The Fisherman.

Standing, stork still with rod in hand, he waits.  A foolish shadow grinning through the afternoon glare.  He hears trains in the distance, the call of gulls, children building families of pebbles, twigs and sea smoothed rocks.  His is a foolish pursuit.  As any hope is foolish, for the universe smiles as it devours the optimistic.

In a small apartment hundreds of miles away an old friend pushes a needle into his arm and smiles at the irony of it.  It is not a smiling matter.  This does not occur to him as the drug forces its way into his veins.  He has given up on hope.

In the mind of a three year old every second is infinity.  Every laugh is an explosion that sends vines of happiness creeping on soft skin.  Every injustice is the world defeated.  Every sadness, forever.  Every smile a blessing.  It has not occurred to her to question the validity of hope.

The writer and the fisherman are one in the same, broken but standing thanks to bits of tape and glue.  The page holds them together.  The blank canvas is hope, be it an empty screen or the orange sheen of an egret's sunset.

Ellie.

This story was recently recognized in a contest...I was one of the ten overall winners of the 2011 NYC Midnight Flash Fiction Contest.

            She checked all the windows and doors, white paint cracking into spider veins.  She made sure that the heavy, lace curtains were drawn tight.  No lights.  She couldn’t chance it.  She knew they were after her, and that this was the only safe place.  She floated through the dim living room, careful not to make any noise – feet soft on the spotted carpet. 

            They had been thorough, she’d give them that.  They’d erased it all.  Aside from the occasional splash of color, or a blurry face, or a snapshot that exploded and faded like a firecracker, there was nothing but the vague sense that there should be something.  Some kind of memory…not just this grey, clutching anxiety.

She looked at herself in the broken mirror which hung on an unhinged closet door.  Thin, white hair.  She wore an old faded, floral dress and a grey sweater.  She seemed small, almost non-existent.  They had taken it all from her, and she’d done the only thing she could – closed herself away in this hidden place so they couldn’t take any more. 

            What was her name?  She couldn’t remember.  She could hear the echoes of it…distant shouts, but she couldn’t make them out.  The same was true for everything.  Friends?  Lovers?  Jobs?  Enemies?  Places she had been?  She could sense the outlines of all these things, but couldn’t fill in the blank spaces.   She let her head sink to her chest and began to cry.

            The house?  She didn’t recognize any of the furnishings.  She was frightened by it.  Taken aback by old, skirted lamps.  Startled by books left open…convinced they hadn’t been there moments before.  It made no sense.  There was nothing to be afraid of.  It was a ghost house, barren, but comforting.

             

            The knock at the door was like a gunshot.  One single, sharp rap.  She froze in place.  She closed her eyes tightly and saw fireworks in the darkness.  The knock was familiar, but she didn’t know why.

            “Eloise, you open up now, hear?  I done brought some things for you.”

            Eloise?  Her hands began to tremble.  She had known that name, but it wasn’t hers.

            “Eloise, it’s cold out here, hon, I’m gonna let myself in, okay?”

            She stood quickly and crossed the arid room.  She felt terror rising in her.  She didn’t know what to do.  She squeezed into the space between two bookcases and tried to slow her breathing.  She heard the jangling of keys and then the creeping rasp of metal on metal as she watched the deadbolt turn.

            The door opened and brought with it a shaft of deafening sunshine.  She could see the outline of a woman, and she covered her eyes.  The voice was soft, kind.  It added to the panic.

            “Now, Eloise…you got nothing to be afraid of.  It’s just me, Norma.  Norma Betts.  I’ve lived next door for forty years.”

            She opened her eyes and saw a woman her age, but plump, squeezed into a navy blue dress, white belt, ankles unfolding over her white pumps.

            “Oh, my.  Eloise, honey.  Don’t be afraid.  You have to listen to me and believe me.  My name is Norma.  You and I have been friends for a long, long time.  We raised our kids together.  We…”

The woman choked on her words and a tear drifted slowly out of one eye. Then she righted herself, shaking herself courageous, like a bird drying its wings.

            “Ellie…”

            The name was like a slap to the face.  There was a moment of recognition.  Gone..

            “Ellie, sit down, hon…just sit a spell…that’s right.  I know you don’t remember, but my name is Norma Betts and we have been friends a long time.  We’ve been visitin’ every day for as long as I can remember.  I was here yesterday.  I brought you some pound cake.  You ate the whole thing in one bite.”

            The plump woman chuckled.  

            “No, you’re right.  I reckon it’s not funny.  Sometimes you laugh so as not to cry, hon.  Look what I found.”

            The woman opened her bag and pulled out an old wooden picture frame.  She handed it over gently.  It held a news clipping with a picture of a young man in uniform.  He was smiling a mischievous grin and leaning casually on the wing of an old airplane, cigarette hanging from his lip. 

            “Ellie, that’s Allen…do you see?”

She ran her fingers over the glass and looked into the handsome face.  She felt uncomfortable, like she was suddenly nude.  She knew that she should know this man.  She looked into the wet eyes of the other woman, who was crying steadily now.

            “Ellie, that’s okay, hon.  That is just OKAY.  You just don’t worry a bit.  You sit here and relax, and I’ll make us some tea.”

            She heard water running.  Then she heard the stove ignite.  Then the clunk of the phone as it was lifted off the cradle. 

            “Dr. Johnson, please.  He is?  You just tell him that this is Norma Betts, and he told me to call when I had to, and I do believe it’s time.  Tell him as soon as you can.”

            The phone made the same sound as it was set back; this time she couldn’t help but think that it sounded like a cell door clanging shut.  She began to shake.  She dropped the frame and the glass shattered.  She froze.

            “Ellie, dear, you just don’t fret about nothing.  We’ll just sit and rest a spell.”

            She felt a hand on her shoulder…warm.  She looked up into the plump face, streaked with mascara.  She knew.

            “Nor…Norma.  I’d be lying if I said I remembered you.  And I sure am sorry I don’t.  But I think I do understand.  Yes, I believe I understand.  I think I owe you quite a bit of thanks.”

            The two women sat silently and drank their tea until it was cold; then there was another knock at the door, but neither moved to answer it.

John's Rage

My impressions blend and bend 
Like wind-storm branches
Pencil sketches against an agate sky
John is breaking furniture
Screaming, growling profane
Animal sounds
It, the sound, reaches out 
Across the bay, across oceans
Expanding and contracting
Stretching light into
Star tendrils of rain soaked
Neon taxi windows
My conscience is a widow
Dark, and bleak and preaching
But I stay hidden
Beneath the animal growling crash
And beneath the glow of 
The night…the dark…
The empty expanse of ambient fear

Spin, the lights...

Spin.  The lights, like bloodstains, smear the walls.

Fuck it and fuck it all.  You want something to hit.  You hate violence.  You want something to hate.  You hate wanting it.  You want something to want.  But you can't think of anything.

Jumped In.

He felt the air leave his stomach and crumpled to his knees.  The world began to spin.  A kick to the head...it was like a bucket of ice water.  He could hear distant shouts and wondered what he was doing.  Everything was stop-motion.  He wanted out.  That was all.  He wanted to become weightless...to float above the dingy streets and look down upon the smiling monuments.

He could taste blood.  He curled himself into a ball and absorbed the blows, covering his face with fingers like tide pool tendrils.  It did not hurt anymore.  It was just a mass of confusion.  He felt himself lift.  His body was not a part of him.  His heart was aching.  He knew that he would never be able to forgive this.  And he knew that his inability to forgive would destroy him.  Blacken his soul.

It was not what he had expected.  He could not imagine standing up, arms raised like half-mast flags.  He could not imagine hugs or pats on the back.  He did not want it to end because then it would be real.  He wanted to stay, curled and beaten, unable to question his choice.

Dreams...

Fevered, I wrap myself in lies and absolutions.  I am not what I am, but a sum of the sad cliches that have led me onward.  Truth falls around me, gathering at my feet like a technicolor dream coat.  You lie?  Of course you lie.  I lie?  Sometimes, indeed, I do.  I am made of thatch and rosemary.  I am hidden from your view and lost in a forest of deceit.  I want nothing.  I need nothing.  Shadows morph into phantasms too dire to contemplate.  I tear at my skin.  I am on a quest for destruction.

Green pastures.  I remember them well.  They are memories, crushed now with skyscrapers, ash, and soot. All has been sullied.  Nothing pure remains.  I feel the needle deep in my vein and hold on for one more day.  One more chance to betray myself.  I will take it gladly.

You think I don't remember.  But I do.  In bits.  In drabs and scraps.  I remember summer fields of alfalfa and innocence.  They mock me now.  They disgust me.  I will lie in my room.  I will let the weight of lost abandon press upon my chest.  I will try to breathe and fail and my heart will pound with the sound of defeat.

Free refills.

He sat, unflinchingly, in his hard wooden chair with a lukewarm cup of coffee in front of him, the paper edges turning sewage brown.  In his hands, he held a book.  He was trying to read the book, but could not concentrate.  He was trying to drink the coffee, but did not like coffee.  It was the cheapest thing on the menu.  And there were free refills.  And this happenstance allowed him to sit for hours, trying to read, pretending not to steal glances at the girl making the coffee.

He was young.  That was part of it.  He did not see value in himself.  He felt small and weak, like a freshly hatched chick.  He looked the part, too.  He was thin and birdlike, with soft, thin down upon his head.  She was about his age.  Maybe older.  There was something fierce about her.  If he was a chick, she was a Peregrine Falcon.  She wore vintage clothes that seemed mismatched but weren't.  She had tattoos on her arms.  He did not know what the tattoos were because he could not see them with his averted eyes.

He felt foolish.  All the hours spent in the cafe, pretending to read, drink, live.  He occasionally worked himself into a feverish state...convinced himself that he would just talk to her for god's sake.  It wasn't like she was better than he was.  Or was she?  Was her towering confidence superior to his life inside his mind?  He knew he was not a bad person.  If he was a person.

He sometimes doubted his own existence.  It was like a house of cards.  He got lost in philosophical labyrinths that led to more self-doubt.  More self-loathing.  Then, he would decide that it was all futile anyway.  He was perfectly content to drink tea and read in his apartment.  But if this was true, why the facade?  Why the lukewarm coffee?  He lied to himself and, this too, made him question his existence.

After months and months, he decided it had to end.  He walked to the cafe, his sneakers slapping the sidewalk.  He was going to talk to her.  If it didn't work, so be it.  The stasis was killing him.  He felt strong in his resolve.  He felt the sun on his shoulders.  He felt a kind of pride welling up in him like a storm wave.

He turned the corner and his resolve grew stronger.  He knew exactly what he would say.  And how he would say it.  One part Jimmy Stewart, two parts Bogart.  He might have to start smoking.  When he opened the door, the cafe was the same as always.  With one small difference.  She was gone.  Without asking the man with the goatee behind the counter, he knew that she was gone for good.  He actually laughed out loud.  It was comical.  All that money spent on coffee.  All the emotional turmoil.  At least the refills had been free.

He stepped out of the cafe and into the liquor store next door.  He did not know what brand of cigarettes to buy, so he looked at the man behind the counter, put on his best Stewart/Bogart and said, "Surprise me."