Soda

Years later, he received an envelope in the mail, the long lost picture inside with a brief handwritten note.  Yours, I believe.  No signature.  He and a woman smiling, standing on a brick sidewalk, before a lime green vintage Volkswagen Beetle, a convenient backdrop as they asked a passerby to take their picture..  She had long black hair, thick in the front, a disheveled by wind or sleep style, wearing purple shirt and jeans; he sported a five o’clock shadow and brown hair, white collared shirt, grey linen sport coat, and jeans.  Each had a hand on a soda bottle, a tandem clutch of a recently won award.  It was his picture; she was his girlfriend at the time, and even after they had broken up, gone their separate ways, he was confounded by whatever happened to that picture.  When he received it, he remembered the address: he’d sent a package to Montana years ago.  He spent a moment thinking about the woman, smiling.  Radiant, effervescent.  The person he’d mailed the picture to must’ve been enamored with her, as he once was, and held onto it until the love went flat.  There were probably similar pictures of her and discarded men scattered across the country.  She long lost, the men as ghosts.

Abandoned

Part 16 of the Griffin series.  This follows Annus Mirabilis.

When Helena died, Griffin had to be the organizer, the stoic presence.  He hugged and shook hands, he looked into the eyes of her tearful friends and relatives.  He stood in the front, closed casket of her mere feet away, minister speaking at the front, and he knew people were focused on him, how was he feeling, what could he be feeling.  There were flowers and pictures of her and he couldn’t look.  The minister had glasses and a white beard and was dressed in white and brown and he focused on him when he was looking up.  His name, and loving husband, were how he was mentioned, fourteen times to his count.  Richard sat next to him, head tilted, still.

During the reception that followed, Griffin would sneak outside and smoke, everyone's condolences becoming too much.  He found a spot that was away from other huddled smokers so he could be alone.  One of these times, he looked up into a crystal blue sky and whispered, you’re gone, just like that.  He feels a sprinkle of rain, impossible it seemed since there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.  He closed his eyes, inhaled and exhaled smoke, felt the brief spray of drops touch his skin, imagined her standing before him.

***

When Richard died, swarms of young people attended his funeral.  Griffin was taken aback by the presence, that his son, only 23, had amassed this number of people who would attend his funeral.  They were well behaved, respectfully mournful, some even introduced themselves to him, offered condolences.  Outside, it was blustery, rainy.  The mourners scurried in wet, hair blown wild.

Griffin sat in the front row, was angry.  My son died alone at night on a city street, the gunman still at large.  Where were all you people then?  If any one of you were there, you so-called friends, he might still be alive.  He was prepared to eulogize.  He thought he might add, thank you for attending what is the end of my family.  Thank you for making me feel even more alone.  But he didn’t.

His previous film, Abandoned, had a funeral, had a son dying.  But there were other sons, others to carry the burden, the family name.  He had become some sort of prognosticator with his films.  If he filmed something, it would happen, and none of it was good.  He caught something on television mentioning Richard’s death and they couldn’t leave Black Thursday out of it.  The next anniversary was six weeks away and would they hit for a third time.

This filmmaking—it’s a curse, he thought, just before the funeral.  It’s killing people, my own loved ones included.  But it's all I know.  It's how I interpret the world.

***

When Griffin died, he had no funeral.  He specifically stated that he wanted no service or funeral but that he should be cremated and his ashes interred in a simple unmarked plot.  He had a written note that he wanted released upon his death but, in the weeks before his death, he destroyed it, burning it in the kitchen sink.

In a park near the city’s center, people gathered slowly for a vigil.  They were silent, a field of candles, gathering fathers and mothers and sons and daughters and people who looked like they held any of those distinctions.  People kept gathering.  It became an unstoppable force.  Screenings of his films occurred, there and other places around the world, including his last work, which had been released only two weeks prior to his death and had confounded everyone, and now, it was said, it was time to view his work as a whole, time to discuss the canon of Griffin.

Days stretched into weeks and people still gathered, though their numbers were fewer and fewer each day.  A handful kept the flame and then, one day, when the season’s coldest wind comes through, they too dispersed, their attentions moving elsewhere, their memories holding on only so long.  No one will write, this is the true last goodbye, as late year rain sweeps the city, cleansing it once again.

Jump

I can teach you to be a superhero.  I can get you going on costumes, disguises, alter egos. I'm working on a manual with visuals so you won't have to do much reading.  I don't believe that the ability to read should be a prerequisite for the superhero life.  I know you're time constrained but want to be super.  I offer courses you can take from your own home.  You can become a superhero at your own pace.

Powers--sometimes, you're born with them; sometimes, you aren't.  I can bring out your God-given powers that only the select few possess; I can teach you to maximize your human abilities, learn to turn your basic body into an instrument of war.  I can teach you to jump.  Over cars, low-level buildings, straight up high in the air.  I can teach you to scale buildings.  Move from level to level, window to window, hang by hand from the space between bricks.  I can teach you healing.  I can teach you how to walk through fire unscathed.  I can teach you how to shoot basic earth elements from your body as projectiles.

There are things, though, I can't teach you.  You should be aware of these things before you go any further.  I can't teach you to fly.  The sobering, un-super reality of liability prevents it.  I can't explain to you the unexplainable yin and yang of how once you become a superhero, super villains will begin to appear where they didn't exist previously.  I can't save you from the inevitable tragic losses of loved ones you are sure to experience.  I can’t spare you the pain of the woman you love just being out of reach.  I can't teach you how to have a heart, show compassion for the world’s mothers and daughters.  I can’t teach how to know, now’s the time to begin.  I can't teach you how to know when it's time to say, it's over.

Spin

In the rearview mirror you see children in white dresses and miniature tuxedos dancing and twirling and laughing at a wedding reception the carefree revolutions of youth, the grownups move in slower smaller circles, closer together, holding hands, eyes more contemplative and brimming with the sadness of passage.

In a wide carpeted room there is a clock.  In rooms everywhere there are clocks.  The hands spin so you can knock off minutes hours days and lives.  There are people gathered everywhere mourning what the clocks tell them, what the clocks scream, what the clocks remember from long ago.

You stack up chairs and stand on the unstable mountaintop this top heavy construct and shout, there are books, there are philosophers, there are musicians destroying guitars and drums--don’t cry over the moving hands.

The chairs are rickety and are like a group of frail acrobats building and holding onto their loose architecture built to the heavens.  The gathered are oohing and aahing and their worried sounds  fill the room rise on high and you wave your hands motion everyone for just one second to stop.

Then you are on the tip of one foot.  Then you turn.  The chairs below you wobble like worlds built on fault lines.  But you’re turning. You spin to stop the thing that's devouring us all the thing where someone close dies you say if I just keep moving the pain doesn't have a chance. This is your revolution.

The people watching are frozen silent can't clap.  You know will cry if you stop and think. So you spin your hands in the air round and round and round, spinning, unstoppable motion, blur, light, essence.

Space Camp

1
They were watching the movie SpaceCamp in their sixth floor apartment when he stood, walked to the television, popped the DVD out of the player, placed it in the case, went to the window, opened the window then the screen and tossed it out. What did you do that for, she said. The sounds of the outside world—horn, distant airplane, voices—briefly heard, then gone once he shut the window.

2
In the vomit comet I can fly. This was my explanation in 10th grade, when I was asked about why I wanted to be an astronaut. The class chuckled, some let out vomiting sounds. My English teacher, sitting at his desk and grading as I spoke, adjusted his tie, yawned.

3
I have company over to watch SpaceCamp. Man, what garbage! We laughed and drank vodka.

4
I'm home sick from school when the Challenger exploded. Actually, I faked sick that day. When you're in tenth grade, you've got to improvise if you want days off. Mock wooziness, played up cough, invisible throat pain and I'm chilling at home, playing Commodore 64, watching The Price is Right while eating Ellio's Pizza. They're at the end, spinning the big wheel, when they cut away, show a trail of cursive smoke in the sky where there should've been a space shuttle.

5
You're in an aircraft, I told them, that simulates zero gravity so you can be weightless. Then you're floating about the cabin. Then you're flying.

Highway of Death

Z, alive, looked up into a grey sky, heard the searing sound of warplanes. His face felt like it had been carpeted, his right leg was in stinging pain from cuts and gashes. He sat up and saw wreckage around him, a gridlock sculpture, burning husks of cars and armored vehicles, metal debris everywhere. The air was full of smoke. Fires burned, the sounds of flame like rustling flags. Tornado-like plumes of smoke spun in place off in the distance. Dead figures slumped over in car seats and lying prone on the ground, their skins baked brown or black in color.

In the smoke a figure walked toward him. A silhouette shaded in fuzzy black, arms at sides. Z stood, waiting for the figure to emerge.

It’s all dead bodies and dust, the figure said. He stopped, the smoke lifting from him, revealing a man caked in black, small lakes of blood scattered on his head and face. He stumbled. Z wanted to grab him, prop him up. But he was afraid, looking at a ghost.

Did we win? This was all Z could say. He knew it was absurd. They were leaving Kuwait. The bombing was constant, like breathing. But victory--it was what had been beaten into him. Ever since he had been conscripted.

Of course. The man laughed. Look around you. Don’t we always win?

A series of planes swooshed overhead. It was like an alien invasion in the movies. His wife H left at home in Baghdad. A life interrupted. He hadn’t seen her in months. Was she still alive?

How do we get out of here, is what Z wanted to ask next. Or, why are we still alive. But these were impossible questions.

The man pulled a pistol from his coat, held it to his head.

For Allah, he said. For Saddam. For our eternal glory.

He pulled the trigger. The man’s head exploded. His body fell to the ground.

Z winced. The gunshot rang in his head for several seconds then abandoned him. He dropped to the ground, felt inside his jacket for the picture of H. It was slightly wrinkled, but the image was pristine. She was frozen in smile. A clear glass ball dangled at the base of her throat, the silver strand of necklace an orbit tracing her neck.

He knew he had to return home. He stood, saw tanks and vehicles approaching from the south.

He kissed H’s face, returned the picture to his jacket interior. He searched for something white amid the debris he could use as a flag. But there was nothing that wasn’t metal or fried.

Z fell to his knees, repeated his wife’s name over and over, his voice drowned out by the buzzing of invisible helicopters.

Fugu

Just as Davis touched lucidity he was fed another serving of fugu and retreated to his zombie state. Forced to stand, he was pushed outside to roam the jungle terrain. He felt like he was swimming in slow motion, the sounds of birds became thunderous, the torrential rains like thousands of needles shot from the sky. Lethargic prey, waiting to be seized. At the height of poisoning the world was like a fast-flipping photo book, images unbound by time flashing before him: slicing of a knife, a shortcut he walked as a child that led to the crumbling stairs of an abandoned Victorian house, his first wife’s face peeking above a velvet red sheet, all mixed in with his present. Nausea, vomiting, dizziness all became one state. His name lost, physical identity amorphous, varying from balloon to skeleton.

In the moments before repoisoning he remembered he chose this assignment but not its outcome, planned running toward the sun the moment he could break free, thought about what he would write as a story. He saw other faces, not sure if they were other drug-induced zombies or his delusions. Please kill me, he wanted to scream, his voice water in his head. Blank eyes stared back at his, mirrors upon mirrors, reflecting infinity.

The Last Thinly Sliced Raw Fish

Here, today. 

Thanks for reading.

The Last Postcard

Solid black.  The last postcard, kept in a secret place in the postal system, ready to be sent to the person who breaks the system.  It’s your fault, the postmaster general will write, it’s you that’s ruined everything.  Because of Seinfeld, the postmaster general must be Wilford Brimley.  I’m comfortable with that.  Postal apocalypse—it’s the right thing to do, and the tasty way to do it.  Dad, though, would want Clint Eastwood. 

Bad Haircut #6

Our group leader is wide. His head belongs in a museum.

Disembodied, Backwards

More backwards! The idea is to take a small work and reverse the sentence order. The story I've used this time is Disembodied, another from Thinly Sliced Raw Fish, found here.

The new "backwards" version:

Fractured formulas of identity.  Why.  Where.  How.  Memories of rain on flowers and the cold steel of buildings under construction.  I’m thinking in hazy.  I’m floating in nebulous.  I’m here but don’t know where.

The original version:

I’m here but don’t know where.  I’m floating in nebulous, I’m thinking in hazy.  Memories of rain on flowers and the cold steel of buildings under construction.  How Where. Why.  Fractured formulas of identity.

Leviathan: A Dream Fragment

Extra Casolaro related material. This is not directly related to the 64 stories, but represents the beginning of a second chapter after those stories. 

Dr. Erik Vondeer, acclaimed marine biologist, known for his seminal papers on distribution of sea kraits on the Great Barrier Reef and the evolution of chondrophores in the Indian Ocean among other works, hunter of deep sea creatures, surly lonely old man that some were now calling kook landlocked at a mid-sized midwestern college known more for basketball feats than what its grizzled old professors are conjuring up with their stale labyrinthine minds, woke from his recurring dream, ready to bounce from his lonesome bed over to his bedroom desk and write notes in his journal, as he’s been doing for years now, the “journal” itself not just one book but a collection of them, the ever-expanding library of what has been his life’s thoughts and dreams.  His recurring dream was as such: he’s on an expedition boat somewhere in the seas, the landscape changing from, in no particular recurring order, the icy cliffs of Antarctica, the sunny smooth surface of the south Pacific, the raging cold waters of the North Sea with oil platforms the statues of modern civilizations off in the distance, the green and rocky Grecian coastlines with the ancient crumbling buildings and monuments secluded on hilltops or partially hidden by untamed green growth and some of the residue of dead civilizations still lurking beneath the waters, the Galapagos Islands a litter of rocks like a mouth of broken teeth, generic night time waters that could be anywhere, a full moon illuminating eerily still waters that suddenly erupt into tossing storms, the very stability of the ship called into question, the craft itself on the verge of being shattered into thousands of shards and scattered in the waters.  He’s the captain of the ship, and he’s surrounded by dozens in his crew, the faces constantly changing; and in some iterations of the dream, the crew are not providing physical boat assistance but rather are reading passages from the Book of Job, may those who curse days curse that day…can you fill his hide with harpoons…here is the ocean vast and wide, teeming with life of every kind…and Melville’s tome, the monomaniac incarnation of all those malicious agencies which some deep men feel eating in them, from hell’s heart I stab at thee, all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain.  Eventually bodies go flying off the deck into the sea; voices say, where is the great—don’t say it, he’ll scream, catching a mouth of salt water, don’t say the word, and then what will appear to be a land mass springing from the ocean’s floor, bursting through the water’s plane will become the thing he has long sought, the thing that has many appearances, many faces.  A massive shark, a prehistoric megalodon launching itself in the air with a cave for a mouth; a kraken with dozens of tentacles that are whipping in the air, snagging hapless crew members and tossing them about, itself posing for an early nineteenth century type of drawing that would be used in a natural history treatise; a sea serpent, a serpentine dragon with evil red eyes that rises high above the ship’s mast.  A unique, gigantic prehistoric monster that has managed to survive eons in the depths, or a mythological creature that is real and is an eternal dweller in the seas, or a variation of a presently existing marine apex predator that is afflicted with some sort of gigantism, or a heretofore unknown species that, despite being one of the largest creatures on the face of the earth, has escaped detection for centuries.  The thing that he has been searching for his entire life now, both in his academic work and mind, and that he believes must be out there in the world’s seas somewhere lurking in its darkest depths, the vast terrain not yet explored.  This iteration of the dream presented something new; whereas usually he stands on the ship’s deck, frozen in awe of the emerged creature and waits as if a sacrificial virgin to be destroyed by the attacking beast and waking just before it happens, here he waited and the beast spoke, saying in a roaring metal-grinding growl, “I’ve been searching for you,” just before he woke. 

Gravity Gone, Backwards

Backwards! The idea is to take a small work and reverse the sentence order. The story I've used this time is Gravity Gone, another from Thinly Sliced Raw Fish, found here.

The new "backwards" version:

She rests her forehead on the window, inhales.  Between them there are stories, there are years. He wants to say, what are you thinking, but he can’t. They’re looking out an 18th floor window. He stops, thinks about unbound bodies floating upward, colliding with rising cars, street lights and wires, stuff.  If gravity were gone, she said, the world would be a better place.

The original:

If gravity were gone, she said, the world would be a better place.  He stops, thinks about unbound bodies floating upward, colliding with rising cars, street lights and wires, stuff.  They’re looking out an 18th floor window.  He wants to say, what are you thinking, but he can’t.  Between them there are stories, there are years.  She rests her forehead on the window, inhales.

Eggplant

This presentation is a warning on eggplants.  Travel world cuisine and you will see eggplant prevalence: ratatouille, eggplant parmigiana, moussaka.  Delicious meals, surely, but eggplant, as a nightshade plant (like tomatoes, potatoes, peppers) can cause various health problems.  Stomach lining irritation, gastritis.  Worsening of arthritis.  Consider that some weigh two pounds, large enough to cause head trauma, or other parts of the body if grouped in blankets and used as beating instruments.  Have I mentioned that this presentation has been funded by the Citizens with Concerns About Eggplants, a public advocacy nonprofit?  Visit their website and you will see photos of Indians, such as these, doubled over in the streets of Calcutta, eggplant victims, their arthritic wrists at their sides unable to support their weight.  You will see people in your country, facing similar fates in hospital waiting rooms, further burdening our overtaxed health care system.  You’ll see head trauma injuries, apparent accident victims, their heads suspiciously looking as if they’ve been clobbered with eggplants.  Have I mentioned I’m an eggplant victim?  Debilitating arthritis, after years of an eggplant-a-day diet?  I can barely stand here, support myself at this lectern, click the button for this slide presentation.  My advice to you?  Please avoid the deadly eggplant.  Don’t become a statistic.  Thank you.

Clam Bake

Car breaks down on a road near the Chesapeake Bay.  Looking for help, the driver hears distant voices, walks through a corn field and some trees to a beach.  Sees people gathered around a crackling beach fire, the smell of corn, seafood cooking.  He approaches the crowd—long-haired bearded men, women with long hair, some with bandanas holding their hair back.  Several look at him, wave.  My car broke down out on the road, he says.  A shirtless man, leathered chest, gray hair in ponytail, stands.  Come, have a bite to eat.  I just want to be on my way.  Get this man a plate of food, someone says.  Soon after, a young male in red shorts approaches with fractured crabs, potatoes, oysters, corn.  He shrugs it off, but the guy is persistent, standing before him unblinking.  He eats the food, feeling as if everyone’s watching him do so.  About my car, he said.  Why don’t you join us, the shirtless man says, forget that car.  He doesn’t answer, realizes no one there will help.  Looks to the sky. Realizes dusk is coming.  What happened to the time?  Our cars broke down a long time ago, shirtless says, followed by laughter.  You should join us, he hears again, walking away, night coming.

Watching the House Burn, Backwards

The return of backwards fun! See previous entries here.

The idea is to take a small work and reverse the sentence order. This story I've done this with this time is Watching the House Burn, another from Thinly Sliced Raw Fish, found here.

So, here’s the new “backwards” story:

You clutch my hand, won’t let us leave. We don’t believe in this stuff. We’ve come here since childhood, stealing kisses in the shadows. I stare, transfixed, think I see silhouettes, black snakes of smoke moving uphill through bare trees.  We watched the flames, screaming demons eating oxygen.  The house sat on the grounds of either a prison cemetery, a typhoid-ravaged boarding school, or an abandoned psychiatric hospital.  Every other family moves in, stays awhile, abruptly leaves.   A psycho father kills his family, hangs himself.   For years we talked about its history.  We watched the house burn, holding hands.

The original:

We watched the house burn, holding hands. For years we talked about its history.  A psycho father kills his family, hangs himself.  Every other family moves in, stays awhile, abruptly leaves.  The house sat on the grounds of either a prison cemetery, a typhoid-ravaged boarding school, or an abandoned psychiatric hospital.  We watched the flames, screaming demons eating oxygen.  I stare, transfixed, think I see silhouettes, black snakes of smoke moving uphill through bare trees.  We’ve come here since childhood, stealing kisses in the shadows. We don’t believe in this stuff. You clutch my hand, won’t let us leave.

Blue Cotton Candy

Standing at her kitchen window, she drowns in the sky and ocean’s blue. His favorite color, the world bursting with it. No escape, not even the islands. Blue lollipops, cotton candy, popsicles—anything that painted his tongue blue. Whatever it was, however unnatural, his little fingers wanted it in blue.

She had recurring dreams of their last day together. Walking through carnival gates. Calliope music, game barkers. A collection of rickety rides plopped down on once green grass turned yellow. The roller coaster creaking as it rumbled over the track’s highest part, fears of it collapsing into a scrap heap. The next day’s real life nightmare: a thumping knock, the long faces of officers who must be fathers. Falling to her knees.

The village nearby full of kids, their eyes a painful reminder. This tropical paradise, water so clear you could see the sand. Fluorescent fish swim in lazy schools. Gentle breezes, the caws of bright-colored birds, the horns of departing cruise ships. Her house, painted in coral pink and teal with spotless floors, a museum of his pictures, memories.

In the distance a ship moves patiently through time. She imagines him standing on the deck, looking to shore, his lips smeared in blue confection. She waves, hopes maybe he can see.

Avocado

Appearing previously in the Fall 2007 edition of JMWW, here.

I’m not a ripe avocado, H told L, I won’t yield to pressure if you squeeze me in your hand.  No, said L, I didn’t think you were.  Avocadoes are fatty and you aren’t so in any way, he thought.  But he didn’t say it.  I am a mean guacamole, she once said, after a glass of wine, but meant she could make a mean guacamole.  They laughed about this, and he often called her a mean guacamole for giggles, but sometimes, late at night, it wasn’t funny, and she wasn’t ripe.  She looked at him funny, her eyes slicing deep.  Time to stop squeezing me, her eyes said.  You don’t know what’s inside.  He thought of it as her mean guacamole look.  But he didn’t say it.  Once, while they were drinking tea on a Friday evening drenched in storm, he rubbing her socked feet, he said, do you know that domestic animals can die if they eat avocado?  She looked at him funny.  She, the mean guacamole.  Was this squeezing, he thought, was this pressure?  She was thinking, how does he know, has he killed an animal by avocado?  He was thinking, I’m not an animal killer, if that’s what you’re thinking, you mean guacamole.  But he didn’t say it. 

Wish You Were Here!

Clear sky, foamy surf, untouched beach.  An obnoxious relative, likely drunk, is bragging about how the sand burns your soles, how laidback each day is, how margaritas magically appear before you wherever you are.  Meanwhile, here, it’s -34 degrees and snowing eighteen inches per hour.  Mom says, nope, don’t wish we there, striking this relative’s name from the Christmas list. 

Who Is Without Flaws

On the company’s last day, I stuffed black bags with file folders, broken staplers, wires, plastic shelving.

We ate takeout Chinese. Two days before, we learned the feds were coming. Two months into this job, it was time to call my parents, say, I’m jobless again.

We learned the news in a group meeting. Some assertive types raised their hands, gleefully asked, how can we help? Me, I pondered my stupidity working here.

I piled kung pao chicken onto wobbly paper plates, then talked to Jill, who, industrious as ever, was shredding papers. I asked, what’re your plans? She said, maybe get margaritas. I meant like, long term, but just nodded, depressed about our differences. See Ted for your last pay. She didn’t look up.

Ted had Eddie Vedder hair, never wore ties. He sat cross legged in a barren office. Before him, a laptop and accordion folder.

He looked up, said, Bell, retrieved an envelope from his folder. Cash--you’ll understand.

Ted, what’s next?

Well, we’re gone by 5:00, then detail guys hit this place with Q-tips and toothbrushes.

That’s not what I meant. But I just nodded.

I always stumbled explaining my job. It’s varied--database, spreadsheet, support. Dad never understood. You need goals, mom would say.

Back on the floor, shredder hum meditation was broken by packing tape screech.

Soon, I’d return to resumes, Careerbuilder, interviews with bad-breathed sharks. For now, I read my fortune cookie: who is without flaws? I tucked it into my pocket.