moved faster than I would have given her credit for.

The doors began to slide shut and I actually prayed a short pray that the girl would make it aboard. She nearly slipped on a piece of ice, but kept her balance and managed to barely squeeze through the doors of the car behind mine. The train whistle blew and we slowly pulled away from the station. The two women could only sit and watch, but before we were out of sight, I thought I saw one reach into her purse and pull out a cell phone. She frantically dialed a long string of digits and began screaming into the phone and that's all I saw.

I turned towards the doors separating the two cars and I could see the girl through the small window. She was sitting on the floor of the car, breathing heavily, with her eyes still trained on mine. Taking a deep breath, I walked towards the door and pulled it open. I entered the other car just as the lights went out, and all I could see, floating in the blackness around me, were those two green eyes.

"Thank you," she whispered in the dark.

Untitled, continued

2004-07-09T03:27:00.000-05:00

The first part of this story is the very first posting on this site. Either scroll down to read it or look to the archives.

I got dressed and headed down to Joe’s. I’d never seen Ricki in there before, but that doesn’t mean no one else had.

Joe’s looked different during the day, brighter, almost respectable. Even the surrounding neighborhood didn’t look quite as menacing in the sunlight. Shops were open. Families were walking around, window-gazing. Looked straight out of a Rockwell painting.

Last night’s storm had given way, not a cloud in the sky, but it had to have been close to 90 already, and it wasn’t even noon yet. I began dripping sweat the minute I stepped out of my building. I felt overdressed in my blue jeans and leather jacket in the sweltering heat.

I pushed open the door to Joe’s and years’ worth of dust particles jumped up in the air, dancing around in the sunlight. Maybe that’s why Joe keeps the lights so low. The place was nearly empty this early in the day, just a few professional sitting at the bar. Joe was standing in his customary spot behind the bar, a pen in hand, going over paperwork.

“Joe,” I said, nodding as I stepped up to the bar.

“Little early for you, ain’t it? The usual?” Joe pulled down a bottle of whiskey and reached for a glass.

“No, no thanks, Joe,” I waved the whiskey away. “Not right now.”

A little surprised, Joe set the bottle back on the shelf and folded his arms over his chest, looking at me with a curious expression on his old, weathered face.

“I’m looking for someone,” I began, my eyes darting around the bar, paranoia starting to get the best of me. “I, uh, I think she may be in trouble,” I stammered, starting to feel a little silly, acting like a private eye working a case, looking for some damsel-in-distress.

Joe stood there, a brick wall, unmoving and as difficult to read as always. Joe was a credit to his profession. He was well aware of the men who frequented his bar and some of their more unsavory business practices. If his years of bartending had taught him anything, it was knowing when to keep his mouth shut. He cleared his throat and did a slow scan of the bar, to see who was here, before responding. His eyes locked on mine, with a look I’d never seen before. “This about the girl you left with last night?” he asked quietly. There was an edge to his voice, a twinge of something, I wasn’t sure what. Sadness? Anger? Guilt?

“I, uh, yeah, Joe. Um…you know her?” The emotion I heard, whatever it was, in Joe’s voice had made me uneasy, knocked me off-balance. I don’t think I’ve ever heard so much as a laugh from Joe, in all the years I’ve known him. He was a bartender. He listened to your troubles, called you a cab when you’d had too much, but he always went about it passively, no emotion cracking through his tough, old hide.

Joe shook his head slowly. “No. No, I don’t know nothin’ about her,” he finally said, his normally gruff voice soft, a grizzly bear turned into a housecat.

“Nothin’, Joe? A name, maybe she mentioned where she liv-“

I was cut off by Joe’s massive hands slamming down on the bar, rattling some empty glasses, as well as me. “I said no!” he yelled with such a fury that I took a couple steps back from the bar.

I looked around, wondering if anyone was paying any attention to us. The old boozers were lost in their own worlds, their own tragedies. They had worse things to worry about than us. I looked back to Joe and caught him wiping something away from his right eye. Joe looked up at me and I could see the tears forming, the pain fluttering dangerously close to the surface. “Sorry…sorry about that. I, um…h…how long you been comin’ in here, son? Five years?”

“Closer to ten, I think,” I managed, rattled by the outburst. “Why?”

Joe reached into his back pocket and pulled out one of those little, plastic photo inserts that come with a new wallet. He choked back the tears as he looked at the top picture. “Here,” he said, handing me the photographs, pointing, “the girl from last night…she reminds me of someone I knew, a long time ago.”

I took the insert from him and looked at the picture he indicated. It was black and white, yellowed around the edges, a young girl, maybe fifteen or sixteen. She was smiling for the camera like she didn’t have a care in the world. She was sitting on stone steps in front of an apartment building, wearing jeans and a sweater. She had long, dark hair, dark eyes, and the more I looked at the picture, the more the smiling girl reminded me of Ricki.

“My daughter,” Joe said so quietly he might as well have been whispering, “Rachel.”

I was taken aback for a minute. I’d never thought of Joe as having any family. He never talked about one. He was a bartender. He never talked about anything, which is why people came to his bar. Sometimes people just want to drink in silence.

“I didn’t know you had a daughter, Joe,” I said, handing the pictures back to him. His old, powerful hand shakily took the insert from me and, after one more glance at Rachel, slid it back into his pocket.

“I don’t,” he said brusquely, as the door opened, turning him back into the Joe I knew, “not anymore, anyway.” He turned and nodded towards the newcomers, “help you, fellas?”

“Couple of Buds?”

I turned and saw two impeccably-dressed men, both looking to be in their upper twenties. One had red hair, the other blonde, which seemed to be the only way to tell them apart. There aren’t any businesses around Joe’s, at least, not any legal ones, that would have anyone dressed in Armani. Something about these two wasn’t gelling with me, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.

“Sure, comin’ right up,” Joe said, grabbing a glass and turning towards the tap.

I watched as the two men looked around the bar, almost like they were casing the joint. One of them gestured to a table close to the door and they sat down, as out of place here as I would be at an upstate country club. I waited for Joe to fill their mugs and deliver them before I continued our conversation.

“Joe,” I started, but he waved me off.

“It was a long time ago. My God, that picture must be close to thirty years old. Forget it.” Joe went back to his paperwork as if nothing had happened.

“Joe,” I tried again, only to be ignored.

Frustration boiled over. Joe had to know something about Ricki. He had to, because if he didn’t, then I knew I’d never find her, because I had no idea where to even start looking, except for right here. I slammed my hand down on his paperwork. “Joe! I need to find her, Joe. She’s in trouble and I need to find her.”

He looked up at me, anger in his eyes slowly giving way to sadness and regret.

“Please, Joe,” I pleaded. “She needs help.”

“All right, son, all right. I don’t know much, I’m afraid,” Joe shifted uncomfortably. Discussing his patrons, for whatever reason, isn’t something that sits easily with him.

“Anything, Joe.”

Taking a deep breath, as if resigning himself to jumping off this cliff, Joe leaned in close to me. “I don’t know her name or anything like that. She’s only been in here once or twice before, accompanied by a very well-dressed gentleman, maybe fifty or so.”

My mind immediately jumped to the two Armani guys, but I let Joe continue.

“She always ordered the same drink, vodka and cranberry juice, but I’d never seen her put ‘em away like last night.”

“This guy, this well-dressed gentleman, where was he last night?”

“She came in alone, shivering like someone just stepped on her grave and wouldn’t move, ya know? Sat at that table over there,” Joe pointed, “for nearly an hour and a half before you showed up. She put away a lot of cranberry juice in that hour and a half.”

“Yeah,” I said, remembering Ricki’s trembling body curled up next to me. “I sorta figured as much. So this guy, Joe, who is he?”

“I dunno what his name is. They don’t tell and I don’t ask. You know that. He’s usually got a couple of boys with him. You know, muscle?” Again, my mind flashed to the two suits sitting by the door. “They’d just call him ‘Boss,’ so, you know, draw your own conclusion.”

My mind was revving like one of those foreign sports cars, trying to process all this new information. I knew Ricki was in trouble, but I hadn’t imagined it’d be something this deep.

“You didn’t hear any of this from me, remember.” Joe said. It wasn’t a question. His hands were shaking and I was pretty sure it wasn’t because of old age.

“Don’t worry, Joe,” I reassured him. “I didn’t hear a thing.”

I looked over my shoulder, towards the door, getting ready to leave, and I caught one of the suits looking at me. His gaze quickly glided over the rest of the bar behind me, like he was just looking around, but I could tell his eyes were focused right on me. Great, just great, I thought. Yeah, maybe it was nothing, but the way these two looked so uncomfortable here, so out of place, the way they hadn’t touched their beers, let’s just say I had a bad feeling about this.

Turning back to Joe, I thanked him for his help. “And Joe,” I waited for him to look me in the eye, “if you ever want to talk, about anything, you know where am I.”

This made Joe smile, if only slightly. “Yeah,” he said, “sitting on that damn barstool like you’ve been doing for the past ten years. Good luck.”

“Thanks,” I replied, heading towards the door, past Armani Blonde and Armani Red, “I’m gonna need it.”

The Walls Have Ears

2004-06-28T14:46:00.000-05:00

Muffled shouting. A man and a woman, I think, same as always. The walls in these apartments are paper-thin, you'd think they'd realize that by now.

Every day it's something different with those two. Insane arguing one day, sex for hours the next. They can't make up their minds. Hell, some days, with all the screaming and crashing, I can't tell if they're fighting, fucking, or both.

God, finally, they've stopped. If I had to go through another night listening to them, shit, I was gonna start selling tickets.

---

I haven't heard from my neighbors for a few days. No fighting, no banging on the walls, nothin'. Happy as I was the first couple days, now I'm starting to wonder. I mean, people, they don't just change overnight. There's no way those two patched up their differences and moved on. Somethin' ain't right...

---

Finally, here we go. Got some muffled thumps coming from their apartment now. I knew they wouldn't let me down. Can't quite make out what it is I'm hearing, though. And there's no yelling, either.

Door's opening. Sounds like someone comin' down the stairs. Wonder if I can get a little peek...

Wow. It's her, the girl. Woman. She can't be more than twenty or twenty-one. So that's what that thumping noise is, she's dragging a laundry bag behind her. Looks kinda heavy for laundry, though. Maybe I should go out and offer to help?

---

Ok, fine, she didn't want my help. Sure was acting squirrelly, though. Real nervous, too. Man, she was beautiful. Wonder what's got her acting so scared, though?

This idea is from a tattoo place...

2004-06-22T18:48:00.000-05:00

Guy in prison, keeps writing letters to his sweetheart - the story is told only in letter form?

He never receives letters back...

When he finally gets out of prison, he goes to the place he and his girl shared, but she's not there. And he sees years worth of his letters piled up in the living room, unopened.

Where has she gone? She's trying to move on with her life, perhaps.

He needs to know, though, so he begins to track her down.

Question remains...where has she gone?

I Always Get Ideas In the Shower

2004-06-10T10:05:00.000-05:00

They're called Dream Agents.

They're normal, average people, who, unbeknownest to them, get injected with tiny, liquid, nanocomputers on the back of their neck. The injection mark looks like nothing more than a small bug bite.

These nanocomputers are programmed to attach themselves to the person's brain and spinal column, and download insane amounts of Information directly into their head.

The Information lies dormant until the individual falls asleep. The chemicals in the brain released during REM sleep act as a trigger, opening the .exe file, and activating the Dream Agent.

Once activated, the Information installs itself, programming the Agent with details of their upcoming Operation, such as what, exactly, they are to do, and how to do it. Any relavent skills (languages, firearms, stealth kills, etc.) are included in the file packet.

Operations for Dream Agents vary from mundane tasks such as wiretapping phones or bugging computers to more hands-on Operations, such as Wetworks (Assassinations).

The beauty of the Dream Agent program is that they cannot be traced. After completing their task, the Agent returns to their bed, their mind wiped clean of any chemical fingerprints, be they memories or traces of the nanocomputer liquid. Any fragments of memory that remain of the previous night's Operation will feel like nothing more than a dream.

Since the Dream Agent Project is a Black Ops program, not much is known about its funding, or who runs it. The targets are seemingly chosen at random, and an Agent is never used twice.

The overall purpose of the Project is unknown. The only confirmed truth is that anyone can be a Dream Agent. You. Your mother, your father. Your brothers and sisters. Your boss. Your mailman. Anyone.

Sweet Dreams.

Untitled

2004-05-14T23:53:00.000-05:00

Her glass clinked against mine as she sat beside me at the bar.

“Another one, Joe,” she said, her voice slightly slurred by what I assumed was more than just a single previous one.

I glanced up from my own glass towards the mirror behind the bar, keeping my head down. She had dark hair; even darker eyes, though that could’ve been due to the extreme lack of light in the bar. Joe, and more importantly, Joe’s patrons, liked it dark.

She had too much make-up on her small, pixie-ish face. The way her big, dark eyes were surrounded by eye shadow made me think of a raccoon I saw once as a kid, in a forest near home.

Her raven hair was cut short, her bangs longer, parted, framing her face in shadow. Her arms were bare and she shivered as she waited for Joe to pour her drink, though, given the goose bumps I was able to make out in the darkness, I doubted it would be able to warm her.

She pulled a slim, silver cigarette case from her small purse, along with a chrome Zippo. With simple precision, she slid a cigarette from its sheath and slipped it between her lips. With a flick of her fingers, the lighter sparked, its flame twisting and leaping in the dark, begging to be freed from its chrome-plated prison. She brought the fire up, illuminating her face, as she lit the cigarette. Briefly, beneath the make-up she wore, I thought I could see some discoloration around her perfectly-formed cheekbones; a mass of dark purple, the skin slightly puffy, as if bruised.

Her eyes, as I had originally thought, were indeed very dark, pools of inky blackness. In that one stolen glance, I knew I could easily drown in those pools if I let myself.

As quickly as it appeared, the flame vanished, chased away by the ghosts of the bar, fearful of the light. Her face slipped back into darkness, the smoke from her cigarette forming a halo of dust particles above her head.

On her right arm I could barely discern a tattoo, though its design was lost in the shadows of the bar.

Joe finished pouring and she nodded to him. I figured she’d get up, go back to her table, leaving me here to make love to her memory, but she sat there, fingering her glass, her head bowed, peering into the murky liquid.

“Like what you see?”

I froze, my heart pounding in my chest like a sledgehammer I was sure could be heard a mile away. She wasn’t looking into her glass. She was looking into the mirror, her reflected gaze fixed on me.

“I, uh…what?” I stammered embarrassed by my voyeurism.

She turned towards me then, slowly, as if any sudden movement would upset her delicate, drunken balance and send her sprawling to the floor.

“I think you heard me, Chief.” Her eyes drilled holes in me as she slowly lifted her glass to her blood-red lips. She sipped, shivering as the liquid burned its way down her throat. A smile spread across her face, her eyes dancing, laughing in the darkness.

“I, um, I’m sorry…for, uh, for staring.” I started, unsure of what I was getting myself into. The way she was looking at me, I felt a twinge of fear deep inside.

“No you’re not,” she said, her small voice almost childlike in its playfulness, “you’re just sorry you got caught.”

She was wrong, though. I wasn’t sorry. A little scared, maybe, but the emotion I felt more than any other right then was excitement, which was, I was sure, a result of the whiskey I had been drinking as much as it was her.

“What, uh, what’s your name?” I asked, downing the rest of my whiskey, feeling its liquid courage warm me. I signaled Joe for another.

“Does it matter?” She smiled a small, sad smile, her eyes slowly drifting out of focus. She shivered almost imperceptibly, her mind obviously somewhere else. I was beginning to think it was somewhere not good.

Just as quickly as she faded out, she was back. Her face bright and inviting, her doe eyes back on me. She sipped her drink and I felt something rubbing against my calf. I didn’t have to look to know what it was.

This girl was trouble. I’m not that much of an idiot. I can tell these things. I had my own problems. I didn’t need to get wrapped up in someone else’s shit. I kept telling myself that over and over, but deep inside I knew it was an exercise in futility. I have this thing, this condition. I always suspected it would one day be my downfall. Maybe this is the day.

I’ve always been drawn to girls who have…issues. Or maybe they’re drawn to me. Our paths keep crossing, is all I know, me and these girls, all my life. Whether they come from abusive homes, or have abusive relationships, alcohol problems, drug addiction, you name it, I find them. There isn’t an inner demon out there that I haven’t met. And it’s always up to me to fix them.

“Well, I have to call you something, don’t I?”

She grinned impishly, leaning forward, which caused her foot to fall away from my leg. I missed its touch the moment it was gone. This close to her, I could smell her perfume, though it was slightly masked by the alcohol on her breath. It smelled faintly of lilacs. “You can call me whatever you want, Chief.”

Leaning forward as she was, in the state she was in, it was only a matter of time before she lost her balance. She flailed her arms out in front of her, grasping the air for something to hold onto. I reached out to stop her fall, nearly tumbling to the ground myself. Her left hand snagged my shoulder, pulling me towards her while stopping her fall at the same time. Her right hand landed between my legs, where I felt a brief squeeze before she slid her hand onto my thigh. She righted herself inches from me, her flushed cheek brushing mine, her breath warm against my ear. “My hero,” she whispered.

I knew where this was heading, where she was leading me, where I was following, as if I were on a leash. I could see it clearly; a writhing mass of sheets and squeaking bed springs, the awkward, hung over morning after. My feeling like shit for taking advantage of a situation placed, quite literally, in my lap; her feeling used and screaming at me before lapsing into ashamed tears. She would pour her guts out to me, her every problem on this earth and she’d look at me with those big, dark eyes and I’d melt. I’d have no course of action other than to attempt to right whatever wrongs have been inflicted upon her.

Looking at her then, the smoke from her cigarette a halo around her head, her eyes searching my own, pleading with me, I didn’t care. I didn’t care about the next morning. I didn’t care about whoever had marred her milky skin. All I cared about was making the pain go away, consequences be damned. I knew I already was.

“Your place or mine?”

I awoke in the middle of the night to the thunderous noise of thousands of raindrops splattering against my bedroom window. Lightning flashed, illuminating the torrent of water cascading in sheets down the pane. Thunder rumbled slowly after, halfheartedly chasing the electricity across the sky.

Something shifted next to me and I glanced down at the curled up, rumpled silhouette that had stolen my sheets in her sleep. The periodic bursts of light revealed her sleeping form wrapped tightly in a cocoon of cotton, her dark, tousled hair a stark contrast to the whiteness of the pillow, like a small bottle of ink splashed by an artist against a blank canvas.

Barely visible against the sheet was a pale shoulder, soft and smooth, the tattoo I caught sight of in the bar, and only briefly glimpsed earlier, now lay there, quiet and still. It was a faerie, I could see, bright with yellows and oranges, sitting in a tree, against a backdrop of greens and browns. A mischievous grin played across her face, dark, sorrowful eyes peering out from behind even darker bangs. She looked a lot like her owner, I thought, though that could have been the shadows caused by the flickering light playing with my mind.

A loud crash of thunder reverberated through the room. I could feel its echo deep in my heart, like the thumping of bass when you stand too close to the speakers at a club. She felt it, too. She stirred in her sleep, and turned over, whispering something so softly, I wasn’t sure I heard anything at all. I cocked my head towards her, straining to hear over the cacophony outside.

“Hold me…”

I slid my arms around her, felt her cold skin shivering against my chest, and let the booze still running through my veins overtake me. I welcomed its dark warmth, falling asleep with a drunken promise on my lips: Whoever had done this to her had better pray they never meet me in a dark alley.

The next thing I knew, the morning sun was piercing my eyelids the way a warm knife slides through butter. As consciousness slowly reclaimed me, memories of the previous night flooded my mind. I remember brief flashes of trembling skin, moist with sweat; of hot breath against my neck and chest, the salt of tears in my throat; of quiet gasps and cries in the dark, in rhythm to the beating of two lost and frightened hearts.

My head throbbed as I gingerly sat up, still feeling the whiskey from last night. I blinked my eyes a few times in a futile attempt to clear the fog. “Good morn-,” I began, looking down beside me, coming up short with a start. Where once an angel lay I saw only air, a faint outline of her still playing in my thoughts. “What the hell?”

I got up and looked out into the living room, straining to hear something, anything, but with no luck. She was gone, in and out of my life in less time than it takes to get an oil change. I never did get her name.

The hot spray from the shower felt good against my skin, washing away the sex and sweat. I stood there for a long time with my head down, letting the water flow over me. It felt good, little daggers of heat stabbing into my head and neck.

Stepping from the shower, I grabbed a towel and began to dry off. I wiped the fog away from the mirror and what I saw staring back wasn’t pretty; old-looking, slate gray eyes, rimmed with blood, two days worth of dark stubble, and a mess of brown hair already sprinkled with age. “You dumb fuck,” I mumbled to myself, “what, you though she was going to want to stay with you? In this dump? You should know better than that. No dame would be caught dead in a place like this with a guy like you. You’re lucky the lighting is so bad at Joe’s and that she didn’t get a good look at you.”

While feeling sorry for myself, I noticed a few tiny bruises scattered around my neck and chest. I gently ran my fingers over the bite marks, remembering her warm breath and her soft moans, nearly whimpers in the dark. I couldn’t help but feel a pang of regret and sadness. I hadn’t really thought she’d want to stay with me. But it would have been nice if she had.

Not quite finished feeling sorry for myself, I wrapped the towel around my waist and headed for the kitchen. My head still throbbed from last night and I needed my fix. I was surprised to find a fresh pot of coffee waiting, my white “I Heart NY” mug, a gift from my mother years back, sitting beside the coffee maker.

I walked to the counter and was about to pick up the mug when I saw a slip of paper sticking out from beneath it. My heart immediately began to pound in my chest. Why was I so nervous? I raised the mug and noticed that her lips, dark and red, had stained one side of it. It even smelled faintly of her. I wasn’t sure if I was ever going to wash it again.

The folded piece of paper just sat there, taunting me. I could see the curve of her handwriting through the thin scrap, but couldn’t make out what it said. Hands trembling (from the chill, I told myself), I picked up the piece of paper and slowly unfolded it, afraid of what I was about to read.

“Thank you,” it read, in the kind of beautiful, elaborate handwriting most guys can only marvel at and never master, but women seem to do with ease. It was signed “Ricki,” a small, cheesy heart dotting the second “I,” like the pretty high school girls would write in your year book, a little tease, knowing they’d never see you again. You never minded, though, welcoming the tease. Hope, even false hope, is sometimes all you have to cling to.

I stood there wearing only a towel and stared at this little scrap of paper, mesmerized by her perfect handwriting, my eyes fixated on her name. I could hear it echoing back and forth in my head as I tried to put her voice to it. Ricki. Ricki. Ricki. Where the hell did you go, Ricki? At least I knew her name.

Testing...

2004-05-14T13:22:00.000-05:00

This is a test of the Emergency Fiction Service. This is only a test.