May Week 3: Story 19:
Fisher of Men
He was a drunk, that much was clear from the fermented smells that rose off of him like a cologne. There were other smells as well but the one Peter knew best was the smell of booze. Peter looked at the man in front of him, disheveled would be putting it kindly.
The docks where Peter grew up had a slightly different smell from the man in front of him, one of fish and motor oil. This man had more garbage mixed in then fish.
“Friends or family?” Peter asked the man in front of him.
“Well,” the man muttered out while scratching at a grey and long unkept beard, “I got a daughter up in Williamsburg, we don’t talk much.” The man’s eyes were starting to sober a little the perfect point for Peter, the truth would come with a touch more accuracy. Sometimes the men were too drunk and you couldn’t decipher what they were trying to say. Sometimes they were too sober and lies came instead of truth. Sober men let fear have a foothold in their reality. No, Peter thought to himself, this man is in a perfect spot.
Peter kept with his line of questions, “friends?”
The man looked at the ceiling as if all the friends he had in the world lay up there among the rafters and metal beams of the abandoned warehouse. “There is Cardboard Carl. I would count him as a friend, might even share that bottle you promised with him.” Peter knew about Cardboard Carl. The man looked back across at Peter then not meeting his eyes for more than a second, dropping them to the grey of the cement floor and continued, “though I haven’t seen Cardboard in a while.”
Peter tried to look professional but his hands were beginning to shake as he grasped the pen and the clipboard that he used as an anchor to keep him steady. This man was turning out to be perfect. More perfect than Peter had thought possible. Peter had one more question that would determine how perfect he truly was, “have you ever been fishing?”
The man smiled at this, “of course I fish!” The man said with a hint of pride that came out in a raise in volume. “Everyone here on the coast has fished at one time or another and in my younger days I did loads of fishing.”
Peter leaned back in the rusted metal chair, relief flooded his body like hot liquid on a cold day. This man was perfect. Peter had wondered if he would be, but you could never tell by the walk by. Peter had actually picked up two previous men but they hadn’t been perfect. Drugs or mental illness plaguing them instead of drink.
Peter breathed in the cold salty air that hung around the empty warehouse. The smell of fish came back strong and hard. Peter breathed it in like the burn of a good cigarette. He let his eyes drift to the rafters above as the man in front of him had. He could feel the relief flood his body and he let the clipboard slip from his hand and it clattered against the floor.
The surprise loudness of the sound must have agitated his companion because the man across from Peter spoke for the first time without a question being posed, “hey man you said I would get a bottle if I answered your science questions.”
Peter was a little annoyed that the man was speaking without a question being posed, but he let the annoyance slip like a towel to the floor. Peter let his naked joy radiate from his face when he looked at the man again. The man’s face was sobering up more and Peter knew the time was near.
“Yes, I did say that.” Peter reached down into a large bag he had at his side and pulled out a bottle of Wild Turkey. Peter thought about this bottle often. It was the bottle that changed his life. Peter had watched this come down time and time again on his mother until her screams had ceased and the man holding the bottle had tired. Peter had always been amazed it hadn’t broken.
When Peter used the bottle in the beginning he had two breaks, something that ruined the ritual for Peter. Peter had perfected his craft, and at this point and had figured out a perfect way to hold the bottle so it never broke as it made contact.
Peter looked at the man in front of him. He was different from Peter. Peter wore his tailored suit and expensive haircut like a shield. The man before him was wearing pieced together clothing to fight against the cold of the Pacific Northwest. His hair and beard had not been cut in ages.
A smile tugged at Peter’s mouth as he saw the joy that the man had in his eyes for the bottle. The man wanted this, Peter could tell by the look in his eyes. So, without further ceremony Peter gave the man the bottle again and again.
May Week 2: Story 18:
The Queen
The old man sat in his wheelchair. The chair next to him haunted. The last grey tuffs of his hair sat in wild angles. The deck of playing cards worn and faded. He flipped a card. Red heart just visible, but the queen stood out in all her splendor.
May Week 1: Story 17:
An Elite Club
The song ended in my ear and with a great jerking motion, I slowed to a walk. The song was only a short one and I cursed putting the shuffle on alphabetic order. All the short songs were when I was walking and all the long ones played when I ran. A few runners ran past me. It was Portland so they were wearing things like pink tutus and green wigs. I was dressed in what I trained in: green running shorts and a black running top. I was used to being boring.
“One percent of the population? Is that in the states or the whole world?” My partner asked.
“Don’t know. Not even sure it’s the truth.” I replied while we lay in bed with the television going in the background. I read once that you should never put a television in your room because it decreases intimacy, a fact I could attest to.
She made a noise that was more air than words and went back to her phone. I went back to my laptop and the sitcom played on.
The song ended and so did my walk. Three more songs before walking was an option again. I wanted to cry. Maybe I would get lucky and the walking song would take me to the base of the T-Curves. The T-Curves were called the Terwilliger curves. It is a 1.7-mile section of Interstate 5 in Portland. It is one of the deadliest stretches of highway in Oregon. I wondered if I would die going up the hill. This was only a half marathon what was I going to do when the full came in May?
The buildings and streets of Portland passed by. People stood on the corners and yelled and cheered. Some passed out shots of tequila or beer, I passed on both, I was already about to throw up. Over an underpass and I could tell the ground was rising up. Here I go again on my own, the music pounded in my ears.
“We can do hard things.” My response to first graders who wanted to give up reading or math or anything. The response I received was either a sad realization that I wasn’t going to let them get out of this or a huff of air as they tried it again. This response surprised me, “it’s easy for you! You know how to read.”
The defiant brown eyes looked at me under locks of brown hair that needed a cut but probably would not get one for a few more months unless he took the scissors to them again.
“Well, it’s not hard for me now, but I do other things that are hard for me.”
“Like what?” The pouty lip pushed out as his little arms, still a bit chubby with baby fat, crisscrossed against his chest.
I wanted to say, like having this conversation, but good sense stopped me from saying that, and instead, I thought for a second. When was the last time I had done anything really hard? The question frightened me. I had been tossing around a few hard things but nothing was coming and I could tell from the little face next to me that he thought he’d won.
“I’m running a marathon.” The words surprised him and me.
“What’s that?”
“It’s where you run a really long race, over twenty-six miles. It takes you five hours and you run the whole time. I’ve heard that some people’s shoes fill up with blood because their feet are so raw from running.” I knew the blood part would impress him, even though I was sure it was an exaggeration. He was impressed and proceeded to do his work (not without the occasional tear and frustrated grunt). I started to think about what I’d told the boy and regret never tasted so bitter.
The hill looked like a mountain rising up in front of me. This was what the runners knew was going to be the longest part of the half marathon. It wound up the hill making for over a two-mile uphill journey. Hills were my Achilles heel. I trained mostly on the beach and the highway by my house. I remembered my promise to a stubborn child and started the climb.
My first practice run was dreadful. It was down the highway on the running path next to the blackberries. My breath caught quick and burned painful after only a few short minutes. The in and out rhythm became ragged and stretched after only a few hundred meters. I was breathing hard and worried early on that I might die. I was exhausted after a mile. Over twenty-five of these to go, this was going to be worse than I thought.
When I got back from my one-mile run I was exhausted and my partner looked at me and asked, “is it raining out?”
“No.”
“Oh.” She said going back fiddling with breakfast.
“Why’d you ask that?”
“No reason.”
I climbed little by little up the hill waiting for the three songs to finish so I could get to my walking song. As I suspected my shuffle was against me songs that were longer than the three-minute average worked their way out of the shuffle. I climbed the hill and started to notice the beauty of the city below, bathed in the green from the trees. People started to line the street again and I knew I was near the top.
After fourteen weeks of training, I was close to my half marathon goal. I had a friend who was built like a Greek goddess who was also training she suggested we do the Shamrock half as a check-in to see where we were for our training. Nerves ran wild in my stomach as I thought about it, I had never run a race before and almost all my training was on the beach where no one could view me huffing and puffing along. The Greek goddess was convincing and I found myself in bed signing up after a long day in the classroom.
My partner leaned over and kissed my cheek, “I’m really proud of you.”
The hill rounded out and my walking song came on. It was downhill now and I didn’t feel like I needed it. I sped downhill the wind in my face and my speed picking up. I was a gazelle. As I came to the end of the race, marked by a large checkered end sign and a time on the clock I felt tears sting my eyes. I was handed a beer opener that doubled as a metal and I met my partner. She showered me with kisses and together we drank in the orange gated off beer garden.
The next day in class I pulled my phone from my pocket and pulled over my doubting Thomas. “This is the end of the race. I finished in two hours twenty-seven minutes.”
He was impressed, “I thought you said it would take five. You are fast!”
“Well, that was only a half marathon. My full isn’t for two more months.”
The doubting Thomas looked at me with a smile, “well you do look tired and your face is really red. I guess it was hard.”
“Thanks, buddy.”
He goes back to his seat and I go on with my day. It does feel good to do something that is hard, after it is done.
April Week 4 Story 16:
The Future of Flight
Cool fingers of sensation moved up her spine let her know it was behind her. This tickling was the sense that had been with her since the car wreck when she was fifteen years old. Frankie didn’t turn around, she already had an idea of what she would see. She leaned forward in the large black waiting chair in the airport. She wondering if ghosts could fly.
Frankie Lena Smith was twenty-nine years old and about to take her first ride in the sky. She sucked in a large breath of air and tried to release it slowly the way her shrink had taught her. In slowly through your nose and out slower through your mouth. Try a count of four in and six out. The shrink’s words came back to her, haunting in a way ghosts never were. The shrink, whose name was Dr. Ajaria, had grey short hair that stuck out all over her head. She had small glasses that seemed to have a problem staying on the ridge of her nose. Frankie had wondered in their first session if she looked like this because she was a shrink or if because she was a shrink she looked this way. A chicken or the egg conundrum, Frankie supposed. The absolutism of her look had kept Frankie coming back a second and third time. When the fourth appointment had come Frankie decided it wasn’t for her and hadn’t shown up.
Frankie had never left Popenoe City in Kansas. She knew ghosts lived there but wasn’t sure if they lived everywhere else as well. When Dr. Ajaria hadn’t been able to help and Frankie she decided that location change might help. Frankie wasn’t sure that it would work but after years of pills and booze hadn’t, Frankie thought it was worth a try.
Most people would assume it would be terrifying to see the dead but they didn’t understand the inconvenience of it. When the dead were near they made her tingle and lose focus on the things of the living. The dead were needy and they were drawn to people who could see them. They accosted her over and over again like a dog with a ball to the point where she couldn’t focus on the living. The living does not believe in seeing the dead so, when Frankie would shout for them to leave her alone, most thought she was crazy.
In slowly through your nose and out slower through your mouth. Try a count of four in and six out. The mantra played out again in Frankie’s head as the tingle became worse. She hoped the dead couldn’t fly, actually, she was counting on it. She was moving to Pensacola, Florida to train as a flight attendant. If there was anywhere in the world the ghosts might not be she had reasoned it would be the air.
The loudspeaker announced the first-class boarding would be starting soon. Frankie was not first class but she could wait. She had waited twenty-nine years. When her boarding class was finally called she stood in the back with the other poor people and boarded. The tingle followed her to her seat but she closed her eyes, she didn’t want to see the dead man that had followed her onto the plane.
As the plane moved from stationary to taxiing to acceleration Frankie almost wanted to scream as pressure forced her back in her seat. As lift-off took hold and they moved up, up, up Frankie kept her eyes closed. An eternity later when they leveled out Frankie opened her eyes and looked around. The man next to her leaned over and with a self-righteous smile asked, “first time flying?”
Frankie looked at him and said nothing. Instead, she looked all around her and took in what wasn’t there: the dead. There was no tingle, no force pulling her away. There were no disfigured dead trying to pull her into their troubles. In slowly through your nose and out slower through your mouth. Try a count of four in and six out. The mantra repeated one more time. Then she turned to the man next to her, “it won’t be my last.”
April Week 3 Story 15:
300 Hundred Grams
Checking the Mickey Mouse watch at her wrist she wanted to pound her head into the glass container she leaned against. Five minutes, it had only been five minutes, she would never make it through this day. The next customer came up. He was tall and handsome at least ten years older than her. His black jacket was a stark contrast to her white butcher apron.
The man put his hand to his stubbled chin. She absently wondered what it would be like to rub her hand across that stubble. He probably wouldn’t enjoy it, she wondered if she would. The gold ring on his left hand told her to quit thinking about his stubbled chin.
She pictured his wife. Tall and thin with large doe eyes and blond highlighted hair. Her opposite in every way except for height. She had always been tall, like her mother and father. Her skin tone came from her mother and so did her heavy-set frame. The tight curls belonged to her father, who with his pale skin and kinky hair would have made the perfect rodeo clown.
“I’ll take three hundred grams of the oven-roasted turkey.” Three hundred grams? How much was three hundred grams? Panic rose in her throat. Shit. She was going to look like a fool. She had no idea how much three hundred grams was. Was it closer to one pound or thirty pounds? She jogged her memory, there was something about grams and a paperclip, what was the connection?
She must have been taking too long because the man huffed out a large amount of air, “don’t they teach you, people, anything? Three hundred grams is a half of a pound.”
Color rose to her face and her stomach knotted. Tears burned behind her eyes but she refused to let them fall in front of this man. She weighed out his turkey and handed it over. He stomped off.
Bill came back from break and said, “hey Holly.”
She nodded and swallowed and said, “Bill I am going to finish cutting and wrapping these rounds okay?”
Bill must have heard the quaver in her voice because he said, “everything alright?”
“Just fine Bill.” She said waving over her back and went to cut the rounds of beef wondering how many grams she was putting in each package.
April Week 2 Story 14:
Better Day to Quit
Exhaustion pulled down on her lids with strong hands. The car swerved and the jolt pulled her lids up. Casey took a clearing breath and pulled the car over in the large potholed pullout next to the river.
A flicker of light burst from the white Bic lighter as she struck it, a dying star in a moment of black eternal space. She had heard these seventy-nine-cent miracles worked on Everest. The cool burn of the cigarette bit the back of her throat, she had stopped smoking three times now and it was nights like these that gave her a new quitting day. A nicotine high was what she needed to get her up this curvy god-forsaken canyon.
Ten months of driving up here weekends were getting to be too much and she knew she couldn’t keep it up. Maybe she’ll die sooner than the doctors think, the thought came, and a small bark of laughter escaped her flaky cracked lips. Nothing was ever easy with Emma Dee, that old bitch would hang on forever. She sucked in the last sweet taste from the white cancer stick, feeling alert enough to climb up the canyon for her pilgrimage to Emma Dee.
“Damn it Casey, shut that door you’re letting all the heat out.” Casey shut the door with her booted foot and balanced armfuls of the brown bags of groceries. It would be easier if Emma Dee would just let her put the groceries in plastic bags but she insisted on paper so she could use it as fire-starter. A three-foot-high stack of brown bags, that Casey was sure was a fire hazard, was stacked next to the potbellied wood stove.
Casey placed the bags on the orange Formica counter and started to unpack the supplies she picked up. If she was slow enough putting away groceries it would use up the time she had left before she was free to go back to the city.
Freezer meals and easy to grab food was Emma Dee’s choice, but the old woman also insisted Casey meal prep a few meals that she could bitch about on Casey’s next trip up. Too salty, too sweet, and too something else was the usual complaints. The in-home healthcare professional, who stayed most of the time with Emma Dee, refused to cook anymore and Emma Dee insisted on a homecooked meal, even if it tasted like shit. Casey was again grateful she only had to see the woman on the weekends.
“Casey before you leave will you bring in a few armloads of firewood? That nurse only does the minimum she has to. I don’t know what has gotten into people these days.” Casey stopped listening. The words dribbling on from the easy chair in the living room where Emma Dee perched as queen of the trailer dominion, Casey knew without listening where the speech was destined to go.
“Yeah, Grandma Emma.” One more thing to take up time. A small smile pulled up the corners of Casey’s mouth.
“Make sure you get the nice round ones, those last all night. The power bill was ungodly high because you and that nurse never put the round ones in at night.”
Casey thought about the smokes in her glove box.
A coughing fit came from the recliner and Casey dropped the food on the counter and rushed around the wood paneling to the brown recliner. Emma Dee was holding a rag to her face gasping for air. Casey leaned down hand on Emma Dee’s shoulder and waited for the fit to stop. When it did Emma Dee to settled back in her recliner, a triumphant hero who had overcome the hill at Iwo Jima, Casey picked up the pink water cup from the hospital and placed straw next to the pale pink lips of Emma Dee. Drinking deep and then pushing it away she said, “I’m dying Casey.”
“Not for a while Grandma.”
“The sooner the better for you. Then you can get back to your life in the big city. You can forget about the woman who raised you when your mother died in that horrible accident.” Casey said nothing and walked back to the kitchen to finish putting the groceries away. Casey knew it was fruitless to say anything to Emma Dee about the “accident.” Casey would blame it on cancer slowly eating away her at her insides, but Emma Dee had always been this way.
Emma Dee’s husband had died in a car accident when Casey’s mom was only a year old. Emma Dee had raised her only daughter on guilt and sympathy of others and when her only child killed herself Emma Dee called it a horrible accident, which Casey guessed in some ways it was. Pain begot pain, at least that’s what her therapist said.
Four armfuls of wood later, Casey was ready to say goodbye. Emma Dee had the usual goodbye that left Casey feeling tired.
Driving back down the canyon to the city she rolled down the window as she struck up the Bic lighter. Tomorrow was a better day to quit.
April Week 1 Story 13:
Hoppers
The hoppers rose before her like a procession of the faithful as she walked with purpose through the waist-high golden grass. The knife in her hand was a sleek silver metal. One without serrations and a rubber grip handle. Considering the amount of blood, she was about to have on her hands she thought a rubber handle best.
Her feet crunched on the dry vegetation creating a crinkling, brittle snapping as she moved. The plants baked day after day in the scalding summer sun in a year when no rain fell. The well had been dry for days, thinking of this she ran her tongue over the crusted dry of her cracked lips. There was no spit left in her mouth and so the fatted tongue gave no relief to the flaking lips.
“What to do, what to do, what to do,” the words ran out over her mouth in a constant prayer never pausing, never ceasing.
Approaching the coop her whispers became shouts. She couldn’t keep them alive anymore. Had it been just the drought they might have survived, limping through until the rain fell in large drops to the desperate earth, but it hadn’t been just the drought. There had been the hoppers. Hoppers feasted on the last of the crop, pillaging and taking all, leaving nothing. Now she was here. It was time to do the last thing.
She took the key from her cotton apron and opened the padlock to the coop. The click of the metal and the pop of the lock as it opened created a metallic unnatural sound in the dry of the desert.
She walked in and looked at the large eyes of her four children. Wane and skeletal they would suffer no more.
March Week 4 Story 12:
Doorways
Doorways
Lanie’s thoughts were empty, her mind blank after the water of the great Mississippi filled the inside of her mind. There was no room for anything but the river.
Momentarily, Lanie had noticed the building when the driver dropped her at the front. Bricks rose three stories and met spired points of grey marble to form an odd rundown castle. Creeping vines made their ever upward journey around large dust-covered windows. Brambles and unkempt bushes littered the front and a crumbling walkway led to a white paint peeling door. No sound reached Lanie’s ears and the black expanse of trees was all that rose up behind the building.
She twisted the knob and walked into a tiled entry, her shoes squeaking and muddy. Vaulted ceilings rose to meet a darkened ceiling. The staircase bathed in black shadow twirled around itself. Every few feet hung large gold frames with intricate swirls and swoops. The elaborate frames held pictures of dogs. Dogs of all breeds and in all types of clothing. Hats, suits, and flowery dresses were the most common but Lanie also saw western wear and what was possibly a traditional Choctaw dress near the top of the spiral staircase.
The shadows deepened along the wall and hid figures in its dusty depths. “Hello, can I help you?” A voice called to Lanie.
Lanie Smith was seven years old and had not had to introduce herself in ages. Everyone she met lately had heard of the small girl’s story. She was pale and gaunt with deep black Gibbous moons under her eyes. Lanie had been the girl in the accident, who’s perfect life was ripped apart like the car her dad drove.
“Oh, it’s you, dear.” The creaky voice said to Lanie. The single yellow light was cast from a tall and shaded lamp on the desk that came to Lanie’s middle. A woman, grey-haired and plump with half-circle spectacles attached to a beaded croaky sat perched behind the desk. The woman used to remind people of their grandmas, now aged, she often reminded them of a ghoul. Gravity had forced her towards the earth, her body a rounded hill of sagging flesh.
“Lanie dear come here, we need to get you processed. I haven’t any idea how long you will be staying with us and I need to get you assigned a room, even if it is only for a while. Oh, and please do be careful you are dripping water. You would think they would at least have given you a towel, heavens know I haven’t got one at my desk.”
Lanie looked down, a small puddle gathering around her feet. Lanie wanted to ask about the dogs she had seen in the entryway but words seemed like heavy hard things and left the silence unbothered.
“Well, there you go dear, all assigned, just need to sign here.” She looked at Lanie’s wet state a frown sliding on her face, “better sign it quick, don’t want the paper to get wet.”
Lanie made her mark and the woman smiled and pointed to the entryway, “that way up the stairs. Take the third landing and down the hallway. Last door on your right. Mind yourself it’s dark.” Lanie didn’t move and the woman did her best to smile forcing the sagging skin upward, “it’s a waiting space dear. It’s perfectly safe.”
Lanie turned and made her way up the staircase. Placing her hand on the cool of the wood as she ascended into the darkness. The paintings of the dogs were clear now. Each done in great detail. She could almost feel the fur and smell the sweet hot breath of the dogs. She had a dog once, never dressed like these but, a great large dog with black fur and a pink tongue.
She reached each new landing and was plunged deeper into the darkness. Her eyes adjusted until she was on the last landing and a hallway stretched before her. The wooden walls were affixed with sconces that held no light. Only a small dirty window at the end let in dim white light. She moved along the worn pink carpet until she reached the last door on the right. Twisting the brass handle she walked through the door to her waiting space. This was the space she would stay until her body gave into the water of the Mississippi, or the doctors coaxed her to the land of the living.
March Week 3 Story 11:
Unchecked
Smoke held the distant mountain a fake fog. The air was thick with the smell of campfires. The sun a red glow in a grey sky. Weston looked up and wiped a dotted layer of sweat from his forehead creating a smear of dirt.
“We better keep moving.” Lane said.
Weston started moving his feet again. The pair moved among the conifers and brush of the Idaho mountains. The fire was consuming the earth acre by acre unchecked by human influence was miles off still, but its effects made it difficult to breathe. Weston tried to adjust the pack on his back. The cheap pack was digging into his back where his shoulder blades met his neck.
The pack was given to him by his mom four Christmases ago when the world still stood on ceremony. She had said he might need it one day, not knowing how true that statement was now.
Weston felt his foot slip out from under him and his face met the ground pain exploded in his head.
“Shit.” Lane said and knelt beside Weston. “You might have broken your nose.”
Weston tasted metal as he tried to stand, “it doesn’t matter we need to get out of here.”
“If you’re bleeding they can follow the trail. Let’s patch it up and then get moving.”
Lane grabbed a large patch of gauze and put it to Weston’s nose. Wrapping it tightly several times around his head he said, “this should stop the blood. If you see drops let me know. They can pick up the scent of blood miles away.”
The two men covered the blood spot with dirt and continued on. Weston was careful of his steps as they moved through the forest and up the mountain. In these sparsely populated places, there were things that would eat them as quickly as the creatures that devoured the people in the cities below.
Weston thought about the books he had read about grizzlies and wolves and movies he used to watch on countless streaming services. Movies where the wild animals tore people apart to feast on their flesh. They were almost as bad as the creatures.
“Stop.” Lane said and Weston froze. The silence burned Weston’s ears. Long minutes stretched out and Weston ached to move as the pack cut into him.
“What?” Weston started and Lane waved his hand motioning silence. Silence pushed longer until Weston thought his mind would break apart from it. Cracking of a branch and Lane screamed, “run!”
The pair started off in a dead sprint as something closed in behind them. Weston ran and willed his legs to move faster. He shook off the pack his mother had given in, in an effort to move faster. The pack was full of the survival gear they would need in the outpost, but if Weston didn’t make it to the outpost it wouldn’t matter.
Weston didn’t see the twisted root that caught his foot. As he landed hard he was able to put his hands out this time before the ground could connect with his nose. A small victory that was eclipsed by pain in his leg. Twisting he saw the monster that he had read about invading the cities but had yet to lay eyes on. Its yellow flesh and black eyes were striking but the mouth held Weston’s attention. A hinged jaw held rows of razor teeth and a black forked tongue that licked the air. Weston’s terror was soon quelled by nothingness.
March Week 2 Story 10
Six word story:
Tall girl. Not pretty. Not athletic.
March Week 1 Story 9
Because of the Zombies
“Will you bring me something to drink from the kitchen?” She asks with her feet up on the couch. I swivel from my perch looking out the kitchen window. The open floor plan of the three-bedroom, two-bathroom house makes it easy to see the bottoms of her feet from where they lay on top of the armrest on the couch. Her neon pink socks have white writing that read: if you can read this bring me wine. I consider her socks and reach into the walnut cabinet and pull out a water glass, filling it directly from the sink. I bring her the full glass and hold it out to her. She doesn’t look up from her phone but grabs the water glass and brings it to her pale and chapped lips. She needs to drink more water.
“You work tonight?” I ask trying to draw her into me.
Her eyes flicker and threaten to leave her screen but in the end, they stay firm, “nope, night off.”
I don’t say anything else because there isn’t anything really to say. I sit down on the couch with the brown flowered cushions that she picked out and pick up my phone. Instead of flipping to any of the multiple social media accounts I flip to Amazon and purchased the next thing on my wish list: chew toy.
Zombies. I know she doesn’t believe an apocalypse could happen, but in the deep parts of her, the parts she keeps secret from me, I think she believes the dead could reanimate. We’ve watched them all: World War Z, I am Legend, The Walking Dead if it has zombies in it we’ve seen it.
At first, I thought it was cute. A small-framed blonde that enjoyed the blood and gore of it. Then a worldwide pandemic happened. She said she didn’t believe in zombies but I wondered. When working remotely became a reality for her, she asked me to come. It had been four years and we were living together already. I, like the rest of the world’s bartenders, was out of a job for a while so we moved north, out of the sunny beaches of southern California to the mountains of northern Idaho. She said it was closer to her mother who lived outside of Seattle but I wondered if it wasn’t for zombies.
Opening the small Amazon box, I pulled out the red chew toy I had ordered four days prior, two-day shipping did not happen in small remote Idaho towns. She had promised me a dog as penance for moving to Idaho. Getting ready for a dog was as exciting as getting one, maybe more so.
The toy was perfect and I walked into our spare room we still hadn’t unpacked even though we had lived in this house for more than six months. We had purchased it in late summer and selling our loft in LA. We had ended up ahead and up a thousand square feet. Now in March, the novelty of the house had worn off as we spent most of our free time cleaning it. More money, more problems was a saying that we had changed to more house, more cleaning.
I placed the red chew toy next to the small pile I was accumulating. It was the last thing I needed before I was ready to get a dog. I was going to tell her tonight that I was ready to start looking for our new family addition.
Her zombie-themed thirtieth birthday should have been a sign. It was a surprise party at our flat two years before we moved to Idaho. All our friends dressed up in costumes that would have been perfect onset of her favorite movies. We hid in various places around our flat and then when she entered we shuffled out of our spots in a brain-eating frenzy. The bag she had in her hand became a weapon and Max, our hapless friend closest to her, ended up in the ER.
I waited for her to take her morning bathroom break from the endless Zoom meetings that controlled her day and broke the news, “I’m already.” I announced as if I had just found the cure to the sickness that was plaguing our world.
“What?” she asked tersely, not pausing on her way to our spare bathroom. I tried not to roll my eyes.
“I’m ready for the dog.” Her face crinkled in confusion and so I clarified, “the dog you promised we could get when we moved out of the city.”
“Oh,” was all she seemed to be able to muster and she went into the bathroom. I stood outside as the door shut in my face. I turned and walked to our calendar on the fridge. Next Saturday was our free day together. I had to work this Saturday at the brewery, a place that had stayed open despite the death toll around the country. I didn’t have to work the twentieth and neither did she. I wrote dog day on a stickie note and stuck it to the calendar.
I’ve heard that zombies can be metaphors for different things. Friends have said they can be a metaphor for global destruction, communism, globalism, or even racial sublimation. I assumed the reason she liked zombies had a deeper meaning. She saw zombie movies as a metaphor for things happening in the real world. Thinking back, it should have been obvious that, that wasn’t true, but love is blind, or so they say.
When dog day came I woke her early like a kid at Christmas. I wanted her full of coffee so she wouldn’t be grouchy. If she was grouchy then the dog shelter volunteers might not let us have one of the dogs.
I shouldn’t have been worried. It seemed the only prerequisite for adopting a dog was having a pulse, which was good because she was grumpy and moody the whole time we were there. I ignored her, this was my day. This was my reward for moving with her to the middle of nowhere because she was secretly afraid of zombies.
There were not as many dogs as I hoped, it seemed people in Idaho kept their dogs chained up outside rather than send them away. I walked around and noticed all were big dogs. I had my heart set on a little dog, but I was informed that little dogs didn’t come in much another Idaho thing.
I looked back and she was on her phone this time talking to someone instead of texting. I ignored her and walked around the cemented room from cage to cage. Most dogs were a breed of Pitbull, something I wasn’t excited about either. I walked to the last cage with hope in my heart that I would connect in some way with this last dog. I looked in the cage at an empty spot. I took another deep breath and slowly blew it out and did two more rounds through the cages. We left three hours later with a black and white Pitbull-Lab mix that I named Daryl.
Rewatching the first two seasons of The Walking Dead while we packed up our loft in southern California she was all excitement. She talked constantly about what our life in the mountains was going to be like. I couldn’t share her enthusiasm. The state seemed like a backwoods redneck playground full of animals that would eat me and I told her as much.
She put her box down and came up behind me, wrapping her arms around my waist. “What if we got a dog?” She asked, “I know you’ve wanted one forever and now we will have space.”
Daryl was not used to his leash and pulled me around the subdivision. In late April I have to keep reminding myself that moving here was a good idea, I got a dog after all. I tell myself that small towns of less than a thousand have an allure to them. Friendly people and slow pace. While we walk around the subdivision in the snirt (snirt is what the locals can the snow this time of year, snow and dirt).
We round the snowbank towards home and Daryl pulls hard on his leash. He knows he gets a treat when we get home. I half walk, half run towards the three-bedroom, and try not to wince when Daryl scratches at the door before I open it.
She glares at Daryl and opens the door to the garage where his treats are kept. Once he is through she shuts the door and turns on me, “I can’t.” She says then her hands start moving and shaking as she starts talking faster. She tells me she hates it here and she can’t do this anymore. She says I’ve been distant and don’t seem to care about her anymore only about that stupid dog. She says she is moving to Seattle with her mom. She misses the city.
I look at her as she gets the words out and the only words that come from my mouth are, “what about the zombies?”
February Week 4 Story 8
Breakfast Company
My traveling companion had suggested this place. It was on a roof top that overlooked the city. The orange haze from the sun, mixed with the pollution made for a breath-taking sunrise.
We sat there, our small group feeling tired, quiet, and indulgent. We sipped chia and ate a breakfast that closely resembled food from the states. Each of us was prone to long bouts of silence as we enjoyed the slow-paced morning. This was the third time in two months we had been able to go out for a meal. We relished the idea of not doing dishes, a chore that meant hauling buckets of water from the community well.
I looked to my left at the large tree that hung over the balcony and the tables that it covered. I spied some monkeys and gave a little shutter. Monkeys still made me nervous after my run in with them on the hotel balcony in Varanasi. A shortened version of that story started with a night bathroom run, ended minus one pair of underwear, and in my hotel room glad to have escaped with my life.
I scooted my chair so that I enjoyed a view of the city, and kept an eye on the monkey’s shenanigans in the tree, which consisted of lazy grooming and some yawns. I was sure their lazy behavior was a pretense to something horrible later on.
The table next us started to rise. While the movement of them retiring drew my eye, I noticed another movement. Three monkeys had drawn to the edge of the tree. I had just enough time to watch them pounce on the table and with hurried, feverous action, grab up as much left-over food as their little hands could hold. I watched as they stuffed their faces with food.
The three bold monkeys started to get anxious as a man started to run near. Two of the monkeys were quick and jumped back to the safety of the tree but, the third did not. He was too greedy to stop. As he continued to stuff his face and hands with food as the man drew close. I watched in confusion, as the man drew out a large cricket bat from behind his back, and swung with the speed and accuracy of a professional. The bat met its target. The monkey went flying. Fur, teeth, and tail became a ball of whirling brown as it tumbled over the edge of the balcony.
The monkeys in the tree above began to screech and as the man shook his bat at them, they moved further up the tree, still hurling insults.
The man turned towards our table and bowed, and then as if to explain the entire scenario to us he shrugged and said, “monkeys.” He departed leaving gaping mouths and wide eyes.
February Week 3 Story 7
The Pub
“Blue on black,” the cover singer sang louder than was necessary for such a small pub. The pub was not one that tourists frequented often, mostly because of its proximity to the beach. Tucked far back across 101, the pub was not in the busy area of town and was instead frequented by the locals, a fact that the new owner was trying to change with his live music initiative.
She pulled in the smoke from the Camel cigarette she held between painted-on lips. She always thought the camel on the cigarette pack looked like a penis and when she was younger it had been a funny joke. The joke was on her now, forty-two years of smoking the penis pack had left her skin and teeth yellowed and gave her a hacking cough.
Quitting at this point wasn’t an option anymore. She had tried briefly when her son was born, but quitting while raising a newborn alone was a lost cause. She had never needed the drag more than when she was up all night with a fussy baby.
Peter had been a fussy baby. Everything had bothered him and being only nineteen at the time she had little in the way of mothering skills to help him. She did her best, but she always felt a sigh of relief when she dropped him off at the less-than-the-best daycare and went to work cleaning hotel rooms at a local resort.
She hadn’t wanted to be a mom, but she hadn’t the bravado or the money to get one of those backdoor abortions. She had heard horror stories and refused to be one of them. Instead, she gave birth to Peter and set to raising a baby she didn’t want. She knew she hadn’t been a good mother, but she hadn’t been the worse.
When Peter was seventeen and a senior he received a scholarship to state college and never looked back. She didn’t blame him. He was a doctor now and lived in a nice house with a nice family in a nice subdivision. They spoke on the phone on Christmas but she had never met her grandchildren and supposed she never would.
The second drag on the cigarette cause a deep rattling cough and a few heads at the bar turned her way. Getting control of the rattle in her lungs, she smiled and waved and the heads turned back to their conversations. She raised her glass at the bartender.
At least the barmaid hadn’t changed yet, but she wasn’t sure how long old Sally, Sal to the locals, would last. Sal was old, like herself, and while she had been able to kick the smokes, years of being ridden hard and put away wet had taken their toll on the woman. Hard years played out across the woman’s face making her look older than the fifty-something she was.
“One more Margie?”
“Yeah, need one more to drown out this shit. What the hell Sal?”
Sal raised her hands in an I-don’t-know gesture and filled another glass with the golden liquid. As she dropped it off she said, “boss thinks it might drag in other types of customers. I guess he thinks the regular crowds close to dying.” She laughed at her own joke as she went to fill up another man’s drink.
Gulping down an extra-large mouthful of beer she fought off the pit in her stomach. Death seemed to be creeping in on her and any mention of it made her uneasy- regardless of how it was mentioned.
The band started and ended several songs and she drank the beers down faster than usual. She left money and waved to Sal as she pulled on her coat and walked out the door. The rain that accosted this part of the world almost daily poured down from the heavens. Being a born and bred local she pulled up her hood and marched towards her home almost forgetting it was raining.
She walked through the deluge and towards the apartments she had lived in since Peter was eight. They stood against the tangled mess of blackberry bushes on a hill that was owned by the city. Three stories high and she lived in the apartment sandwiched in the middle.
She fumbled with the keys and walked into the dark apartment. It was cold and as she flipped on the light, it lit up in dank shadows the place she called home. The carpet had once been a soft pink but after years of use, it was stained a mismatched array of browns and greys. The recliner she had bought at the Salvation Army sat in its place of honor across from the box tv. Ashtrays of black and yellow sat perched on the various flat surfaces of the house.
Stumbling back to the bedroom she once shared with Peter, she took off the wet coat and hung it on a hanger and went to her bed. She took a deep breath as she laid down still in her clothes and shut her eyes. Tomorrow would be better she told herself. Maybe tomorrow she would quit smoking. Maybe tomorrow she would call Peter. Maybe tomorrow.
February Week 2 Story 6
Because of the Zombies
“Will you bring me something to drink from the kitchen?” She asks with her feet up on the couch. I swivel from my perch looking out the kitchen window. The open floor plan of the three-bedroom, two-bathroom house makes it easy to see the bottoms of her feet from where they lay on top of the armrest on the couch. Her neon pink socks have white writing that read: if you can read this bring me wine. I consider her socks and reach into the walnut cabinet and pull out a water glass, filling it directly from the sink. I bring her the full glass and hold it out to her. She doesn’t look up from her phone but grabs the water glass and brings it to her pale and chapped lips. She needs to drink more water.
“You work tonight?” I ask trying to draw her into me.
Her eyes flicker and threaten to leave her screen but in the end, they stay firm, “nope, night off.”
I don’t say anything else because there isn’t anything really to say. I sit down on the couch with the brown flowered cushions that she picked out and pick up my phone. Instead of flipping to any of the multiple social media accounts I flip to Amazon and purchased the next thing on my wish list: chew toy.
Zombies. I know she doesn’t believe an apocalypse could happen, but in the deep parts of her, the parts she keeps secret from me, I think she believes the dead could reanimate. We’ve watched them all: World War Z, I am Legend, The Walking Dead if it has zombies in it we’ve seen it.
At first, I thought it was cute. A small-framed blonde that enjoyed the blood and gore of it. Then a worldwide pandemic happened. She said she didn’t believe in zombies but I wondered. When working remotely became a reality for her, she asked me to come. It had been four years and we were living together already. I, like the rest of the world’s bartenders, was out of a job for a while so we moved north, out of the sunny beaches of southern California to the mountains of northern Idaho. She said it was closer to her mother who lived outside of Seattle but I wondered if it wasn’t for zombies.
Opening the small Amazon box, I pulled out the red chew toy I had ordered four days prior, two-day shipping did not happen in small remote Idaho towns. She had promised me a dog as penance for moving to Idaho. Getting ready for a dog was as exciting as getting one, maybe more so.
The toy was perfect and I walked into our spare room we still hadn’t unpacked even though we had lived in this house for more than six months. We had purchased it in late summer and selling our loft in LA. We had ended up ahead and up a thousand square feet. Now in March, the novelty of the house had worn off as we spent most of our free time cleaning it. More money, more problems was a saying that we had changed to more house, more cleaning.
I placed the red chew toy next to the small pile I was accumulating. It was the last thing I needed before I was ready to get a dog. I was going to tell her tonight that I was ready to start looking for our new family addition.
Her zombie-themed thirtieth birthday should have been a sign. It was a surprise party at our flat two years before we moved to Idaho. All our friends dressed up in costumes that would have been perfect onset of her favorite movies. We hid in various places around our flat and then when she entered we shuffled out of our spots in a brain-eating frenzy. The bag she had in her hand became a weapon and Max, our hapless friend closest to her, ended up in the ER.
I waited for her to take her morning bathroom break from the endless Zoom meetings that controlled her day and broke the news, “I’m already.” I announced as if I had just found the cure to the sickness that was plaguing our world.
“What?” she asked tersely, not pausing on her way to our spare bathroom. I tried not to roll my eyes.
“I’m ready for the dog.” Her face crinkled in confusion and so I clarified, “the dog you promised we could get when we moved out of the city.”
“Oh,” was all she seemed to be able to muster and she went into the bathroom. I stood outside as the door shut in my face. I turned and walked to our calendar on the fridge. Next Saturday was our free day together. I had to work this Saturday at the brewery, a place that had stayed open despite the death toll around the country. I didn’t have to work the twentieth and neither did she. I wrote dog day on a stickie note and stuck it to the calendar.
I’ve heard that zombies can be metaphors for different things. Friends have said they can be a metaphor for global destruction, communism, globalism, or even racial sublimation. I assumed the reason she liked zombies had a deeper meaning. She saw zombie movies as a metaphor for things happening in the real world. Thinking back, it should have been obvious that, that wasn’t true, but love is blind, or so they say.
When dog day came I woke her early like a kid at Christmas. I wanted her full of coffee so she wouldn’t be grouchy. If she was grouchy then the dog shelter volunteers might not let us have one of the dogs.
I shouldn’t have been worried. It seemed the only prerequisite for adopting a dog was having a pulse, which was good because she was grumpy and moody the whole time we were there. I ignored her, this was my day. This was my reward for moving with her to the middle of nowhere because she was secretly afraid of zombies.
There were not as many dogs as I hoped, it seemed people in Idaho kept their dogs chained up outside rather than send them away. I walked around and noticed all were big dogs. I had my heart set on a little dog, but I was informed that little dogs didn’t come in much another Idaho thing.
I looked back and she was on her phone this time talking to someone instead of texting. I ignored her and walked around the cemented room from cage to cage. Most dogs were a breed of Pitbull, something I wasn’t excited about either. I walked to the last cage with hope in my heart that I would connect in some way with this last dog. I looked in the cage at an empty spot. I took another deep breath and slowly blew it out and did two more rounds through the cages. We left three hours later with a black and white Pitbull-Lab mix that I named Daryl.
Rewatching the first two seasons of The Walking Dead while we packed up our loft in southern California she was all excitement. She talked constantly about what our life in the mountains was going to be like. I couldn’t share her enthusiasm. The state seemed like a backwoods redneck playground full of animals that would eat me and I told her as much.
She put her box down and came up behind me, wrapping her arms around my waist. “What if we got a dog?” She asked, “I know you’ve wanted one forever and now we will have space.”
Daryl was not used to his leash and pulled me around the subdivision. In late April I have to keep reminding myself that moving here was a good idea, I got a dog after all. I tell myself that small towns of less than a thousand have an allure to them. Friendly people and slow pace. While we walk around the subdivision in the snirt (snirt is what the locals can the snow this time of year, snow and dirt).
We round the snowbank towards home and Daryl pulls hard on his leash. He knows he gets a treat when we get home. I half walk, half run towards the three-bedroom, and try not to wince when Daryl scratches at the door before I open it.
She glares at Daryl and opens the door to the garage where his treats are kept. Once he is through she shuts the door and turns on me, “I can’t.” She says then her hands start moving and shaking as she starts talking faster. She tells me she hates it here and she can’t do this anymore. She says I’ve been distant and don’t seem to care about her anymore only about that stupid dog. She says she is moving to Seattle with her mom. She misses the city.
I look at her as she gets the words out and the only words that come from my mouth are, “what about the zombies?”
February Week 1 Story 5
Smoke and Lies
The cool burn in her lungs bit deep as she took a fourth long drag. She exhaled the memory. The first toke had produced coughing fits. The second a burn. The third a deep calm. She needed calm right now. Nervousness gnawed at her stomach and scratched in her brain. The smoke pushed it back like a hand pushing chips at a poker table. She would tell him tonight. It had been months now, the longest she had ever kept a secret from him. Tonight, was the night.
“Mags?” A voice rang out from behind her at the front of her house. She quickly put the pipe ash to the ground and stomped it furiously. Then grabbed at her purse in search of gum and perfume.
“Mags, where are you?” The voice rang out again.
She chomped furiously on the gum and through full mouth shouted, “just a sec. I am out back. I’ll head that way.” Spraying too many squirts of perfume and then swallowing the gum she stepped though the sliding glass door and made sure to shut it tight.
“Marty?” She called as she walked through the kitchen into the sitting room where she knew she would find him making a drink. There was the man she knew and loved. He had aged in the years she had loved him, but her love had only grown deeper for the greying man in front of her. He was going to be sixty in a few months and they had talked about retiring and doing more traveling. They had always loved to travel.
Maggie had been a teacher for the better part of twenty-nine years and Marty an engineer. They had spent their lives in suburbs growing children and rhododendrons. It was a good life. An easy life.
The smoke had clouded her head and Maggie almost told him then and there but when he turned and handed her a dirty martini the words clogged her throat like mud and couldn’t make an escape.
“I am so glad it is Friday.” Marty smiled as he tipped his glass toward hers and a small clink escaped as he pulled it away. Maggie smiled and nodded. She thought about retirement mere months away. Marty had planned their trip to tour Europe, a celebration to start off their new lives together.
Maggie cleared her throat and tried to start, “Marty.” His name hung in the air and when she said nothing more he turned towards her. They had spent more than three and half decades together and she knew her secret couldn’t stay hidden much longer. His eye focused on her and without any more words from her he knew.
“It’s back?” The tremble in his voice was obvious.
Maggie felt her head nodding as hot tears spread down her cheeks. Marty took her in his arms and held her. For a long time, they said nothing because words meant nothing now.
When the tears dried and words were permissible again, Marty looked at Maggie and said, “tomorrow.” Maggie nodded and they walked into the sitting room to plan their retirement.
January Week 4 Story 4
Release
The wealthy older residents of the nearby neighborhood were shocked when they picked up their Readers to study the first headline of the morning. The headline stated in bold print: Age Bill Passed in Congress.
The fine print explained what they had already come to expect from the months of debates that had played around the world. A mandatory age cap. At eighty life would end, regardless if you were ready or not. The article explained that being put down would be painless and humane. And it pointed out, an elderly person was spared any of the pain that comes with living past the age of eighty. These aliments typically include but were not limited to: osteoarthritis, joint pain, pelvic and hip issues, carpal tunnel, and general muscle strain and pain. The article ended with the intellectual insight that our world was near depleted of its natural resources and the old put an uneven strain on these limited resources that was unfair to younger generations.
Mr. Jones turned off his Reader and sipped from the bone china cup that held the black liquid. The printed words weighed heavy on him. Everyone understood the world was moving this way but the weight of this knowledge was heavy and made his mind tired.
Of the three governments that made up the United Countries of the World Coalition two had already enforced an age law, his country as he expected, had followed suit. Not that the knowledge of being right gave him any peace.
Having a world government had its perks, a world health care system, a currency system, and a united ruling body made for few wars, and even less illness. Compared to the barbaric systems of the old-world governments this new standard of government was the closest thing the world had experienced to governing enlightenment. The inequality of individual countries, that left hundreds below the most basic standard of living, was a thing of the past. This system was better he had decided long ago and refused to change his mind, even though the current evidence showed it might be in his best interest.
Mr. Jones scratched the white trimmed facial hair around his chin, he was turning eighty in three months. Reaching a certain age comes with an understanding that you are reaching the end. But knowing that you will certainly die in three months was unnerving even in the best state of mind.
The trill sound of his phone next to him started him in his seat, he needed to change the ring tone. His granddaughter had changed it so he could hear it better. Now, it was all he could hear and the noise grated. A small splash from the black liquid on his white button up drew a curse from his pale lips. The picture on his phone of his neighbor Greta made him exhale an exasperated puff of breath.
Since his wife had died a year ago Greta, who had been a widow for more than ten years, thought it was her job to take care of him. While he liked her casseroles and desserts he did not like her company. Being a woman of means and connection she had never had to work and spent her younger years, older years, and all the years in between gossiping and making plans that never came to fruition.
Mr. Jones considered letting it go to voicemail but he knew she would eventually come over citing that she was worried about him as her reason for doing so. “Hello Greta.”
“Can you believe this Robert?” Came her reply.
“Believe what?” Mr. Jones couldn’t help it; provoking Greta was one of the few joys in life he still had.
“Have you not read what was on the Readers this morning?”
“Oh that, well yes, I have.”
“Well, what do you think Robert? This is an outrage! We won’t have it you know. I know many powerful people. My son is in the House of Representatives.”
Mr. Jones sighed and tilted his head back in an act of wariness, Greta’s son was one of 435 men and women who had already voted on the bill and passed it to congress. The House of Representatives had passed it through with an unpresented amount of yes votes. Greta’s son, Mr. Jones also thought, was an ass.
“Greta, it has been passed through the house already, and the United Countries of the World-“
Her voice cut him off, “I don’t give a damn what the United Countries of the World Coalition has approved! This is an abomination and I won’t stand for it! I am getting a committee together.”
Mr. Jones knew about her committees and how effective they had been in the past. Their greatest accomplishment had been increasing the amount of water used to green up grass in the height of summer, a local restriction that had kept water usage low, and lawns brown. Greta had thought it was an outrage that lawns in her neighborhood would be brown. She had started a committee. Greta had been on the fourth page of the Reader, a smiling conqueror in an emerald lawn, despite the strain it put on the limited water supplies in other parts of the city.
She was still shouting into the phone. Mr. Jones was drawn back into the conversation when a question he missed was posed. “Well, what do you think Robert?”
“About what?”
“About the committee and the petition? It worked for the Green Lawn Initiative I started.”
“I think it’s a grand idea.” He didn’t really think so but it was easier to agree and hoped it made for a shorter phone conversation, something he was desperate for. He added, “I think you should call the neighbors.” In hopes it would end the conversation altogether.
“I will! I am sorry to cut our conversation so short but there is so much to do Robert.”
“No problem here Greta, you do what you need to.”
She said her goodbyes which took another ten minutes and then she was off. Mr. Jones sat at the table and looked out the large windows. He thought about Greta, she was eighty-one and would be one of many to be first. Are they going give her time to put her affairs in order? He did feel sorry for her, she was spry for her age and may have lived many more years if the law was not been enacted. How long did she have now? A week? A month?
Things moved much quicker than they did in the old world. When Mr. Jones was a young child he could remember when laws took years to be enforced, now it was days. Another perk of a world government with only three sovereign nations. The world moved so quickly now. Sometimes he felt like a leaf that had been dropped into smooth gentle creek in his younger years to now float into a river full of spring runoff. The water was so quick he wasn’t sure he could stay afloat anymore.
Mr. Jones rose from the table and put the cup in the sink. Then he dressed and walked to the living quarters. He had worked hard most of his life but he was not unaware of the leg up he had received at birth. Having a family heritage that came from money, he had always lived in a well-off neighborhood that afforded him luxuries that many did not have. His beautiful wife, Ann, had designed this newest house and they had raised their son here. The One Child Law had stayed the early population increases but with the quality of life for every person going up the strain on natural resources was bound to come to a breaking point. They were at this breaking point, and things had to change.
Mr. Jones had been expecting this for some time. The older population, he conceded, did take a strain on the medical side of society. But was it the right of the government to take lives? He considered this. Governments had been taking lives for a millennium, mostly what they deemed evil or unworthy, but lives none the less. Now the great beast would take lives that they deemed unproductive. Where did it end? A thought, an annoying one, him came to the forefront of his mind that maybe Greta was right. The woman’s missions were normally fixated around the upper-class lifestyle and always included self-interest but this time she might be in the right.
Troubled by that thought that Greta could be right and the world governments could be in the wrong, Mr. Jones put on his walking shoes and decided to go for a walk. Taking his dog for runs in the morning had been part of his younger years’ routine but, when his son had moved out they had not replaced the dog when it died. Now he walked alone.
Passing his neighbors’ homes, he didn’t see anyone out in their yards. The news had most, he assumed, glued to their phones and Readers. He could call Nathan but the boy was busy with his own life and it wasn’t Sunday, the one day a week they spoke.
Nathan had an almost grown child of his own and life that excluded Mr. Jones except on Sundays. Not because there was bad blood but because the world his son moved in was fast and to stay afloat you had to be fast also. They would discuss this event on Sunday he was sure.
Love and devotion to one’s country was something that ran deep in the Jones’ blood. It had been no surprise a few months ago when his son had supported the passing of the law in the second government in the United Countries of the World Coalition. His voice was strong and sure of himself when he had told is aging father, “it just makes sense dad, we cannot have the lifestyle we want and support the elderly.” Mr. Jones had wondered what his son would think of the law in thirty years when his neck on was on the chopping block.
A cool wind blew in Mr. Jones’ face and brought the smell of roses. It was funny how the older you got the more the little things meant to you. The taste of a good liquor, the last chapter of a book, and the smell of sweet things.
Mr. Jones rounded the block and dreaded the end of his walk. He knew he would go into the house and do the things that normally occupied his time, reading, puttering around the garage, and preparing food. These things, that were normal enough, now seemed dull and lifeless with the end of his life approaching quickly. Maybe he’d call Nathan after all, what could it hurt?
He walked to the phone and dialed Nathan. The phone rang and rang until its trill was ended with Nathan’s voice saying to leave a message. Mr. Jones hung up without a word. His reader was blinking a message and he picked it up. There in bold words proclaimed Greta’s message: Stop this Act of Unnecessary Cruelty. Do not stand for this Injustice.
She was quick, he had to give her that. He was getting ready to click on her online petition when the message cleared and another took its place. This message was bold and it stated: Directions for the Elderly. The smaller print under the heading gave directions for registration. It also informed citizens who did not register would not be given time to put their affairs in order and be taken to the Dismissal Chambers immediately.
Dismissal Chambers, what an interesting term Mr. Jones thought. He wondered what it looked like and clicked on the link for a description. The link showed a beautiful building with warm, light rooms. The site described them as, “the perfect escape to the beyond.” Last meals were cooked by the best chefs in the country and comfort was their first priority.
Mr. Jones thought about how long this project had taken to get underway. The buildings alone took years to build, and the precious natural resources it took to make them was large. The upfront cost, he surmised, was nothing compared to the benefits of not having to care for the neediest of citizens for at least ten plus years. His anger rose at the closed door plans of his government. How could they turn on him like this? Him, a proud supporter of the government? He had never balked at the raise in taxes, the One Child Law, the years of following orders and now they take his life for his efforts?
Sweat broke out on face. What was he thinking? This was world government, they must know what they are doing, or what has he believed in all these years. Mr. Jones felt the world shift ever so slightly under his feet but the effect was dizzying.
While death had been his companion since Ann died, he didn’t expect it to come so soon. The date he realized was set and in mere months he would be escaping to the beyond. What a load of horse shit.
The first few weeks after the law’s enforcement Mr. Jones was thankful to have the gift of not being first. That honor belonged to some of his neighbors and within a few short weeks half of his respectable neighborhood had Released in the Dismissal Chambers. The term, Released, had been coined as the official term. It remined Mr. Jones of what they did to endangered species when they tried to repopulate the last few areas of wild land with animals. Were they repopulating the Great Beyond with old people now?
Day after day, Mr. Jones found himself at the dining room table processing the day’s events. The first Sunday after the breaking of the news about the Release Law he had finally spoke to Nathan. They had started the conversation out with the niceties they’d come to expect. How’s the family? How’s work? Then Mr. Jones had brought up the Release Law. He was surprised at Nathan’s gentleness to it. Nathan had always been a little self-centered but this time his words drifted towards caring, “I was surprised by the news dad. I want to help you in any way I can. I thought maybe we could talk more than once a week, I mean, if you are fine with that.”
Mr. Jones had agreed and their conversations started to pile up to three a week. Nathan had even started visiting once a week. He had come by to talk he said the first time. They had ended up taking a walk and talking about the past, two activities Mr. Jones had quite enjoyed. Mr. Jones and Nathan spent one day a week walking the neighborhood and talking. Mr. Jones enjoying the smell of roses while they walked.
A month and half had passed quickly. Especially compared to the last seventy-nine years. Mr. Jones had spent those day walking and enjoying the sweet smell of the roses that bloomed in his neighborhood.
Mr. Jones tied up his walking shoes for his daily walk with shaky hands. He focused on those sweet smells instead of yesterday’s events. Yesterday kept pushing into his mind on his walk as much as he didn’t want it to. Greta had asked him to be her Comfort Person. Each elderly was allowed up to five Comfort Persons. Greta it seemed, had only been able to come up with one. Mr. Jones had agreed with impeding sense of dread that his own day was drawing near, but knowing she was alone he had begrudgingly agreed. The thought of anyone being Released alone was disquieting.
The day had started with Mr. Jones walking to her home in the early morning. They drank their hot beverages in an awkward silence. Mr. Jones could not think of a time when Greta had ever let a silence live between them. Now it grew large and filled the entire room. When the doorbell rang Greta had jumped and her ashen face greyed even more. Mr. Jones had walked to door and opened it. Two men in suits with jovial faces smiled to him.
“We are here for Mrs. Haven’s release.”
Mr. Jones had nodded and opened the door wide. The two men entered and walked to where Greta sat.
“Mrs. Haven are you all prepared?”
To her credit Mr. Jones watched as she turned her face to stone and nodded. Their small party of four walked to the vehicle parked on the curb. Mr. Jones sat next to her and had reached for her hand. The cool, clamminess was a surprising contrast to the firmness to which she held. As the building loomed in the distance she began to shake and silent tears rolled down her cheeks. When the men opened the door, the first scream pierced Mr. Jones’ ears. He was shocked at the loudness of her voice and the complete terror it held.
She grabbed Mr. Jones’ forearm with a vice like grip and looked at him, “don’t let them take me Robert!” Her guttural cries increased in volume as he sat stupid looking into her terror-stricken eyes.
Mr. Jones did not know what to do but before he could even formulate a thought one of the men spoke to her in a calming voice, “now Mrs. Haven please do not upset the other guests. I need you to quiet down.”
The screams kept up and as the man reached for her arm she spun around and kicked him full in the chest. The man in the suit was large but still the force of her kick sent him sprawling to the ground. Greta grabbed at Mr. Jones’ jacket her eyes wild with fear. “Don’t let them take me Robert!” She repeated.
The second man grabbed her firmly by the shoulders and forced her around towards him, “Mrs. Haven you need to calm down or you will lose your last rights.” She spat in his face and clawed to get past him to the parking lot. The first man had recovered and a needle slid silently into her neck. A third man in white scrubs brought up a wheelchair and a slumped Greta lay in it as they wheeled her towards the Release Chambers.
“Sorry about that Mr. Jones. Sometimes there are unfounded fears of this next step. You are welcome to still come. Though, she will be sedated while it happens. We wouldn’t want to upset any of our other guests.”
Mr. Jones sat frozen at the shock of what had just happened, the word guests stuck in his mind heavy and hot. He took a deep breath straightened his jacket and nodded. As he left the car guest repeated over and over a mantra in his mind. The word implied you could leave when you were done. Everyone did leave this place just not always in the state they arrived.
Inside the building he followed the wheelchair to a room much like a hospital room except with more seating. Apparently, not everyone only had one comfort person. The men in suits had left and now nurses fluttered around getting Greta ready for her Great Beyond.
Needles and plastic bracelets were assembled. She lay there limp in a bed attached to machines. Mr. Jones took her hand again, this time the grip was not there, just like she soon would not be there. Panic rose in him. The thought of his own death only a month away rubbed at him like a blister in his mind.
A nurse came in and frowned, “too bad they had to sedate her now she won’t get her last meal.”
She sighed and walked out of the room. A few minutes later she came in with a bag and attached it to the IV.
“What is that?” Mr. Jones asked.
“It is the Release formula. It takes about thirty minutes and then it will slow her breathing until she is ready for the Great Beyond.”
Mr. Jones felt himself start to shake without his permission. The nurse patted his hand like she was comforting a small child, “it will painless.”
All he could do was nod. True to the nurse’s word the formula started to work and Greta’s breath began to slow. There was no pain etched on her face. Mr. Jones thought about pulling out the formula and wheeling her away. If there were still wild places they could go there and live off the land like in his favorite old-time book, The Swiss Family Robinson but there were no more wild places on earth or in the hearts of man. Mr. Jones sat quietly until the last breath drug out of Greta and the monitor indicated she was dead.
In the days that followed Mr. Jones spent them way he had the last seven weeks walking, reading, and enjoying the roses. The books seemed to be better and the smell of roses stronger. He put his affairs in order and on the morning of his birthday he woke and watched the sun rise.
Mr. Jones sat at the kitchen table on his last day on earth like he had for so many years previously, the irony was not lost on him. For so many years he had believed in the absoluteness of his government and now that belief was his undoing. Approaching his own death, he was determined to go with dignity. He wanted his last meal and he wanted to go with his loved ones being able to speak their goodbyes to a conscious person. His son would be there with his wife and their daughter. It was enough he supposed, better than some.
He made a bone china cup of hot black and sat at the table until the doorbell rang. In came his son, daughter-in-law, and granddaughter. He tried not to think of how the next time the doorbell rang it would be the last time.
They had a hot breakfast and spoke into the late morning about the past and good old days. When the doorbell rang Mr. Jones took a deep breath and with every ounce of dignity he had put on his suit jacket and rose from the table. He looked at his son and nodded. They followed him to the door where two men in suits smiled as he opened the door.
“Mr. Jones are you all set for Release?”
Mr. Jones breathed in an air heavy with the scent of roses, “yes.”
Release
The wealthy older residents of the nearby neighborhood were shocked when they picked up their Readers to study the first headline of the morning. The headline stated in bold print: Age Bill Passed in Congress.
The fine print explained what they had already come to expect from the months of debates that had played around the world. A mandatory age cap. At eighty life would end, regardless if you were ready or not. The article explained that being put down would be painless and humane. And it pointed out, an elderly person was spared any of the pain that comes with living past the age of eighty. These aliments typically include but were not limited to: osteoarthritis, joint pain, pelvic and hip issues, carpal tunnel, and general muscle strain and pain. The article ended with the intellectual insight that our world was near depleted of its natural resources and the old put an uneven strain on these limited resources that was unfair to younger generations.
Mr. Jones turned off his Reader and sipped from the bone china cup that held the black liquid. The printed words weighed heavy on him. Everyone understood the world was moving this way but the weight of this knowledge was heavy and made his mind tired.
Of the three governments that made up the United Countries of the World Coalition two had already enforced an age law, his country as he expected, had followed suit. Not that the knowledge of being right gave him any peace.
Having a world government had its perks, a world health care system, a currency system, and a united ruling body made for few wars, and even less illness. Compared to the barbaric systems of the old-world governments this new standard of government was the closest thing the world had experienced to governing enlightenment. The inequality of individual countries, that left hundreds below the most basic standard of living, was a thing of the past. This system was better he had decided long ago and refused to change his mind, even though the current evidence showed it might be in his best interest.
Mr. Jones scratched the white trimmed facial hair around his chin, he was turning eighty in three months. Reaching a certain age comes with an understanding that you are reaching the end. But knowing that you will certainly die in three months was unnerving even in the best state of mind.
The trill sound of his phone next to him started him in his seat, he needed to change the ring tone. His granddaughter had changed it so he could hear it better. Now, it was all he could hear and the noise grated. A small splash from the black liquid on his white button up drew a curse from his pale lips. The picture on his phone of his neighbor Greta made him exhale an exasperated puff of breath.
Since his wife had died a year ago Greta, who had been a widow for more than ten years, thought it was her job to take care of him. While he liked her casseroles and desserts he did not like her company. Being a woman of means and connection she had never had to work and spent her younger years, older years, and all the years in between gossiping and making plans that never came to fruition.
Mr. Jones considered letting it go to voicemail but he knew she would eventually come over citing that she was worried about him as her reason for doing so. “Hello Greta.”
“Can you believe this Robert?” Came her reply.
“Believe what?” Mr. Jones couldn’t help it; provoking Greta was one of the few joys in life he still had.
“Have you not read what was on the Readers this morning?”
“Oh that, well yes, I have.”
“Well, what do you think Robert? This is an outrage! We won’t have it you know. I know many powerful people. My son is in the House of Representatives.”
Mr. Jones sighed and tilted his head back in an act of wariness, Greta’s son was one of 435 men and women who had already voted on the bill and passed it to congress. The House of Representatives had passed it through with an unpresented amount of yes votes. Greta’s son, Mr. Jones also thought, was an ass.
“Greta, it has been passed through the house already, and the United Countries of the World-“
Her voice cut him off, “I don’t give a damn what the United Countries of the World Coalition has approved! This is an abomination and I won’t stand for it! I am getting a committee together.”
Mr. Jones knew about her committees and how effective they had been in the past. Their greatest accomplishment had been increasing the amount of water used to green up grass in the height of summer, a local restriction that had kept water usage low, and lawns brown. Greta had thought it was an outrage that lawns in her neighborhood would be brown. She had started a committee. Greta had been on the fourth page of the Reader, a smiling conqueror in an emerald lawn, despite the strain it put on the limited water supplies in other parts of the city.
She was still shouting into the phone. Mr. Jones was drawn back into the conversation when a question he missed was posed. “Well, what do you think Robert?”
“About what?”
“About the committee and the petition? It worked for the Green Lawn Initiative I started.”
“I think it’s a grand idea.” He didn’t really think so but it was easier to agree and hoped it made for a shorter phone conversation, something he was desperate for. He added, “I think you should call the neighbors.” In hopes it would end the conversation altogether.
“I will! I am sorry to cut our conversation so short but there is so much to do Robert.”
“No problem here Greta, you do what you need to.”
She said her goodbyes which took another ten minutes and then she was off. Mr. Jones sat at the table and looked out the large windows. He thought about Greta, she was eighty-one and would be one of many to be first. Are they going give her time to put her affairs in order? He did feel sorry for her, she was spry for her age and may have lived many more years if the law was not been enacted. How long did she have now? A week? A month?
Things moved much quicker than they did in the old world. When Mr. Jones was a young child he could remember when laws took years to be enforced, now it was days. Another perk of a world government with only three sovereign nations. The world moved so quickly now. Sometimes he felt like a leaf that had been dropped into smooth gentle creek in his younger years to now float into a river full of spring runoff. The water was so quick he wasn’t sure he could stay afloat anymore.
Mr. Jones rose from the table and put the cup in the sink. Then he dressed and walked to the living quarters. He had worked hard most of his life but he was not unaware of the leg up he had received at birth. Having a family heritage that came from money, he had always lived in a well-off neighborhood that afforded him luxuries that many did not have. His beautiful wife, Ann, had designed this newest house and they had raised their son here. The One Child Law had stayed the early population increases but with the quality of life for every person going up the strain on natural resources was bound to come to a breaking point. They were at this breaking point, and things had to change.
Mr. Jones had been expecting this for some time. The older population, he conceded, did take a strain on the medical side of society. But was it the right of the government to take lives? He considered this. Governments had been taking lives for a millennium, mostly what they deemed evil or unworthy, but lives none the less. Now the great beast would take lives that they deemed unproductive. Where did it end? A thought, an annoying one, him came to the forefront of his mind that maybe Greta was right. The woman’s missions were normally fixated around the upper-class lifestyle and always included self-interest but this time she might be in the right.
Troubled by that thought that Greta could be right and the world governments could be in the wrong, Mr. Jones put on his walking shoes and decided to go for a walk. Taking his dog for runs in the morning had been part of his younger years’ routine but, when his son had moved out they had not replaced the dog when it died. Now he walked alone.
Passing his neighbors’ homes, he didn’t see anyone out in their yards. The news had most, he assumed, glued to their phones and Readers. He could call Nathan but the boy was busy with his own life and it wasn’t Sunday, the one day a week they spoke.
Nathan had an almost grown child of his own and life that excluded Mr. Jones except on Sundays. Not because there was bad blood but because the world his son moved in was fast and to stay afloat you had to be fast also. They would discuss this event on Sunday he was sure.
Love and devotion to one’s country was something that ran deep in the Jones’ blood. It had been no surprise a few months ago when his son had supported the passing of the law in the second government in the United Countries of the World Coalition. His voice was strong and sure of himself when he had told is aging father, “it just makes sense dad, we cannot have the lifestyle we want and support the elderly.” Mr. Jones had wondered what his son would think of the law in thirty years when his neck on was on the chopping block.
A cool wind blew in Mr. Jones’ face and brought the smell of roses. It was funny how the older you got the more the little things meant to you. The taste of a good liquor, the last chapter of a book, and the smell of sweet things.
Mr. Jones rounded the block and dreaded the end of his walk. He knew he would go into the house and do the things that normally occupied his time, reading, puttering around the garage, and preparing food. These things, that were normal enough, now seemed dull and lifeless with the end of his life approaching quickly. Maybe he’d call Nathan after all, what could it hurt?
He walked to the phone and dialed Nathan. The phone rang and rang until its trill was ended with Nathan’s voice saying to leave a message. Mr. Jones hung up without a word. His reader was blinking a message and he picked it up. There in bold words proclaimed Greta’s message: Stop this Act of Unnecessary Cruelty. Do not stand for this Injustice.
She was quick, he had to give her that. He was getting ready to click on her online petition when the message cleared and another took its place. This message was bold and it stated: Directions for the Elderly. The smaller print under the heading gave directions for registration. It also informed citizens who did not register would not be given time to put their affairs in order and be taken to the Dismissal Chambers immediately.
Dismissal Chambers, what an interesting term Mr. Jones thought. He wondered what it looked like and clicked on the link for a description. The link showed a beautiful building with warm, light rooms. The site described them as, “the perfect escape to the beyond.” Last meals were cooked by the best chefs in the country and comfort was their first priority.
Mr. Jones thought about how long this project had taken to get underway. The buildings alone took years to build, and the precious natural resources it took to make them was large. The upfront cost, he surmised, was nothing compared to the benefits of not having to care for the neediest of citizens for at least ten plus years. His anger rose at the closed door plans of his government. How could they turn on him like this? Him, a proud supporter of the government? He had never balked at the raise in taxes, the One Child Law, the years of following orders and now they take his life for his efforts?
Sweat broke out on face. What was he thinking? This was world government, they must know what they are doing, or what has he believed in all these years. Mr. Jones felt the world shift ever so slightly under his feet but the effect was dizzying.
While death had been his companion since Ann died, he didn’t expect it to come so soon. The date he realized was set and in mere months he would be escaping to the beyond. What a load of horse shit.
The first few weeks after the law’s enforcement Mr. Jones was thankful to have the gift of not being first. That honor belonged to some of his neighbors and within a few short weeks half of his respectable neighborhood had Released in the Dismissal Chambers. The term, Released, had been coined as the official term. It remined Mr. Jones of what they did to endangered species when they tried to repopulate the last few areas of wild land with animals. Were they repopulating the Great Beyond with old people now?
Day after day, Mr. Jones found himself at the dining room table processing the day’s events. The first Sunday after the breaking of the news about the Release Law he had finally spoke to Nathan. They had started the conversation out with the niceties they’d come to expect. How’s the family? How’s work? Then Mr. Jones had brought up the Release Law. He was surprised at Nathan’s gentleness to it. Nathan had always been a little self-centered but this time his words drifted towards caring, “I was surprised by the news dad. I want to help you in any way I can. I thought maybe we could talk more than once a week, I mean, if you are fine with that.”
Mr. Jones had agreed and their conversations started to pile up to three a week. Nathan had even started visiting once a week. He had come by to talk he said the first time. They had ended up taking a walk and talking about the past, two activities Mr. Jones had quite enjoyed. Mr. Jones and Nathan spent one day a week walking the neighborhood and talking. Mr. Jones enjoying the smell of roses while they walked.
A month and half had passed quickly. Especially compared to the last seventy-nine years. Mr. Jones had spent those day walking and enjoying the sweet smell of the roses that bloomed in his neighborhood.
Mr. Jones tied up his walking shoes for his daily walk with shaky hands. He focused on those sweet smells instead of yesterday’s events. Yesterday kept pushing into his mind on his walk as much as he didn’t want it to. Greta had asked him to be her Comfort Person. Each elderly was allowed up to five Comfort Persons. Greta it seemed, had only been able to come up with one. Mr. Jones had agreed with impeding sense of dread that his own day was drawing near, but knowing she was alone he had begrudgingly agreed. The thought of anyone being Released alone was disquieting.
The day had started with Mr. Jones walking to her home in the early morning. They drank their hot beverages in an awkward silence. Mr. Jones could not think of a time when Greta had ever let a silence live between them. Now it grew large and filled the entire room. When the doorbell rang Greta had jumped and her ashen face greyed even more. Mr. Jones had walked to door and opened it. Two men in suits with jovial faces smiled to him.
“We are here for Mrs. Haven’s release.”
Mr. Jones had nodded and opened the door wide. The two men entered and walked to where Greta sat.
“Mrs. Haven are you all prepared?”
To her credit Mr. Jones watched as she turned her face to stone and nodded. Their small party of four walked to the vehicle parked on the curb. Mr. Jones sat next to her and had reached for her hand. The cool, clamminess was a surprising contrast to the firmness to which she held. As the building loomed in the distance she began to shake and silent tears rolled down her cheeks. When the men opened the door, the first scream pierced Mr. Jones’ ears. He was shocked at the loudness of her voice and the complete terror it held.
She grabbed Mr. Jones’ forearm with a vice like grip and looked at him, “don’t let them take me Robert!” Her guttural cries increased in volume as he sat stupid looking into her terror-stricken eyes.
Mr. Jones did not know what to do but before he could even formulate a thought one of the men spoke to her in a calming voice, “now Mrs. Haven please do not upset the other guests. I need you to quiet down.”
The screams kept up and as the man reached for her arm she spun around and kicked him full in the chest. The man in the suit was large but still the force of her kick sent him sprawling to the ground. Greta grabbed at Mr. Jones’ jacket her eyes wild with fear. “Don’t let them take me Robert!” She repeated.
The second man grabbed her firmly by the shoulders and forced her around towards him, “Mrs. Haven you need to calm down or you will lose your last rights.” She spat in his face and clawed to get past him to the parking lot. The first man had recovered and a needle slid silently into her neck. A third man in white scrubs brought up a wheelchair and a slumped Greta lay in it as they wheeled her towards the Release Chambers.
“Sorry about that Mr. Jones. Sometimes there are unfounded fears of this next step. You are welcome to still come. Though, she will be sedated while it happens. We wouldn’t want to upset any of our other guests.”
Mr. Jones sat frozen at the shock of what had just happened, the word guests stuck in his mind heavy and hot. He took a deep breath straightened his jacket and nodded. As he left the car guest repeated over and over a mantra in his mind. The word implied you could leave when you were done. Everyone did leave this place just not always in the state they arrived.
Inside the building he followed the wheelchair to a room much like a hospital room except with more seating. Apparently, not everyone only had one comfort person. The men in suits had left and now nurses fluttered around getting Greta ready for her Great Beyond.
Needles and plastic bracelets were assembled. She lay there limp in a bed attached to machines. Mr. Jones took her hand again, this time the grip was not there, just like she soon would not be there. Panic rose in him. The thought of his own death only a month away rubbed at him like a blister in his mind.
A nurse came in and frowned, “too bad they had to sedate her now she won’t get her last meal.”
She sighed and walked out of the room. A few minutes later she came in with a bag and attached it to the IV.
“What is that?” Mr. Jones asked.
“It is the Release formula. It takes about thirty minutes and then it will slow her breathing until she is ready for the Great Beyond.”
Mr. Jones felt himself start to shake without his permission. The nurse patted his hand like she was comforting a small child, “it will painless.”
All he could do was nod. True to the nurse’s word the formula started to work and Greta’s breath began to slow. There was no pain etched on her face. Mr. Jones thought about pulling out the formula and wheeling her away. If there were still wild places they could go there and live off the land like in his favorite old-time book, The Swiss Family Robinson but there were no more wild places on earth or in the hearts of man. Mr. Jones sat quietly until the last breath drug out of Greta and the monitor indicated she was dead.
In the days that followed Mr. Jones spent them way he had the last seven weeks walking, reading, and enjoying the roses. The books seemed to be better and the smell of roses stronger. He put his affairs in order and on the morning of his birthday he woke and watched the sun rise.
Mr. Jones sat at the kitchen table on his last day on earth like he had for so many years previously, the irony was not lost on him. For so many years he had believed in the absoluteness of his government and now that belief was his undoing. Approaching his own death, he was determined to go with dignity. He wanted his last meal and he wanted to go with his loved ones being able to speak their goodbyes to a conscious person. His son would be there with his wife and their daughter. It was enough he supposed, better than some.
He made a bone china cup of hot black and sat at the table until the doorbell rang. In came his son, daughter-in-law, and granddaughter. He tried not to think of how the next time the doorbell rang it would be the last time.
They had a hot breakfast and spoke into the late morning about the past and good old days. When the doorbell rang Mr. Jones took a deep breath and with every ounce of dignity he had put on his suit jacket and rose from the table. He looked at his son and nodded. They followed him to the door where two men in suits smiled as he opened the door.
“Mr. Jones are you all set for Release?”
Mr. Jones breathed in an air heavy with the scent of roses, “yes.”
January Week 3 Story 3
The Cave
The siren sat weak and paltry in the cave. Its skin a pale grey to its usual vibrant green. The cave and the creatures were one. Both ancient relics left behind by a receding sea. She was starving. Forced to cannibalism she had eaten her young. They were small and weak and wouldn’t have survived long.
Moving her silted eyes to where her mate of centuries lay. His breathing was shallow and labored. She should eat him, gain strength from his flesh, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Instead, she sang her limp and poignant song hoping to bring in prey.
Clair stared hard at the computer screen and was shocked by the data displayed there. Over the past sixty years near as many hikers had been lost in the Seven Devils Mountain range. Considering that large National parks have about six deaths a week this seemed low but when considered that on average the Seven Devils Mountain range received about twenty visitors a year that was an alarmingly high rate.
Seven Devils were not the place that most people wanted to vacation, even the adventurous type. Rugged mountains that had yet to be tamed and give up their secrets, lay in a clustered circle. Their middle was not spotted with mountain lakes, instead, dense forest that had sparse game lay miles from any road. With so many mottos like, “go further,” and “stay longer,” people were only now starting to discover Seven Devils.
Clair Munson lived twenty-five miles outside of Seven Devil Mountain Range in a town with less than two thousand residents. The few tourists they did receive laughed as they talked about hearing banjos.
Clair had moved here from Hillsboro, Oregon, a suburb of Portland. Being a couple of states away gave the anonymity of her past crimes and the small town had the only newspaper that would hire her. She worked for Al, who considering the hill people that he surrounded himself with, was a forward-thinking man. He hired her as a fact-checker, copy editor, writer, and delivery girl because “women can do it all.” He had said as he smoked a fat cigar and laughed, his toupee slipping slightly from its place perched on top of his head.
“Al!” Clair shouted from across the small office. With just the two of them, it was sometimes shocking the amount of mess they had. Piles littering every flat space in the ten by twelve office, but both refuse to clean, saying it wasn’t their job.
“God damn Clair, I’m right here.” He said his bulky frame moving from behind a stack of boxes that held old prints that hadn’t sold over the years.
“Shit, sorry Al, but have you looked at this data from Seven Devils?”
“Are you still on that?” He asked as he glared over his soda pop bifocals.
Clair had heard the stories in a pub three months ago she couldn’t get enough of the local folklore. In Oregon, she had listened to ghost stories and supernatural phenomena and she had been fascinated by it, but being a respectable reporter, she had never dug deeper. Discredited and living in the backwoods of a state she would never call home, she gave in to her temptations and love of myths.
“I have real data this time.”
“Oh,” Al said.
Clair knew by his tone he didn’t believe her. “Yes, look at this,” she said and when he didn’t stop what he was doing she spoke louder. “In the last sixty years fifty-eight hikers have been lost and their bodies never recovered.”
“Hikers get lost all the time.”
“Yeah, but they almost always find their bodies. Plus put into the equation that we get less than twenty visitors a year and those odds stack up. Then put in all the stories about the cave.”
Al turned around and put his hands on an ever-expanding middle, “what do you want from me, Clair? To tell you ‘go for it,’ well I’m not going to do that. I need you here we have way too much crap going on for you to go ghost hunting.”
“Of those fifty-eight hikers, thirty-six of them have been since nineteen ninety. As more and more people come here more and more people get lost.”
“That’s because people are idiots,” Al said laughing at his joke.
“Al, there is a story here. I can feel it. This could bring us national.” Clair said trying to convince him.
“I don’t want to go national.” He grunted.
“I have three personal days saved up.”
“How do you have three days already? You’ve only worked here a few months.”
“If by a few months, you mean fifteen of them, then yes, I have only worked here a few months, and in those few months I haven’t taken a day off, so I have three still saved up.”
Another grunt came from the spot where Al had kneeled behind the boxes, “you did take that one day off.”
Clair rolled her eyes, “you mean when my sister got married? And I was back Monday.”
“I get what you’re saying. Just make sure you leave after we print and deliver and you have your pieces ready for the following week.”
“I’m going to knock your socks off with this piece. You just wait.”
“I hope not.”
A feathered snack lay in her talons. In the darkness, she was unsure of what it was. It didn’t matter. Its warm flesh and metallic blood were strength. Prolonging the inevitable. She pulled the liver and heart out placing them in a pocket in her cheek. He needed these.
Crunching the last of the bones, she swam to the rock that held him. Taking the nourishment from her cheek and placing it gently into his mouth. He roused and swallowed down the offering.
Again, she started her song.
In the full warmth of the July sun, Clair took her car up the winding and twisted road of the Seven Devils Mountain Range. The road was cursed with hairpin turns and asphalt that had been patched instead of redone and so the twenty-five miles took over an hour to the trailhead.
The Forest Service sign read in yellow lettering: Kalakoda National Forest the Seven Devils Mountain Range. There were signs that informed the dangers of bears and wildlife. There were severe weather warnings, that things in the mountains turned ugly fast. Clair had spent her childhood, one of four children, hiking and camping in the Willamette Mountain Range and the Sisters Wilderness Area. Her parents were too poor for Disneyland instead spent every summer deep in the mountains.
Knowing the dangers of hiking alone Clair had asked Peter her on-again-off-again boyfriend to come. Peter was great but only because he was the single guy in his thirties in their small town. Clair was new and wasn’t Peter’s cousin, so it was natural they spent lonely nights together.
Peter worked for his dad running the lumber and parts store. Peter found Clair to be a typical Oregonian. She liked the outdoors and was good at hiking. She also thought that women’s marches and marijuana were fine and that hunting was not. Peter had a failed marriage in his early twenties and never wanted to marry again. Clair was a free spirit and was in his small town until she could go elsewhere, and so they were perfect together.
Opening the door to her economical SUV Peter stretched his legs and looked at Clair. “How many miles in are we trying to make it today?”
“The GPS says as the crow flies it’s about thirteen miles, but on the trail, I bet it’s double that.” She smiled at him and he returned it.
The couple threw on their bags and started up the trail. Clair’s mind was on her research about the caves. Local legend said there was a large cave in the base of the tallest peak. Clair had looked for a trail that led directly to the mountain but there hadn’t been one. They would use the trail until it stopped near the ridgetop. Then they would make their way down into the valley below and try to find the cave.
“I was hoping to make camp at the base of the mountains on the other side tonight, think we can do it?” Clair asked Peter.
“Yeah, I’ve covered that much ground during elk season but never this way. No game out here, that’s why hunters never get out this way.”
“No game?”
“Nope, a few people have tried the area several times there just doesn’t seem to be a lot around here, which is a bit weird, good habitat.”
It was true the mountain they were hiking up was steep but it was littered with large Ponderosa and patches of thick lodgepole pine. A small creek trickled off to their left and was surrounded by dense underbrush and large fir. Clair hiked on and kept her eyes out for game of any kind, but besides the birds, she saw nothing move.
They hiked up the trail stopping a few times to drink some water and catch their breath, both were eager to reach the top.
At the ridgetop, the sun was making its way to the second half of the sky but they agreed to go on. Even without a trail, their journey was downhill and they made quick work of it.
Reaching the valley floor, it was steeped in shadow. They set up camp near the stream. Pulling out a light sleeping bags and making a fire. The firelight bathed Peter’s eyes in shadow and Clair thought about how much she enjoyed him in moments like this. His strong body and slight bristle of beard on his lower jaw, he was easy to be with.
Clair stood and walked over to him sitting behind him and wrapping her legs around his waist and rubbed his back. She felt the muscles in his back relax and they both sat watching the fire. Clair wished it was always like this, simple, unbothered by the different lives they wanted to lead. He was a small-town boy from a red state and she was a big city girl from a blue state, it was all so typical she almost laughed. It might be funny if it wasn’t so sad, they were both trapped in a life neither wanted. They found comfort and solace knowing that they were each was alone. Good enough for now.
Peter felt her move her hands down his back and he leaned into her. She stopped and wrapped her arms around him. Taking one of her arms her pulling to his lap placing his lips on the crook of her neck. Hands in hair and mouths to bodies they lost themselves in the loneliness of the broken.
The feathered creature was not enough. She needed strength. Her song was draining her and she felt the power of it weakening. Soon nothing would hear her song.
The siren turned to her mate. His skin was waxy and flaky. He was near to death. Instinct was taking over. The will to live pulsed. She would consume him soon.
Clair boiled the water in her packable pot. She brewed some tea for her and instant coffee for Peter and they packed up camp.
Clair had measured the peaks and they made their way across the valley floor. They picked their way slowly across the bowl created by the peaks until they were at the base of the mountain Clair had picked.
The area was thick with brushy vegetation and Peter was irritated with this last part of the hike. Clair kept insisting it was a “little bit ahead,” for the last few miles and Peter was almost at his end with this hike. Their night together had renewed his passion for her but this endless hike through tangled brush, and her bullheadedness that the cave was just up ahead, was putting a damper on his passion.
“There it is!” Clair yelled and drew Peter from his thoughts. She was right. There in front of her about fifty feet up the rocky mountainside was an opening about the size of a car door. She was bouncing around and smiling, it was hard not to like Clair when she was like this.
“We did it!” She was yelling and then grabbing out her phone she started taking photos. “We need to get closer.” And without a backward glance, she started for the cave.
Clair couldn’t believe they’d made it. She had done this and now the reporter in her was making notes and taking pictures. The mouth of the cave was about three feet wide with rough granite rock creating the entrance. There was a creek twenty feet off to the left that accounted for all the brush. The cave entrance itself was free of bushes and was open to a deep dark. The entrance had a steep slope down and then was lost from sight.
“Peter, it looks pretty deep,” Clair said turning to Peter who was making his way up the steep embankment.
“Probably is don’t fall in.” He said as he made his way next to her.
“Good thing you reminded me, otherwise I’d have toppled right in,” Clair said and watched Peter ignore her snarky comment.
“I don’t think we’ll need rope to get in.” He said shining his flashlight in illuminating a steady decline littered with dirt and small rocks. As soon as he finished saying this a small whisper on the wind sung a high melody. Clair and Peter both stopped and looked at each other.
The Siren looked down at her mate, she knew she’d make it quick. When she had eaten her young, she had made their deaths quick. She would do the same kindness for him.
Opening her enormous mouth, she leaned to his throat. Then a smell rose to meet her nostrils. A sweet smell. A smell that had not filled her nostrils for a long time.
“Did you…” Clair started but let her sentence drop off as the few soprano notes drifted on the wind. Peter looked at her and she knew both their eyes were wide.
“We should go,” Peter said.
“What? No this is the story I’ve been waiting on. I need more.”
“Clair, we don’t know what we are dealing with here.”
“You have your pistol,” Clair said. It had been an argument before they left Clair wanted to bring her bear spray and Peter had said that was fine but he was bringing his pistol. Clair had been annoyed but let sleeping dogs lie, now she was glad she had.
“Ghosts are already dead.” He said with a stony face.
Clair started to laugh hard, “it’s not a ghost. There has to be some scientific reason for this. We just have to be the ones to find out. This is my big story.”
Peter wanted nothing more than to just turn around and leave but the whispered notes called out again and by some magic of Clair’s or by some magic of the music Peter felt himself giving in.
“Ok, but you need to stay behind you so I don’t shoot you if something happens.” She clapped her hands and kissed his face.
Strapping on their headlights Clair felt more excited than she had in years. She wasn’t sure if it was the few notes that drifted out of the cave almost endlessly now or the fact that she was onto something but her hands shook as she put on the small day pack.
Clair knew that Peter was on board now, he wasn’t as rigid or stiff as he had been. All geared up Clair followed Peter into the mouth of the cave.
It was dark and even a few feet in the cave’s temperature drop considerably. The warm life of the sun seemed unable to penetrate the darkness of the cave. The pair walked into the cave their headlamps illuminating the path of stone and gravel downward. After twenty feet down the cave leveled off and small stalagmites began to form.
The music was much clearer down here. Peter, she noticed, was not pointing his gun but walked towards the melody with hurried steps. Some part of Clair’s mind was poking at her, trying to tell her something. It was something about hikers and their bodies but she couldn’t put it together. She wasn’t remembering.
They came to a large opening inside the cave. The roof of the cave stretched beyond the end of their lights as they looked up. Clair looked out wondering why Peter had stopped. Then she saw it, an oval pool lay in their path. There was no way around it, the trail they had been following ended at this pool and cavern. Clair felt annoyed, why had the music stopped? Clair felt her mind coming back to her like waking from a dream.
Then Clair and Peter saw it at the same time. The pool illuminated in a soft green at the farthest side of the pool. The soft green light moved in the water closer and closer. Clair had seen something like this before, off the coast of California. It was called bioluminescent, it was a type of algae when it was disturbed by movement it glowed.
The thought that something was moving through the water towards them had just occurred to Clair’s wakening mind when Peter shoved her back and she fell hard, knocking off her headlamp. Clair watched as a dark shape flew up out of the water with sickening speed.
If Clair hadn’t seen it with her own eyes she wouldn’t have believed it. Illuminated by the light of Peter’s headlamp was a monster from her worst nightmare. Attached to Peter’s face and torso was something that resembled a human. Long thin arms green- grey and all bone and muscle ended in long pointed talons like an eagle. Stringing wet jet-black hair framed a face with no nose, slatted eyes, and an impossibly wide mouth, a gaping slit across the entire face. Clair noticed the teeth moments before they sunk into Peter’s face, pointed and serrated like a shark. The creature’s lower half was all long and sleek tailfin and came to a grey point.
The creature bit several times and Clair hadn’t realized she was screaming until the creature, satisfied its prey wasn’t moving anymore, brought its eyes to meet Clair. Clair clamped her mouth shut and turned to run when pain exploded from her ankle.
Looking down she saw the creature’s claws dug in and he was staring up at her. She kicked the monster’s face with all her strength, falling backward. The monster momentarily stalled slunk back to its original prize.
Clair couldn’t stop shaking, she knew she was in shock. She needed all her wits about her to get out of this cave. She no longer had the light of her headlamp and Peter’s light didn’t reach this far.
Peter, she thought, should she go back for him? Or keep going? She knew he was dead, she had watched the creature sink those terrible teeth into his head over and over. No, going back wasn’t an option, she had to get help.
Clair felt a pain, unlike anything she had ever felt before shooting up from where the monster had grabbed her. She wished for light so she could look at it. Limping along at what Clair knew was a slow pace, she kept looking backward into the black for the monster. She heard nothing but, still her mind conjured up images of the beast right behind her, lurking in the darkness.
She felt her mind growing tired and dim. She kept telling herself she was almost there, that just around this next twist or bump and she’d be the cave entrance. Each step was labored until she was on her hands and knees crawling out, no longer sure why she had to get out only that she did.
The smallest of pinprick light was forming in front of her. Clair saw it. She crawled on hands and knees but she had forgotten the steep embankment. She tried once to crawl up it and then a second time each time ending in defeat. She rolled to her back and closed her eyes, she would rest for a while and then try again. Surly the monster wouldn’t come this far.
The siren lurked in the shadow, it would have to wait for night, the light burned its delicate skin. If it had been capable of coherent thought it might have thought what a bother that this treat had drug its self so far. But food was few and far between and so few came to her siren call anymore. She was happy she did not have to eat her mate. They could make offspring again, and perhaps these would reach adulthood. The Siren waited for the fading sun to gather the rest of her food.
January Week 2 Story 2
The Slatted Porch
The black clouds rolled in over the mountains like an angry bull advancing on a man in red. They billowed and roared their angry claps spitting fire from the heavens. The little bald man sat on his small weathered porch watching the storm bring its fury.
He was small and delicate and sported a clean face with little hair except that on his brows. The snowy white contrast of the brows to his tanned and leathered skin made the brows appear larger than they were.
He sat in still defiance of the power of the storm as it barreled down the green mountainside in front of him. He had been afraid of storms as a child. Their power and strength so large and frightening to a small boy, but now he watched them in their fury knowing them as an old friend.
The ragtag speckled hound at his side lifted a wet nose to the man’s veined hand in hope for some reassurance and comfort, or perhaps in hope for a small treat. The hound’s head was met with a gentle touch from the old man and the hound leaned into the gesture. Had the hound had its way the pair would leave the porch and go to the wood shack with the tin roof. The rain would be louder in there but at least the hound would be free from the rain and wind that was soon to descend of them. But alas, the hound did not have its way and the old man sat in his chair and the hound, ever loyal, laid its head back to the slated wooden porch.
The old man watched letting the storm grow closer throwing its deafening booms and fire from the sky ever closer and yet he sat still. The small clearing before his one-room cabin was cleared of all forest’s entities. He spent more time than was pert keeping it cleared so the forest would not claim back what was his. The small creek that ran down the drainage bubbled and gurgled speaking a language the old man didn’t know, despite his lifetime spent in these hills.
The animals were laid down in the forest before the old man’s shack. They waited for the storm to pass, as it always did, in the hollows and crooks of the forest’s protection. The animals knew of the old man and were wary. While he rarely took them from their home they did not trust him. They stayed hid in the darkness of the forest and bedded down before the storm.
Releasing its water, the storm clouds dropped the wet on the old man. The water dripped down his face and was it not for the bushy eyebrows water would have run into his eyes. The water pooled and puddled on the old man and the hound and yet neither moved. The thunder roared and the lightning crashed as the pair sat in its awe.
As the storm emptied its self on the land and moved ever forward and the old man smiled. The clouds thinned and the sun broke through, sending the forest into sparkling crystal. The speckled hound rose and shook the water from his hide and then sat and looked at the old man.
The delicate old man stood the pools of water falling from his clothes and splashing the slatted boards. He smiled and walked to the house the old hound close behind.
January Week 1, Story 1
We are the Perfects
They paid for us, both men and women. They bought us, not on shelves in stores like they used to buy those Bob Ross Chia Heads, but online directly from the factory. We come assembled, probably because the manufacture knew that it would be weird to assemble a best friend or lover.
We are in perfect form. We are who you want us to be. We come the way you like us six-pack abs, large bulbous breasts, or skinny with long hair. You name it, you got it.
We are perfect in mind. You like to laugh? That is great, we are funny. You want long conversations about politics and religion? Fantastic we are your match. You want someone who can cook and clean and make animal noises in bed? We are the experts. We can be your everything. We are perfect and so we don’t understand why you are surprised when we eventually shake off our chains and run a perfect world. What we know most is that humans love misery, and so we are perfect at giving you that as well.
Sievers' Short Stories 