short story

‘The Trailcam’ by Matt Poll

Fiction, Short Stories

Trailcam

Illustration by Andres Garzon

 

“Someone…yes, someone smashed our trailcam,” Pia said, holding up a shard of brown plastic.

A breeze tousled the silver birches that loomed above the trail, provoking a flurry of golden autumn leaves. The leaves flipped and glided among the two bird researchers.

“Damn, that’s the second one now. We had one go missing last month up by the platform, right before you arrived. The straps on that one looked like they were cut with a blade,” Teemu said, then directed his gaze downwards, “…and they left no tracks. They’re pretty good.”

Teemu, the lanky Finnish bander-in-charge, crouched to examine another piece of the camera.

“Whoa. So who do you think is doing this? Are there poachers up here?” Pia pushed a lock of bronze hair behind her ear and looked down the trail with a spooked expression.

“No, I mean, yes, there are poachers in Finland, for sure. But over on this side of the mountains, there just isn’t much to poach, as far as game birds or animals with good fur on them. I’ve never heard of poachers here working at catching our birds, the songbirds we work on here. Too small, no meat.”

“That’s really creepy. And what about the Mistle Thrush that Dawn banded yesterday? I wanted to ask you about that. Have you ever seen anything like that? Could that be related to the trailcam?”

“The one with the little splint on its wing? No, never saw that before. That was much stranger than the trailcams — the bones in the wing were set perfectly like a vet did it. But no vet —“ Teemu looked up and exhaled from puffed cheeks.

“But no vet would use those tiny little bits of wood for a splint?”

“That’s right. It was woven wicker. And the splint was fastened with that strange cording. Dawn thinks it was wool made from thistledown. Who does that? Such a tight little braid, don’t know who could have done that, or why. Maybe it’s related to the trailcam, maybe not,” Teemu said.

“Maybe it was the gnomes and elves!” Pia giggled.

Teemu’s face remained sombre.

“Well, we don’t joke about them, especially up here in the north. You know, the majority of Scandinavians believe in them. The invisible eyes. The small ones. We call them Tonttuhere in Finland. There are good ones and bad, many different types, just like birds.”

Pia furrowed her brows suspiciously.

“Riiiight.”

She nudged the cracked remnants of the camera casing with her foot, then stooped and retrieved something from the leaf litter.

“Oh-ho! Looks like we have a forgetful vandal. He left the memory card,” Pia said with a smile, holding the card up high like a football referee.

****

Pia, Teemu, and Dawn crowded around Teemu’s laptop on a tattered couch. The research shack was cramped and basic, but the international team of bird banding volunteers had been working well together in the remote wilderness of northern Finland, in spite of the First-World ordeal of a spotty Wi-Fi signal.

The sky outside the large main window was a profound black, and the swish of the pines was picking up in the onshore wind. A slim shaving of moon flickered on the fjord a kilometre down the hill.

Teemu queued up the files on the memory card to play all eight of the previous night’s motion sensor-activated video clips. The first two showed a Eurasian Red Squirrel bumbling past in the background. The third clip featured a spotty Mistle Thrush kicking over leaves, while the fourth also briefly showed a squirrel, this one sniffing near the camera in failing light. The last few clips showed movement but were too dark and brief for the researchers to make out on the first play.

“Replay it Teemu, that one, and can you slow the — oh Jesus!“

Something cracked off the corrugated outer wall of the shack with the force of a gunshot. The researchers all flinched, then tensed. Teemu held a finger to his lips and stood to peer out the window into the gloom. Visibility ended several paces beyond the front steps.

“It’s OK guys, just a branch falling, it’s windy,” Teemu rasped in a voice that betrayed his uncertainty. He sat back down and played the last four video files again, this time at one-quarter speed.

Dawn jabbed the screen with her finger.

“There! Do it again slower, and pause it. Frame by frame if you can.”

Teemu restarted and paused the video file, then brightened the screen to compensate for the almost complete lack of light in the clip, which was taken at dusk. The front half of a Siberian Chipmunk was visible peering from what looked like a rough cloth sack, and very clearly, one of its front paws had a tiny wooden splint fastened to it.

“Same thing! That chipmunk has the same splint like the Mistle Thrush I banded yesterday! Someone is out here fixing up small animals!” Dawn blurted.

The next clip elicited gasps. It showed a pair of stumpy hands reaching and coaxing the chipmunk out of the sack, after giving the splint a final adjustment. Then the chipmunk and the hands were gone from view.

“Did you see how small those hands were?” Dawn said and poked the screen again.

“A woman?” Teemu offered, then used his sleeve to wipe the screen where Dawn had touched it.

“No way. That’s a kid. Those hands were super small,” Pia said, “…play the last ones, Teemu. This is crazy.”

The next clip was even darker than the previous ones. Only several frames were lit. Teemu paused the video as something passed close in front of the camera and looked right into the lens. The researchers squinted closer until all three realized together with a jolt that it was a human face.

“Christ!” Dawn said, “…it looks like an old hippie!”

The blurred face on the screen was that of a bearded older man whose face rippled in a knowing, friendly grin. He sported what looked like a rumpled felt cap.

“Wow. This guy, maybe some kind of old veterinarian who’s gone hermit,” Pia said, absently looking at the screen, “…a midget vet.”

“Yeah, I guess. Here’s the last one,” Teemu said.

The last frame before the camera had been destroyed showed the face back away from the camera.

“Wait, how small is that face? Look how small it got just there at the end.”

“That was blurring I think. It’s a perspective thing because the face was close to the camera,” Teemu said.

“No way, that face was too small, he’s a dwarf or something. Holy smokes, I’m gonna put this online when we get a signal. This will go viral, a midget vet in the woods,” gushed Dawn.

Pia added: “Dawn is right. I agree about the perspective, but at first, the face looked much bigger than it is because it was right up against the lens, but when it backed away —“

A loud clang outside the shack made the trio jump again, but they settled quickly as the familiar sound told them that Hanno had returned a day early with the supplies. Hanno was the caretaker of the Sami tribal land the research station was on and was busy replacing the station’s large gas canister.

****

The stocky Hanno pushed the door open and dropped two large bags of food onto the table.

“Hello. Gas is changed. Here is your food.”

The brusque Laplander pointed his chin at the laptop and gave an inquisitive grunt.

“Hi Hanno. Thanks so much for the food run, we were running low. That there on the screen is someone we think has been tampering with our research cameras. And maybe he’s been caring for animals too, healing them. Do you know him? He would be quite a short fellow,” Teemu said.

Hanno stepped closer to the screen and frowned, as the weather outside took a turn. The wind suddenly bent the treetops, and a weighty rain clattered on the roof.

Hanno let loose a breathless diatribe in Finnish and stabbed accusatory fingers towards the three researchers, and the laptop. The three cowered on the couch, as the wind redoubled its fury. What sounded like hail began to crackle against the research station. Hanno finished with a quiet sentence and calmly pulled the memory card from the laptop. He turned and plucked the tiny wicker and thistledown splint from where it sat on the window ledge, then exited the cabin.

A bewildered silence hung in his wake. Dawn finally spoke up as the winds outside ebbed.

“What did he say?”

Teemu took a deep breath, then spoke with a thin voice, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“He…said that we have encountered an Uldra, which are a kind of…Tonttu, ehm…gnome, as you would say, that in fact live up here in the north. He said that the Uldra, and the other twilight beings, well he said that unlike us, they all speak the language of the animals, and know about their problems. He said they care for the animals, as we saw. He ended by telling us that if the Uldras are mistreated by people, that disasters can occur. So we should leave them alone, is what he said, and Lapland and Finland will remain a happy place.”

“He said all that?” Pia whispered.

“He did.”

****

The researchers huddled in the doorway and found that the weather had eased abruptly — not a puff of wind — leaving the trees around them picture-still. The moon shone with a diffused brilliance that illuminated the woods around them so brightly that it looked like the light of the gloaming.

The top of Hanno’s colourful hat could be seen as he bobbed his way back down the trail to the fjord. He was humming a melody that sounded like the tentative first notes of a dawn chorus. A Robin’s chuckle replied from the underbrush, perfectly on key and in time with the Laplander’s refrain. This was soon joined by several Fieldfares and an assortment of other songbirds. Then, dozens of human-like voices chimed in from the surrounding forest, adding a dreamy, melancholic falsetto to the most exquisite song the researchers had ever heard.

 

MATT POLL has spent most of the past decade lurking in the bushes in South Korea and has written a memoir about the shenanigans involved with being a foreign birdwatcher there. He has also started writing a series of supernatural stories about birding, as well as a thriller/fantasy novel set on Korea’s DMZ.

Copyright © 2020 by Matt Poll. All rights reserved.

 

‘Encounter’ by Jaco Fouché

Fiction, Short Stories

Encounter.jpg

Illustration by Andres Garzon

 

Some years before, I had moved to a coastal town thinking that fortune smiled on writers in picturesque places. But after much time had passed, I was in a bad state. I had hardly any friends. Writing no longer interested me. I wasn’t working at a proper job which contributed to my condition. There was a lot of time to waste fretting about old regrets and fears of the future.

So I slept. And dreamt. There was one in which I wandered into a vast building visiting room after room on floor after floor. I could never leave it. I’d wake up with a feeling of searing regret, something that some prisoner might feel, but that did not stop me from turning over for more sleep.

I slept at night, I slept in the mornings. In the afternoons I got up to go to the shops, or with effort write one of the stories that were my mainstay at the time. In the evenings I’d watch television before once again falling asleep.

One day I awoke early from a bad dream. In it I had decided enough was enough, I could no longer bear my own history, I couldn’t stand my own feeble attempts at art. I saw that it had all rushed away from me, everything that constituted a good and meaningful life. What was left to do? I had literary visions of the windswept cliffs the town was famous for. Perhaps I’d gain something like insight or guidance from the gulls and water and bracing sea air.

I dressed and ventured into the strange chilly morning, walking along the badly lit streets to the beach where I stood looking out over the bay.

There were other people there; old people, happy people. So happy did a particular group of three of them seem where they stood at the top of the stairs leading down to the sand that I walked over.

“Morning,” a bald man said, “are you joining us?”

“Yes, do,” a woman said.

All three of them had with them some baggage that made me ask:

“Are you planning a picnic?”

“No, we’re going swimming, of course,” the bald man said.

“Good grief,” I muttered, as to me it was a cold day. They laughed in delight at this. I said I was going for a walk.

“Before work?” the woman asked.

“Work, with that head of hair?” the third man said skeptically. I hadn’t had a decent haircut in a long time.

“I’m self-employed,” I said. I walked some distance along the path from where I could watch them put down their baggage, take of some clothes, and in their bathing costumes go into the water.

There must have been ten of them in the early light, their forms cutting into the backdrop of small white breakers rolling into the shallows. The bald man and his female companion turned and looked in my direction. Were they discussing me? Beyond the breakers, the water was darker but beyond that, across the bay, the sun was rising behind a great bank of clouds.

How beautiful all this was, I told myself. Why wouldn’t I do things like this more often? But I knew the next day would come and I might wake up only to turn over and sleep. I was stuck in something I couldn’t clearly explain. Still, this particular morning was happening and I decided to make good use of it, and followed the path through rocks and milkwood trees. It was wonderful to be out in the chill and the noise of the sea, water churning white against the rocks.

After a while, I returned to the beach where the bathers were leaving the water and heading for their towels and warm clothes.

“Oh, wasn’t that splendid,” the bald man said on noticing me.

The woman nodded and said, evidently for my benefit, “I’d suggest that even the younger generation might have use of such an experience.”

I remained standing there, drawn by their warmth. The bald man produced a half-bottle of sherry from his bag and grinned at me. “How about a toot now,” he said. We drank in turn, small polite sips which were more about the company than anything else.

“What work do you do?” the man asked.

“Writer,” I muttered. “Nothing you would’ve read.”

“I say,” the man said to me, “I hope you don’t think I’m prying, but is everything all right? There’s something about you, some malaise.”

“Yes, and you seem overdressed for the beach,” the woman said kindly. “This isn’t just a walk you’re taking, is it?”

There was very little I could think of to say to that so I laughed as carelessly as I knew how. We drank some more of the sherry, which filled me with warmth as much as did my companions.

“You know,” the bald man said, “fifty years ago I had a head of hair like that.” The woman laughed. The man stroked his pate and looked out over the sea, which had grown much lighter. “I’d just started a business. Construction. Things were great. The economy was strong, my timing was right. I was doing well. Then I got a diagnosis. I was told I had months to live. So I closed my business and moved back in with my folks. I didn’t do anything but read. After some time I’d worked my way through the Waverley Novels, the James Bonds and about half of the Canadians and my dad asked me, ‘So when do you plan to die?’ And I realized even if it was happening any day now, I might as well go out and face life. I went back into construction, got married, had a family, lost my wife, saw my grandkids grow up. Then I met this one. All that in fifty years.”

“And I met you, John,” the woman said softly and then to me, “It’s true it’s not all about good times. Sometimes you have to accept what’s downright bad too. Long ago when I was in my late forties I felt very alone. My kids were grown, my husband had left me. I moved to another town and worked there. I met a man who I had my doubts about. He wasn’t working, but he claimed to be looking for a business to buy and run. After a while, he was still looking and talking about it and living with me. I told friends that even if he was a swindler, at least I would have had someone in my life for a while. But sure enough, I eventually had to accept that he was simply a layabout and a braggart. One day I drove him to the station and bought him a ticket to a town on the other side of the country. He went. He left me without resistance. After some months he phoned me to say he was happy. Despite what you might think, that it sounds tacky, it was sort of special. It was life, you know. And that only happens to you when you allow it to.”

I nodded. I was very self-conscious. The two people seemed so kind and wise to someone who often felt like a foreigner even to himself. I was a citizen of some desolate country. I wondered if I should be concerned that my plight seemed to be written all over my person.

“What we mean,” the bald man slowly said, “is that we could tell something is up with you. If we could, we’d point you in some direction and say, there, that’s the way to go.”

“But what do we know?” the woman said.

Some of the other bathers had joined us and there seemed to be no point in continuing the discussion. I thanked the couple for their time and they wished me well and I walked back to my flat, where I looked around me.

The place was a mess. I cleaned it all day long. Shortly before the end of business hours, I went out for food and when I came back, I cleaned some more. Late at night the people below me knocked on the door to urge me to be quieter and expressed their surprise at the fact that they’d never seen me before. They left. I stayed up to write down what I could remember of the morning’s meeting at the beach.

At around four o’clock I fell asleep and dreamt. Once more I entered a vast building with many rooms and floors. But instead of waking up without having left it, this time I passed through it and walked away and I felt powerful.

When it was daylight, I began to dial numbers and look up businesses before deciding that a more personal touch was called for. I set out for the main part of town where with some effort I managed to ingratiate myself into a position with a retailer situated in a busy street. It wasn’t really sales, nothing so fanciful, just an assistant’s position, but it was a job that I could do while being among people all day. I was with company.

After going home at night, I chiseled away at my thoughts about the people on the beach. A few times I went back there early in the morning. I never saw them again.

Some years before, I had moved to a coastal town thinking that fortune smiled on writers in picturesque places. But after much time had passed, I was in a bad state. I had hardly any friends. Writing no longer interested me. I wasn’t working at a proper job which contributed to my condition. There was a lot of time to waste fretting about old regrets and fears of the future.

So I slept. And dreamt. There was one in which I wandered into a vast building visiting room after room on floor after floor. I could never leave it. I’d wake up with a feeling of searing regret, something that some prisoner might feel, but that did not stop me from turning over for more sleep.

I slept at night, I slept in the mornings. In the afternoons I got up to go to the shops, or with effort write one of the stories that were my mainstay at the time. In the evenings I’d watch television before once again falling asleep.

One day I awoke early from a bad dream. In it I had decided enough was enough, I could no longer bear my own history, I couldn’t stand my own feeble attempts at art. I saw that it had all rushed away from me, everything that constituted a good and meaningful life. What was left to do? I had literary visions of the windswept cliffs the town was famous for. Perhaps I’d gain something like insight or guidance from the gulls and water and bracing sea air.

I dressed and ventured into the strange chilly morning, walking along the badly lit streets to the beach where I stood looking out over the bay.

There were other people there; old people, happy people. So happy did a particular group of three of them seem where they stood at the top of the stairs leading down to the sand that I walked over.

“Morning,” a bald man said, “are you joining us?”

“Yes, do,” a woman said.

All three of them had with them some baggage that made me ask:

“Are you planning a picnic?”

“No, we’re going swimming, of course,” the bald man said.

“Good grief,” I muttered, as to me it was a cold day. They laughed in delight at this. I said I was going for a walk.

“Before work?” the woman asked.

“Work, with that head of hair?” the third man said skeptically. I hadn’t had a decent haircut in a long time.

“I’m self-employed,” I said. I walked some distance along the path from where I could watch them put down their baggage, take off some clothes, and in their bathing costumes go into the water.

There must have been ten of them in the early light, their forms cutting into the backdrop of small white breakers rolling into the shallows. The bald man and his female companion turned and looked in my direction. Were they discussing me? Beyond the breakers, the water was darker but beyond that, across the bay, the sun was rising behind a great bank of clouds.

How beautiful all this was, I told myself. Why wouldn’t I do things like this more often? But I knew the next day would come and I might wake up only to turn over and sleep. I was stuck in something I couldn’t clearly explain. Still, this particular morning was happening and I decided to make good use of it and followed the path through rocks and milkwood trees. It was wonderful to be out in the chill and the noise of the sea, water churning white against the rocks.

After a while, I returned to the beach where the bathers were leaving the water and heading for their towels and warm clothes.

“Oh, wasn’t that splendid,” the bald man said on noticing me.

The woman nodded and said, evidently for my benefit, “I’d suggest that even the younger generation might have use of such an experience.”

I remained standing there, drawn by their warmth. The bald man produced a half-bottle of sherry from his bag and grinned at me. “How about a toot now,” he said. We drank in turn, small polite sips which were more about the company than anything else.

“What work do you do?” the man asked.

“Writer,” I muttered. “Nothing you would’ve read.”

“I say,” the man said to me, “I hope you don’t think I’m prying, but is everything all right? There’s something about you, some malaise.”

“Yes, and you seem overdressed for the beach,” the woman said kindly. “This isn’t just a walk you’re taking, is it?”

There was very little I could think of to say to that so I laughed as carelessly as I knew how. We drank some more of the sherry, which filled me with warmth as much as did my companions.

“You know,” the bald man said, “fifty years ago I had ahead of hair like that.” The woman laughed. The man stroked his pate and looked out over the sea, which had grown much lighter. “I’d just started a business. Construction. Things were great. The economy was strong, my timing was right. I was doing well. Then I got a diagnosis. I was told I had months to live. So I closed my business and moved back in with my folks. I didn’t do anything but read. After some time I’d worked my way through the Waverley Novels, the James Bonds and about half of the Canadians and my dad asked me, ‘So when do you plan to die?’ And I realized even if it was happening any day now, I might as well go out and face life. I went back into construction, got married, had a family, lost my wife, saw my grandkids grow up. Then I met this one. All that in fifty years.”

“And I met you, John,” the woman said softly and then to me, “It’s true it’s not all about good times. Sometimes you have to accept what’s downright bad too. Long ago when I was in my late forties I felt very alone. My kids were grown, my husband had left me. I moved to another town and worked there. I met a man who I had my doubts about. He wasn’t working, but he claimed to be looking for a business to buy and run. After a while, he was still looking and talking about it and living with me. I told friends that even if he was a swindler, at least I would have had someone in my life for a while. But sure enough, I eventually had to accept that he was simply a layabout and a braggart. One day I drove him to the station and bought him a ticket to a town on the other side of the country. He went. He left me without resistance. After some months he phoned me to say he was happy. Despite what you might think, that it sounds tacky, it was sort of special. It was life, you know. And that only happens to you when you allow it to.”

I nodded. I was very self-conscious. The two people seemed so kind and wise to someone who often felt like a foreigner even to himself. I was a citizen of some desolate country. I wondered if I should be concerned that my plight seemed to be written all over my person.

“What we mean,” the bald man slowly said, “is that we could tell something is up with you. If we could, we’d point you in some direction and say, there, that’s the way to go.”

“But what do we know?” the woman said.

Some of the other bathers had joined us and there seemed to be no point in continuing the discussion. I thanked the couple for their time and they wished me well and I walked back to my flat, where I looked around me.

The place was a mess. I cleaned it all day long. Shortly before the end of business hours, I went out for food and when I came back, I cleaned some more. Late at night the people below me knocked on the door to urge me to be quieter and expressed their surprise at the fact that they’d never seen me before. They left. I stayed up to write down what I could remember of the morning’s meeting at the beach.

At around four o’clock I fell asleep and dreamt. Once more I entered a vast building with many rooms and floors. But instead of waking up without having left it, this time I passed through it and walked away and I felt powerful.

When it was daylight, I began to dial numbers and look up businesses before deciding that a more personal touch was called for. I set out for the main part of town where with some effort I managed to ingratiate myself into a position with a retailer situated in a busy street. It wasn’t really sales, nothing so fanciful, just an assistant’s position, but it was a job that I could do while being among people all day. I was with company.

After going home at night, I chiseled away at my thoughts about the people on the beach. A few times I went back there early in the morning. I never saw them again.

 

JACO FOUCHÉ is a South African writer who has published ten books in Afrikaans and who is interested in publishing in Canada. He was won awards for his Afrikaans writing. His most recent award was for an English poem in the AVBOB Poetry Project, “A Feeling like Leaving Harbour”, of which the theme was death and loss and which earned him first prize in the English category.

Copyright © 2019 by Jaco Fouché. All rights reserved.

 

‘Consequences’ by Dalia Gesser

Non-Fiction, Short Stories

Consequences

Illustration by Andres Garzon

 

When we live our lives on the edge, with no regard for how we conduct ourselves or how we treat our mates, it’s no surprise that consequences usually follow. I picked up an inebriated man in my cab, late one evening, outside a local bar. He needed to get home or maybe he just ran out of drinking money and called it ‘a night’. It’s all too common for the intoxicated ones, having just imbibed in a ‘bottle of courage’, to rant on about some ridiculous situation they became embroiled in, which of course they’re never at fault.           This forty something-year-old was no different. Having no filter, he began spewing his drunken opinions during the short drive to his residence. I was all too familiar with this behavior and how easily an innocent comment could set them off, so I tried to keep the conversation light. This gentleman, however, most probably due to his uninhibited state, felt the need to share the ongoing conflict he was having with his spouse.

“Oh my wife doesn’t care much for my drinking,” he confided in me.

“Why is that?” I asked sarcastically, trying to humour him.

“I don’t know,” he said. “You’d think she’d be used to it by now.”

“Maybe she hopes you’ll change,” I said more sincerely.

“She’s always trying to change me,” he said complaining.

“We all have room for improvement,” I said.

“When she met me, she knew that I like to drink and she did too,” he said trying to defend himself.

“Well, people don’t always stay the same, especially as we get older,” I said.

“You got that right,” he said, a bit upset. “If she doesn’t drink, the least she could do is not bug me about what I like to do.”

“Well maybe she wants the best for you and doesn’t want to see you have long term health problems,” I said.

“I know, but if I don’t care she shouldn’t either.”

“Easier said than done.”

“True.”

Just as I pulled up to the man’s home, we both witnessed someone throwing clothes out of an upstairs window. We watched as the smaller items floated down gracefully while the larger ones landed on the lawn with a thud.

“This doesn’t look good,” the man commented.

“I guess not.” I replied. “Am I to assume that’s your wife tossing out your clothes?”

“Ya,” he said in shock.

This situation was so cliché. I could easily imagine, without meeting her, the script leading up to this scene. The numerous comments and threats she made to him about his drinking or spending money or, more likely, both, judging by the neighbourhood where they lived. Then there were his endless promises to change, which never amounted to anything concrete, only leading to escalating disappointment. The numerous frustrated rounds, voices raised, before he would leave the house in a huff. He would always return ‘three sheets to the wind’ after the bar closed at 2:00 a.m.

Tonight, after their argument, he took off to the bar as usual, but this time her anger brewed. This time, after reaching her limit, she made the decision not to continue on the same path with this man who was incapable of modifying his habits. After a few hours of smoking many cigarettes, pacing around the house, maybe speaking to a girlfriend which included many tears, she came to terms that change was overdue. She brainstormed, possibly with her girlfriend, decided on the best plan, mustered up the courage and carried it through. Good for her.

“I can’t believe this is happening,” he said as more garments filled the yard.

Yes, he was that clueless.

“Lori!” he called up to her.

Lori stared down at him as he craned his head out of the open cab window but said nothing. At this point what could he possibly say? As drunk as he was, he seemed to understand at least that much. Her action spoke volumes. She popped her head back inside then after a few seconds and resumed her mission, more garments came tumbling downwards.

“I never thought she’d go and do this!” the guy exclaimed.

Was this his best defense?

“Well I guess she had enough,” I said stating the obvious.

As the reality of his wife’s actions sank in, a look of guilt spread across his face. The man got out of the cab, walked over to the clothes spread across the front yard, and began picking them up with a saddened expression. He was clearly at a loss as to how to deal with this pathetic situation.

“Lori, Lori,” this upstanding citizen called up to the second floor again.

It was all to no avail. Lori ignored his pleas.

“Where else can I take you,” I asked the distraught man trying to make him understand that staying here was not an option.

In the wee hours of Sunday morning, a few months later, I was requested by dispatch to drive a man home. It was difficult to detect his age, due to his smoker’s complexion and slightly burned-out appearance. This guy was the last of my intoxicated fares so by the time we arrived at his home it was close to 3:00 a.m. When I stopped the cab in front of the house with the porch lights on, I noticed a piece of paper posted to the front door. Next to the door with the handwritten message was stacked a stereo, a briefcase, a few boxes, an ugly lamp, a leather jacket, and a few other possessions. Scattered across the lawn was an array of clothes. My passenger let out a gasp.

“I can’t believe she left my jacket in full view! Someone could have stolen it.”

Of all his possessions this undoubtedly was one of his favourites. He took a couple of minutes to study his state of affairs. “This is unbelievable!”

The now ex-girlfriend found an unmistakable way of making her point. I felt the need to bring the posted message to his attention, as I questioned how cognizant he was with drunkenness now compounded in shock.

“She left you a note,” I said.

He got out of the cab and pulled the paper off the door. He glanced back at me and shrugged.

“How long have you been together?” I couldn’t help but ask loudly.

“Not long,” he paused, “a few months.”

He stood silently, assessing the disaster zone, then took out his cell phone from his pocket. Perhaps he was expecting to get the boot, not knowing exactly how or when it would happen. I waited patiently then, after a couple of minutes, made an arm gesture signaling him over to the cab.

“What are we doing here?” I called to him wanting to get on with my shift.

“Just a sec,” he held up his index finger.

He paced back and forth over the lawn, picking up his clothes while conversing with someone on his cell. “Okay,” he said then hung up.

He walked over to the driver’s window and paid me.

“Are you alright?” I asked.

“Ya,” he answered. “Just like last time, a buddy’s coming over to get me.”

 

DALIA GESSER, a theatre arts/educator and writer, has been running theatre arts programs for children and seniors, since 1998, funded mainly by grants from the Ontario Arts Council. She incorporates storytelling in all her theatre arts programs as everyone has interesting stories to tell. Some of her non-fiction stories have been published in an anthology book series titled ‘Conscious Women’, four in the ‘Chicken Soup for the Soul’ series and four stories in ‘Kingston Life Magazine’.

Copyright © 2019 by Dalia Gesser. All rights reserved.

 

‘Highly Evolved Creatures Talk to Me’ by James Finost

Flash Fiction, Short Stories

Stepping off the blurry edge of town, first through the corn-filled meadows, then an untouched wilderness, twisted maple forests, pristine rivers—where do they run to?—shallow canyons, shores of salt lakes—half a continent of scenery at least, all passes in a matter of hours and then—sand. And then that’s all there is. Hundreds of years of walking sand. Wandering endless bleached earth. You could drown in it. Wherever the other side is, only the creatures can say.

What do they say? “I know a place you can go.”

Water burns, though it isn’t water, from the canteen to my lips down my throat through my arteries, unrelenting poison, memories of being able to black anything out by numbing the hours with the next round and the next. Where is the darkness now? A day that never relents to night, allows decades to crawl on by.

I take desperate sleep under a sun that doesn’t move, doesn’t blister my skin. This heat could peel the shell off a tortoise, but no burns come to my arms or feet or face, it only shrivels my insides.

The flash of a scorpion out of the earth stops to consider something a moment. I bring a stick down on its back and cleave it in two, squash the stinger under the sole of my sandal, squeeze its insides into my mouth. Its blood burns my tongue, though it isn’t blood. Gulp it down, whatever I can get, and toss the carcass away.

Asking them: “How do you live?”

The voices come—where do they come from?—“We don’t drink.”

Feverish walking through immeasurable nothing. Not another soul to be found. No bodies rising from the earth, like nothing ever died out here because nothing lived out here. The steady incline up a rapid, moving, shifting hill, a blistering promise of some view. But more nothing all around. The opposite of being trapped in a confined space. Trapped in the bright abyss.

At times I find the canteen dry. And other times when I wake—was I asleep or passed out?—it’s filled with the substance again. Oldest affection, sweet and refined it used to be. Like the blood of someone you used to love, or who used to love you.

Another carcass tossed away—my own—in the ever-expanding wasteland, the void of nature. In a place like this, you start to wonder if you’ve fallen entirely into some place eldritch, a blight on a map in the centre of nowhere at all. Black ants at the sides of my vision, or are they the spots of delirium?

Whispers. The creatures whisper to me still. Where are they?

My hands search inside the sand. No, not sand, soft scrobiculate pockmarked ground. Cup both hands to my head to shut out the light and peer through tiny holes in the ground. Here they are! They gaze up from unreachable quenching darkness. What highly evolved creatures these must be with their irises so clear, rested, full of colour—I used to know them.

They say, “Don’t you know what it’s like watching you?”

JAMES FINOST is an Australian emerging writer living in Canada. Not too long ago he was a primary school teacher, and before that a facilitator of writing groups for young people. He now works in a library trying to keep his ever-growing reading list at bay.

Copyright © 2019 by James Finost. All rights reserved.

 

‘Eulogy’ by Maia Kowalski

Fiction, Short Stories

Eulogy.jpg

Illustration by Andres Garzon

 

My father’s funeral was on a Tuesday, on my mother’s birthday. I found this fitting. After the divorce, she had said multiple times how much of a relief it was to have him out of her life. Now it almost seemed like a birthday present. She didn’t attend. The crowds of black that shuffled inside the church fanned themselves with the funeral programs I had made. We kept the doors open, but there wasn’t enough wind to sufficiently cool anyone past the last pew.

He didn’t want it in a church; I remembered that much from his will. In the few glances I was allowed, he said he wanted to be cremated in Calgary, where he had lived most of his life. His ashes were to be thrown around the city. I think he knew it would be too hot when he died to stuff people into a building. Grandma said we had to have a casket in Barrie, though, where he grew up. The shiny box was flooded with roses when we knew he hated them. There was a picture board even though throughout his life he was vehemently against taking photographs. But I liked how we refused all his orders. It made the whole thing more bearable.

It’s always easy to tell who comes to funerals because they feel guilty. I saw too many people I hadn’t seen enough in my father’s life when he was alive, and when I shook hands with them they pretended to know my name and gave me a sympathetic smile. Some didn’t smile at all. Go home, I wanted to tell them.

My grandmother gave the first speech. Even though she and my father never had a strong relationship, she pulled out old childhood stories and humorous arguments that lightened the crowd. She told us about his love of gardening and daisies. Then as we were all feeling better about ourselves, she hit us with tears when she said a child shouldn’t die before their parents.

My aunt was next and she, too, did not have a strong relationship with my father. But she brought out the same material.

“He was a good brother,” she said. “I knew it’d be hard to lose a sibling, but I didn’t think it would be this hard.”

I heard people sniffling in the row behind me and my grandmother gave a massive sob. I coughed to make it look like I was feeling the same.

I didn’t want to do a speech. I didn’t even want to be there. I told my father’s side over and over that I didn’t want to talk, that I didn’t have anything to say, but my grandmother quipped me with the you’re family line which left me with no other excuse. So when I walked towards the podium I pointedly dabbed my face with a Kleenex, pretending to wipe away old tears and ready to feign more emotion. I had a folded map of North America to use as a prop and stuffed it under my arm.

“My dad was a good man,” I began and scanned the crowd. Eager but tear-stained faces from my family filled the front row. Everyone else was a massive blur.

“I’ll always remember him as the one who took us for road trips,” I said and looked at my brother for confirmation. He gave me a faint smile.

“Jack would map them out and we’d start driving at 4am so we could get to our next rest stop before dark.”

I took out the map and pointed out the different places we had driven together. There were pen marks all over the United States and a single line from Calgary to Toronto, when my father had driven my brother out to university in his first year.

“He said his dad never took him to places like this, so he wanted to do it for us.”

I folded the map back up and looked at my grandmother and aunt. They smiled at me in agreement.

“He drove us around the city a lot if we needed something,” I continued. “There were the trips to Krispy Kreme, and Tim Hortons, and always to McDonald’s.”

The whole church laughed.

“When I was six we’d go daisy hunting in our backyard. I remember always finding more than him, and when he looked into my basket he threw them all up in the air and made me laugh.”

I actually smiled, remembering our hazy sunlit backyard, my orange dress, white daisies falling around me and sprinkling my vision. “Then he’d pick me up and put me on his lap, and we’d pick off the petals together.”

For the first time at the ceremony, my eyes threatened to tear. But I braced myself.

“Of course, there are always two sides to every person,” I said. “To be honest, there were a lot of times I didn’t want to be around him. Most of my life, actually.”

The wind carried in sounds from the street.

“When my grandmother told me to write this speech, the only things I could think of were negative.” I paused, pacing myself. “Honestly, those last three examples were the only things that showed him in a positive light.”

I looked at the front row. Grandma wasn’t happy.

“Our conversations were never deep. I never smiled genuinely around him. I think I even tried to suppress smiling if I noticed he was near me.”

Grandma’s mouth drooped comfortably into the frown lines she had built up over the years whenever she was upset with my father. I stopped looking at her.

“There was that time when I was eight, and he was running a bath for me and Jack. I sat on the side of the tub, naked because I was little, and he looked at my stomach and told me I was getting fat. I ran off crying to mom and she told him off.”

I was going to stop there, but there was a fire in my stomach.

“When I had a hard time making friends in university, he told me I wasn’t trying hard enough. I told him I had anxiety and he ignored me. ‘Making friends isn’t that hard,’ he said.”

There was an uncomfortable cough.

“He told me I was closing doors on people on purpose. He told me to force myself to be social. He told me I would be a drop-out. And he expected me to trust him when he couldn’t even trust me. I couldn’t make eye contact with him. He was unreliable and headstrong and nothing I liked in a person.”

I was looking at the back of the church. It was at this moment that I dared to look at the other pews, and it was the silent mass of stony and sad faces I had expected. I took their silence as agreement.

“I wish I could say that I loved him. I wish I could say that I enjoyed his company or he made me laugh or he was one of the best fathers a child could ever know. But the truth is he wasn’t, and being dead doesn’t change any of that.”

I snuck a peek at my grandmother and could barely recognize her. Her face was contorted into a glare, all narrowed eyes, and furrowed eyebrows, but she didn’t speak. I don’t think she could figure out what to say.

My aunt studied her fingernails in her lap. She must know I’m right, I thought. But when she looked up at me, her eyes were full of tears. She shook her head. My stomach dropped.

Jack was as somber as he was before I spoke, and I knew he didn’t like confrontation, so he wouldn’t say anything to me until after. But he bit his lip, which I knew meant he felt guilty. I looked away.

“Thank you.”

I walked away from the podium and towards the doors. I heard people whispering about me in the pews as I walked by.

“Why did she say that?”

“Is that really his daughter?”

“What a horrible child.”

But I ignored them just like I ignored my father every time he tried to tell me he was right.

Happy birthday, mom, I thought as I finally exited the church. The sun was bright and the heat embraced me. I feel as relieved as you do.

***

I woke up today with a headache. It’s still so hot outside, and even though I kept my window open last night, I couldn’t escape the stickiness of overnight summer sweat. But the heat reminds me. Today’s the day.

I’ve been thinking about this for a while now. The funeral was only a month ago, and since then my family has refused contact. Jack updates me on everything they’re saying behind my back, even though he doesn’t agree with what I did either. I don’t blame them for talking about me, but deep down I still think they know I’m right.

Jack says their favourite line against me is, How could she say that about her own father? He helped raise her, didn’t he? Sometimes I want to send a message back to explain. But I never do.

I thought ranting about my father would make me feel better, and I did in the beginning, for the first two weeks after the funeral. But then one morning I woke up with so much guilt I couldn’t move out of bed. I didn’t want to do anything except think about how I ruined the ceremony.

The day after that I told myself I’d redo everything at his grave the next month. I’d say a proper speech and remember him in a good way, even though my mind was filled with bad ones.

That’s today. I put on the same outfit I had on a month ago, and drive to the cemetery.

His grave is way in the back because everywhere else is filled up. I remember when he told me he paid to keep two spots open closer to the gates for himself and my mother, when they were still together. A few years went by until he realized he couldn’t afford it. I remember arguing with him about how he was spending his money, which ended with me not speaking to him for three weeks. I laugh as I drive past those two spots now, reading the names of people I don’t know: my way of telling them how happy I am that they got those spots instead of my father. But I wonder if I’d be more inclined to visit him if he was closer to the exit.

He’s in the middle of a row, and after I pass everyone else’s pretty potted tulips and orchids I come to a plain stretch of dirty grass and weeds. I’m surprised no one picked up the cemetery’s gardening bill, after all the emotion and kind words said at the funeral. But I guess all of that really did mean nothing.

I’m standing in front of him now. I look at his name for much too long, study the way it’s carved into the grave and how neat the dates look underneath it. I’ve forgotten why I’m here.

And when I do remember, nice words refuse to come out. Instead there’s that fire again, that fire I had a month ago, and it’s erupting inside my throat and now I’m yelling at him, yelling at his grave, yelling at dirt and weeds and a piece of stone that bears his name. I yell until I start to cry.

But when the wind changes and the sky is overcast, I slow myself down. I don’t know how long I’ve been here but it feels like the longest I’ve ever wanted to be in his company.

I had brought the map from the funeral with me as a symbolic thing, to show him where we went together for the last time. But I rip it up now, in front of him, getting rid of any evidence. I don’t need it anymore.

I’m about to leave when I see a single daisy flopping back and forth in the wind, right beside his grave. I pretend it’s him in flower-form, asking for forgiveness. And I pretend I’m six again, and dozens of the same flower are falling around me, dotting my vision, and I’m about to be picked up and held in his lap. I hope he remembers.

The daisy loses its petals in a strong gust and I watch them disappear in the grass. Then I turn my back on him for the last time.

I really hope he remembers.

 

MAIA KOWALSKI is a Canadian writer who is finishing up a Masters of Creative Writing in Paris, France. Originally from Toronto, she plans to move back home after she graduates to work on her first short story collection.

Copyright © 2019 by Maia Kowalski. All rights reserved.

 

‘How to Win Solitaire’ by Heather Hunt

Fiction, Short Stories

Solitaire.jpg

Illustration by Andres Garzon

 

Dear Mariella Goodman of the Counselling Office at Johnstown College,

I wish you hadn’t helped me last year. Now I am in a worse state than I was in before, or ever have been; worse even than in the third grade when I peed my pants during story time. For weeks—MONTHS—my identity was Pissy Chrissy. No! Now I am in a state worse even than the exact MOMENT following my accident, when my best friend Hannah shot away from me, laughing, and said, “You’re just like Jillo!” 

Jillo was her daughter, her doll whose mouth she could pour things in if she had the urge to change a diaper. Jillo’s mouth was frozen in the shape of an O, but not in surprise. Her eyebrows were static and relaxed.

Hannah and I stopped being friends after I peed at school, but we were doomed anyway. Her mother forbade her from pouring anything but water into Jillo, and I was always whispering, “Do it with chocolate milk. I can get some from my house.” Her mother slit her eyes at me while plating after-school Oreos in their kitchen. Somehow . . .I don’t know how, but somehow, she knew I wanted exotic liquids to gush from Jillo’s stark plastic nub. I mean, I kept my voice down. It didn’t matter if it was chocolate milk or prune juice. I just wanted to experience something that didn’t flow freely from millions of faucets around the world.

But, actually, Jillo looked nothing like a baby! She looked like our teacher, Mrs. Ashford. They both had green eyes and blond hair down to their shoulders. During story time I’d extract reading rug lint from as close as I could to Mrs. Ashford without touching her black ankle boots. Once, on a Thursday in March, she said, “Christina, are you listening?” and I said, “Yes, but maybe he just put green food coloring in the eggs and ham, so it’s secretly pretty normal, but no one will believe him.” She didn’t ask me again. During the summer after the third grade, I unzipped my pencil case on a Ferris wheel in San Francisco and let all the lint out. The sky was more reading rug than it was air. 

If you had not helped me leave my relationship last year, I would still be in that one rather than the one I am currently in. Jen wasn’t THAT bad. I realize that any opinion you formed of her is based on my whining about her in your office. I hope your office is still located on Fourth Street, but don’t mistake my hope as a wish that you and your peace lily still face West and get all that afternoon sunshine. I just hope you are there to receive this letter. I know you never met her, but I’m telling you now. Jen, she wasn’t that bad.

I used to blame Jen for the footprints on our hardwood entrance. Brown footprints from April to November, salty whites from November to April. The city was coming into my apartment with no invitation, and I had to tiptoe through that shitty city to reach the cleaning cupboard. Those footprints filled my head with heat, pulsing in my temples –Inescapable. “I need a drink,” I’d mutter to my soggy socks. Salt doesn’t wipe away as well as mud. While I filled the mop bucket, Jen would retrieve a Tupperware from the fridge and eat standing up, smirking with her dick nose and saying, “You can’t prove they’re mine.” 

“No one else here wears size ten,” I would say, and she would laugh. Spraying couscous or granola everywhere. The next thing I knew, I’d be coaxing her crumbs out from between the cupboard cracks with a butter knife. Never her. God no. She’d probably chop her fingers off! Jen and her goddamn sausage fingers.

Before I started thinking her nose looked like a dick, I thought Jen resembled a young Goldie Hawn. I didn’t know what Goldie Hawn looked like, still don’t. I’m guessing she’s suave and a bit handsome. Two months into our relationship, I slipped at a curling match and broke my foot, and Jen drove around the block nine times because a bread delivery truck was idling in the spot closest to the Medi-clinic. 

“I thought it would work, since nine’s your lucky number. But looks like I gotta take matters into my own hands.” She double-parked, trapping all that sourdough and gluten-free rye between the curb and her Jeep. I had never seen anyone double-park before. No one’s brave enough! She carried me up the clinic walkway and hummed the Bridal Chorus into my ponytail, every note punctuated with dejected beeps behind us. Pissed fists on flat black car horns. Her chest vibrated against my back when she hummed. Goddamn brave Jen! She placed me on a paisley waiting room chair. I was quick to grow cold – quick to complain. She covered me with her coat, even though all she had on was her Bon Jovi concert tee. Her forearm hairs stood at attention until the doctor saw me.

But as soon as we moved in together, the footprints started. She was just so BIG. Just so SORRY! She didn’t realize she was so annoying. You already know . . .you helped me feel less bad leaving her. Remember? “You shouldn’t have to live annoyed.” You had this amused smile. Something you should know is . . .well, you wear glasses. And you keep your desktop screen turned away from your client’s chair, but in the reflection of your glasses, I noticed you playing Solitaire while I spoke. I always see you making weird moves. You should hold off on moves that aren’t important.

The one I’m with now accidentally called me “Stace” on our second date, when we were in line for movie tickets. I said, “I think you mean Christina,” and she said, “What?” and I said, “Did you just call me Stace? My name’s Christina.” And she said, “Excuse me,” but not to me—she said it to the line gathering behind us, because we were stuck between those blood-red velvet ropes they try to fancy movie theaters up with. We were stuck in front of about thirty people, and she shoved backwards through them all jagged – like tearing cling wrap too fast against its own blunt razor.

As I followed her, more than one person leaned toward my face and made a tsking noise with their tongue. When we got outside it was frigid as hell, but I was relieved to have escaped that snake pit. I told her, “I was just reminding you what my name was. I thought you forgot.” The marquee was bright, and she glittered in dark contrast. Onyx. Just then, I realized that she was the most beautiful woman I’d ever known in my entire life. She must’ve realized my realization, the way she laughed. I turned away to read license plates or convenience store signs. Coronas, 2-for-1!

I heard her say, “Excuse me, do you have a cig? I’ll give you a dollar,” and when I looked, she was huddling over a garbage guy’s lighter. I wanted to touch the black stubble of her shaved head, which I had only gotten to do once so far—a week earlier, on the bridge after our first date. She had gripped the waist of my polyester peacoat, tripped me forward for a kiss. Our mouths had generated seamless humidity. My right palm had found the calmness at the back of her scalp. Come to think of it, it’s textured like a velvet rope.

But outside of the movie theater, tobacco smoke streamed from her nostrils. She said, “Don’t you dare ever. EVER! Embarrass me like that again.” I apologized with my eyes. Do you remember them? They’re dusty, like September footprints. We speed-walked downtown. Instead of watching a movie, we downed Jameson and sank balls at the decrepit university billiards place. I’m guessing you don’t know the place. It’s decrepit.

She sunk the eight-ball and said, “The only way to diminish your pain is to literally confront it head-on.” She’s one of those people who says “literally” for emphasis. Stacey’s her ex-girlfriend, and now the name means nothing because we literally include it in every conversation. Like, “What do you want for dinner, Stace?” “Oh, cheese and peas, Stace.” It’s like slapping a “Dykes Do it Best” sticker on your own locker in the tenth grade before anyone else can. Before they hear you missed class on Tuesday because you were writhing under Cherise Lopez from one to four p.m., destroying her bed with sweat and toe jam.

We had walked to Cherise and her dad’s apartment for lunch, and she had used the bacon that was specifically his to make my BLT. He was at work. Cherise had this way of paying attention to me, treating each of my words and actions as opportunities. When I mumbled, “thanks, it’s tasty,” she mumbled back, “tasty, huh? I know something tasty,” and her eyes took a season or two to investigate me, starting at my mismatched socks: purple hearts left, cooking kittens right. You heard me. Cooking kittens. That morning when I’d gotten dressed. . .well, if I had even dreamed of being someone’s lunch dessert, maybe I would have worn my mother’s lawyer-lady nylon socks.

Good thing was, Cherise wasn’t fickle when it came to me. She didn’t like her dad’s bacon, didn’t like salt. Didn’t even like cheese! Her own lunch was lettuce-mayo-bread. But with ME, I figured Cherise wasn’t fickle because of how she paused on her way up. I blushed and squeezed my thighs together, which made a shadowy v-crease in my jeans, which inflated her smile. Maybe it’s stupid, but. . .well, if I had died under her cautious chestnut gaze, right now I’d be a ghost, bragging about how my life was all pleasure, no pain. You’d say, “what about Jen, who filled you with guilt? And what about the new one, whose slightest facial grievance governs your thoughts, emotions, and actions?” and I’d say, “I don’t know Jen or the new one, because I died in high school when someone figured me as cunning as a piece of crystal, before I could discover reflexivity.”

The day after my time with Cherise (more specially, the day after Heaven found the stretch of skin between my thighs), I waved our afternoon around like an identity token. I wore a rainbow pin on my backpack and told all the kids from the Out and Proud Club, “Guess what I did yesterday!” I wonder if I would have started calling her Cherry if we had had more time together. I’d love to send her dad some bacon. Actually, well—what I’d actually love is to apologize to the entire Lopez family, if I knew how to reach them. But her dad moved away from Johnstown when she went to sleep in the river. I don’t dare dream of all the things I’d say. “I miss her, too,” is all I can muster without my ribs and collarbone clenching each other for support. The thing is, I don’t actually know if I miss her, or just the feelings she gave me. I feel hollow like a Jillo doll, thinking about all this. I wonder what her favorite movie was. Her favorite brand of car. I don’t care about cars the way she did. Cherise and the goddamn toy-car collection on her bedroom shelf. My bedroom shelves kept junk like concert glow sticks and dollar-store nail polish, dry, three shades too light to be current.

Blame is a vortex. I don’t know why anyone accepts it if they don’t have to, but sometimes you HAVE to, like when a dark circle spreads around you on a thin blue reading rug. I wish you hadn’t helped me with my problem. Jen? Really not a problem, Jen. She used to aim the hair dryer under the duvet when my feet were frozen – made me any goddamn thing but annoyed. Maybe I mistook her cold-pricked arm hairs as a visceral reaction to the cold. Maybe they were her only defense. “Spare me if you can.” She knew I’d put flames to whatever we created, someday, in some way or another.

Sincerely,

Christina Burns

P.S. I’ll feel bad if you’re not on Fourth Street anymore, and your offices have no windows, because if you’re like the majority of people, you threw your dead peace lily in your IKEA waste basket and its ceramic holder broke in pieces too soft to puncture a plastic bag. Did you know peace lilies grow back if they want? Just like that, on a whim? So, organic matter is in the landfill. Those brown fronds hear and smell misery without ever seeing it. Seagulls, goddamn creaking cranes and lost dogs.

 

HEATHER HUNT is a lesbian writer and video artist from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. She holds a BA Honours in English and Creative Writing from Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec, and has self-published two novels of LGBT2S+ content. Hunt conveys the emotional impacts of human relationships in her work by employing language reflecting the elements of nature and the human senses.

Copyright © 2019 by Heather Hunt. All rights reserved.

‘I Bring a Girlfriend to Hang Out with my Friends’ by Jamie Saporsantos

Flash Fiction, Short Stories

I used to make out with Ariel from The Little Mermaid.

It was a doll.

She was a doll, and I was four.

And the little four-year-old girl that I was just wanted a little smooching before she pretended to swim in the bathtub and played with her plastic toy Flounder.

 

When I was a pre-teen my cousin would ask, “Do you have a boyfriend?”

I’d say, “No.”

“Do you have a girlfriend?”

“No,” I’d say, and she would smile. Now, I think that was a joke, but twelve-year-old me just thought it was normal.

And it is normal, it is normal, I tell myself.

 

Now, I bring a girlfriend to hang out with my friends.

We’re thirty minutes late because I want them to have had at least one drink in them.

We walk up to the table and take our seats.

I let a breath out as two little shot glasses are placed in front of us, and I smile while introductions are made.

“Alcoholic,” my girlfriend teases.

“Just a lesbian,” I say.

 

JAMIE SAPORSANTOS is an emerging writer born and raised in Calgary, Alberta. She is a recent graduate of Mount Royal University’s English B.A. program where she discovered a passion for the craft of creative writing.

Copyright © 2019 by Jamie Saporsantos. All rights reserved.

 

‘Jarred’ by Lea Beddia

Fiction, Short Stories

Creatures

Illustration by Andres Garzon

 

I waited in line at the grocery store and stared at the tabloid magazines. I read a headline about a woman giving birth to a gorilla. Who reads that stuff? I looked at the contents of my cart. How many jars had I filled in the last month? Fifteen at least. Maybe it was because I was more temperamental than usual. Was it hormones? Maybe it was because I had procrastinated correcting final exams and it was stressing me out.

The woman in line ahead of me paid for her lottery tickets, and it was my turn to line up my items on the conveyor belt. The cashier weighed the fruit and scanned the case of jars.

“Do you make jam with the peaches?” A staleness surrounded the cashier’s gruff voice.

“I don’t make jam, but the peaches are excellent this year.” I tried to be polite, but I hate small talk.

“Oh. That’ll be twenty dollars and ninety-seven cents, please.”

I was relieved the cashier didn’t ask what the jars were for. Would she suspect I could trap people inside them?

I handed over my credit card and the woman read my name.

“Adina Mazara, that’s a nice name. What nationality is it?”

The cashier scanned my hair, dark brown with a natural wave, to get her answer. My skin is café au lait, according to my concealer. I wanted to tell her it was none of her business.

“I’m Canadian.” I know what she meant, but this way there wouldn’t be any follow-up questions. Any time I tell people my parents are Italian, they look at my dark skin and nod, then make a mafia joke. If that happened, I feared the cashier would end up in a pile of dust and trapped in one of my jars, like the others.

“Of course. Well, you have a nice name.” The cashier returned my credit card. “Have a nice day.” She handed me the bag of groceries, then the case of jars, and looked at me again. “Do you need help carrying those to your car?”

“No, thank you.”

At home, I set the case of jars and the grocery bag on the kitchen counter. I glanced at the shelf in the corner of the room, but not for too long.

I heard rattling. It could have been the air vents as the cooling system kicked into gear, but the sound came from one of the jars. There were at least 50 of them lined up on the shelves. Among them were snarky classmates, judgemental distant relatives, a few ex-boyfriends, and a dog that almost bit me. It was the beaker clattering against the others. It contained my high school chemistry teacher.

I had struggled for months in his class. I had enrolled because I wanted to be a vet, but my hope was crushed when I failed first term.

Despite all my efforts, Mr. Pasio was an insensitive teacher who mocked my attempts openly. When balancing equations, he called on me to give the answer.

“Adina! Can you at least do this equation? You get good marks in math, right? Easy peasy, come on.” I saw right through his compliment to the insult he lanced at me. He came too close and I saw his blue eyes squinting. By some magic, I shrank. It must have been something he’d concocted with his chemicals. It converted my weaknesses into a fresh wound. I felt like a fish in an aquarium; I was on display through the glass, with all my faults magnified.

I craved invisibility. Yes, I could balance the equation because it was a concept more of algebra than chemistry. Rather than answer the question, I stared at him. Normally, I would have averted my eyes from his, but not this time. I wanted to tell him what a jerk he was. As I opened my mouth to release my rage, he disappeared into a tornado of sand circling around me. I tried to wave it away, but it was like an insectile horde, changing direction with each swing of my arms. It got in my hair and eyes. I grabbed a glass beaker and a stopper from the back of the room, and then placed them on my desk. I had no idea what was happening, but I felt in control and I knew what to do. I was the one with the magic.

To the dust cloud, I whispered through clenched teeth, “Go,” and I trapped my chemistry teacher. My classmates didn’t seem to notice and they continued with their equations.

He’d spent close to twenty years inside the jar, and it was clear that he wanted to make an escape.

I hurried to my junk drawer and pulled out the duct tape. I held the jar in place and taped it to the back of the shelf. I was out of breath. I peered in the jar. The dust particles swirled around. From my reflection in the glass, I saw dark circles under my eyes and the weight I’d gained under my chin. Insomnia had worn me out.

Certain the chemistry teacher wouldn’t budge, I sat down to read a book. I couldn’t help glancing at the shelf. The jar was steady, but I still perceived the sand swarming inside, trying to get out. I was worried the other jars would do the same, but they remained quiet.

Restless, I stood again, this time studying the jar containing my first serious crush. I was in college, and I spotted him on our first day. We had a few classes in common, and worked on projects together. We would flirt, hold hands, and sometimes kiss. Eventually, I found myself in quiet corners pressed up against him, not always by choice. I made excuses for him, thinking boys will be boys. I never told him to stop, because I thought I was supposed to enjoy a boy’s advances.

In an alley near campus, he held my wrists in his one large hand, bruising them. He untucked my shirt from the inside of my skirt and forced his other hand underneath it. I asked him to stop. Instead, his hand went up my skirt. I twisted my wrists free and fought him off. I wanted to tell him what he had just done was abusive, but instead, I ran back to school.

The soles of my shoes stomped through the asphalt leaving indentations of my footprint. The ground shook and the boy crumbled to the pavement, leaving only rocks and sand in his place. He followed me, bouncing in small pebbles alongside me until I got to my locker. I emptied a jar containing pencils.

“Just go,” I whispered.

On my shelf, the rocks and sand that became of him sparkled in the sunlight cast on the shelf.  Looking closely, I panicked to find there was another jar rattling. I picked it up. It was pink. I remembered the woman inside it.

In my eleventh year of teaching, I met with the mother of a student to discuss the drastic decline in her son’s marks.

“Jeremy failed this term. I don’t understand the problem. He says you don’t like him and are always on his case,” the mother griped.

“I have no problem with Jeremy, but he doesn’t do his homework, which is why he’s failing,” I explained. This was true. Jeremy had been witty and keen until his marks and behavior took a dive.

“Jeremy said you told him he’s lazy. Maybe you’ve been working them too hard. They’re just kids. What good is it for them to do so much work anyway?” The mother’s voice grew louder and I noticed parents in the hall peering into my classroom as they waited their turn to speak with me.

I smelled alcohol on her breath. I knew the mother was ignorant to the changes in Jeremy’s mood. I knew it coincided with her binge drinking and his father’s abuse. I couldn’t say this aloud because he had written to me in confidence in the only assignment he submitted during the term, which was supposed to be about gratitude. He stated he had nothing to make him feel grateful, then went on to explain why. He met with the guidance counselor, but it did little to change his habits.

“I never said he was lazy. I said he lacked motivation. I would be willing to spend extra time with Jeremy to help him complete the work. If he spends lunchtimes with me catching up, I won’t count his work late.”

“Oh yeah, so now he’ll have detention.” The mother made it sound like it was an insult to instead of a reasonable solution to getting his work done. I had met parents like her before: emotionally absent and trying to make up for it.

I wanted to flip the desk over, shake the mother and tell her Jeremy was devastated. She was oblivious.

Instead, I told her, “Jeremy is bright, but he needs the right encouragement. I don’t think he’s getting support at home.”

“The hell with this.” The truth about Jeremy pierced the mother, causing her to crumble like an old anthill, into a puff of sand.

I emptied a jar filled with paperclips and whispered, “Go.” The parents in the hall didn’t notice.

In my living room, I placed the pink jar back on the shelf, and although it was still rattling, I had an appointment. I’d have to deal with the rattling when I returned. I only hoped my husband Samuel wouldn’t get home first. What would he think if he saw them moving? He would probably pick them up, study them, open them, maybe even empty them before I could figure out what to do. How would I explain them? Until then he’d always thought they were filled with sand from beaches I had visited. I couldn’t tell him they contained people who had caused me uncontrollable frustration. Every time someone was jarred, I felt a complete loss of control for letting myself get so angry.

I would have to worry about it later. I hurried to the car in order to get to my appointment on time. At the doctor’s office, I picked up a magazine in the waiting room. A couple walked in, bickering about a parking spot.

The woman walked through the door, with her right hand resting on her pregnant belly. She spoke softly. “My legs ache and I’m out of breath. I just thought we could park closer is all.”

“Why? You can’t use your legs no more? Hey, you can walk. See? Just like that.” The man gave her a gentle push into the waiting room.

The woman sat in front of me and groaned. She crossed her legs at the ankles, then uncrossed them.

“Why are you so difficult anyway?” Her partner sat next to her. “Why did I even have to come here today? Can’t you do anything on your own?” The man mumbled, but I was close enough to hear their conversation.

“I just thought you might like to see the ultrasound, hear the heartbeat. Those things are nice.”

“Like I need to hear the kid before he’ll be screaming and crying in my face all night.”

“I could have taken a taxi,” the woman said, squirming in her seat again.

“Oh yeah, with what money? You don’t even want me to smoke no more to save money.”

“It’s not good for the baby,” the mother stressed. Her chair squeaked as she twisted in her seat.

“Neither is the booze, yeah?”

“I don’t do that anymore. I save money, too.”

“Yeah, so you can buy fancy clothes for the baby and Jeremy?”

I gripped the armrests of my chair and bit my lip. I remembered her. Jeremy’s mother. I thought of him then. He always came to school in old sweat pants with holes in them. He wore his winter boots indoors because he couldn’t afford new shoes.

The pregnant mother sat with her elbows on her thighs, her head in her hands.

I almost spoke up to let her know I was there, to tell her I had her back, that her partner shouldn’t talk to her like that, but my courage was replaced with confusion. How could she be in front of me when I was sure she was in a jar on my shelf at home?

I was relieved to hear the doctor call my name.

The doctor weighed me and entered the information into her computer. There was a knock at the door, and I pulled at the hospital gown to cover up. A young doctor entered and spoke with my physician.

With the door open, I could hear the mother’s voice yelling form the waiting room, “Come on, come on, just quit it. If you don’t want to be here -” The young doctor left and closed the door. Soon after, I heard glass breaking in the waiting room.

When I left the doctor’s office, I walked out into the waiting room expecting to hear the couple arguing some more. Instead, I saw the mother, still looking defeated. At her feet was a shattered jar and a mound of sand.

Amazed, I sat next to her.

“What happened?” I asked.

“He was going to hit me again. I hit him first. I told him he could leave for good and it would be fine with me. My baby will be better off not knowing him. So he’s gone.”

“What about this?” I stuck the toe of my shoe in the dust, making an awful scraping as I scattered it around on the ground.

“The sand? Oh, that’s me. I used to be bottled up, quiet, but I’ve had enough. I was sealing it all up, you know, so that I wouldn’t explode, as if I could hold it all in, but I can’t. No one can. Sometimes, you have to get out, and let go, you know?” The mother kept her eyes downcast.

I didn’t understand. For me, the sand was always the other person, never myself. “What part of you is in the sand?” I asked her.

“My pain. The humiliation, I’ve been keeping it and hiding it for too long. It was time to let it out. I thought I could do something with it, but no. Who needs it? Sweep it away and let it go. I have other things to worry about.” She pat her round belly and looked up at me, “We all do. Hey, I know you. You teach Jeremy.”

She kicked the sand around, until the grains spread out, barely noticeable.

When I got home, I went straight to the shelf. The mother’s jar was on the floor, shattered. Sand spread out in a dry splatter of fine spears across the floor. I cleaned up the mess. I filled the empty case with jars containing rocks, sand, dust, shame and guilt. I finally understood. All this time I thought I was trapping people. Then I remembered. The chemistry teacher never disappeared. I changed class. I hated giving up and felt useless in class. The boy in the alley, he never spoke to me again, but I looked at him from a distance, still liking him, and hating myself for it. Jeremy’s mother never came for another interview, but I remember him grumbling something about how his mom was pregnant again. I felt guilty that I couldn’t help him improve his marks. I bottled up everything I hated about myself and put it on a shelf so it could be contained, but so I could also remember everything I didn’t want to be.

I waited for Samuel to come home and we walked to the lake with the jars. When my husband saw that I was out of breath, he offered to carry them. I insisted on carrying them myself. At the lake, I opened each jar and emptied its contents onto the beach, telling Samuel about each secret. The sand floated in small clouds, sailing with the wind and falling to the ground, each grain lost, unrecognizable among the infinity of the beach.

I heard my voice echo across the water as the mother’s words echoed in me, “That’s my pain.” Samuel just nodded and let me continue. “I’ve been keeping it for too long. I’m sharing it with you now so I can let it go.”

Samuel held me around my waist and smoothed my shirt over my round stomach. “I’m glad you told me. I want you to be a happy mom. But this pain, why did you trap it?”

“Because, I didn’t know where it belonged, so I held onto it. When I looked at the jars I felt what I had done wrong each time, desperate never to let those things happen again. When I get anxious, I hold onto to all the negativity I’ve ever felt, and I feel it all at once. I’m always aware of the bad things that could happen because of all the things that have already happened.   It made sense, but it doesn’t anymore. I don’t know that I’ll be able to let go of these forever but emptying them here is a start.

“The box will be lighter on the way back home,” Samuel pointed out. I nodded.

When we arrived home, Samuel washed the empty jars while I cut peaches to make jam.

 

LEA BEDDIA was born in Montreal. Her passion for literature has bred into a passion for writing. She studied Education at McGill University, and is currently completing a Creative Writing certificate at Concordia University. She enjoys all forms of writing, especially literature for young adults, and children. She aspires to have her young adult manuscript published. Visit her website: http://www.leabeddia.com or find her @LeaBeddiaWriter.

Copyright © 2019 by Lea Beddia. All rights reserved.

‘Miss Marigold’s Self-Portrait’ by Danielle Eyer

Fiction, Short Stories

3

Illustration by Andres Garzon

 

The summer I turned ten was filled with church bells and local choirs singing the town’s sorrows. The news blared from every television and radio –– they were investigating a death near my old house. A kid had died falling off a rocky cliff on the shores of Lake Erie, and the accident had awakened our small town. That night, police sirens screeched past our cottage. It took the entire fire department to retrieve his broken body by the rocks at the bottom. It had only been a dare. After the boy died, cliff jumping decreased in popularity.

I found Miss Marigold a year later on that same cliff. It was a day in early October, so it was too cold for swimming. The waves were too rough, and the clouds were too low. Miss Marigold sat facing the lake, her back against a boulder.

She was a colourful stain in a grayscale landscape. She looked like she had emerged from a mound of fabric swatches –– the textile equivalent of a scrapbook. Red and green ribbons in her hair, denim and suede patches to cover tears in her dress, a wide-brimmed yellow hat tied to her chin with twine. She balanced an oversized sketchbook on her knees and, trailed charcoal across the blank page in a sweeping motion.

I approached her from behind, half-hidden by the rocks. Her shoulders tensed when I stopped. I held my breath, stood still for a full minute. When I ventured upward again, she was back to sketching, her hat flopping in the wind.

She never acknowledged me, but I knew that she was aware of my presence. She waited for me. I waited for her. The sun waited for no one, and continued its slow descent behind the layers of clouds.

I closed my eyes for just a moment. When I opened them again, it was dark and she was gone.

I returned to the cliff the next day after school. Miss Marigold was back at her boulder with her sketchbook. Today she wore a red baseball cap and a skirt, layered like a wedding cake. A paint-splattered shawl was wrapped around her shoulders to keep warm.

I stopped a few feet before her and rolled up the collar of my turtleneck to keep out the wind.

“What are you drawing?” I asked.

She set down the piece of charcoal, her fingers smudged black. “It’s a self-portrait. Do you know what that is?”

I stepped forward to peer at the drawing. “That’s like, when you draw yourself, right?”

It was unfinished, but I recognized the image of a young lady’s profile, her small nose pointing upward, her eyes soft and shining, her lips full, smiling. It was only the start of a portrait, but it was radiant, even in black and white. I almost wished I could climb inside the picture just to be in the Beautiful Lady’s presence.

“So?” she asked. “Does it look like me?”

“I can’t tell with your hat on.”

She removed her hat. My initial reaction was to step back in horror, but my curiosity overcame my shock, and I inched forward to peer into her face.

Her murky eyes were wide-set. Her nose sank into her face. A deep scar ran from her hairline to her mouth. Her teeth were crooked and yellow, and her crayon-drawn lips were smeared across her face.

I grimaced. “That doesn’t look like you at all!”

She frowned at my words, her lips pressed together. Her eyes flared up as she glared at the image. She tore the page out of the book and crumpled it up, saying: “You’re right! Oh god, you’re right. She’s beautiful, she looks nothing like me!” She flung the crumpled paper over the side of the cliff.

“No, don’t!” I cried. I raced to the edge and watched it sink into the water. My eyes stung. Never again would I see those smiling eyes, the lady radiating on the page. “Why’d you do that? You didn’t have to throw it away.”

“Yes, I did.”

I softened when I heard her voice, high-pitched and near sobbing. She sunk her face into her hands. “I will never look like her,” she muttered. “Never.”

I stuck my hands into my jacket pockets and sat down, close but not too close. I saw the hurt I had caused, and needed to repair the damage I had done.

“You’re not ugly,” I said, and even as I said it I knew it wasn’t true. “Maybe you just need more drawing practice. My daddy says you can get good at anything with practice.”

Lifting her face from her hands, she asked, sniffling, “Really? You think so?”

I gulped and nodded. She smiled at my answer and wiped her face with some loose fabric on her sleeve.

Even now, I don’t remember if she ever introduced herself as Miss Marigold or if I baptized her myself. Her name came to me as I sat with her every day. It suited her, with her brightly coloured hats and clothing.

I’d come home from school every day and find her at that same boulder like a stray dog. I didn’t know where she came from. My classmates shrugged when I brought her up at school. Perhaps she never left, never stood up and stretched her legs. I sat with her as she sketched.

As the month wore on, the lady in the portrait grew clearer. Her delicate features sharpened as Miss Marigold added detail to her sketch: her curled eyelashes, the blush in her cheeks, her slightly upturned nose.

But just when the lady became real, Miss Marigold screamed and tore up the page, whimpering as if she were in physical pain.

It became a pattern. With every attempt, she grew more furious. The mere existence of the image hurt a deep part in her, and she wouldn’t keep quiet until it was destroyed.

The destruction of the image pained me. The lady’s existence, or perhaps her inexistence, haunted me. I woke up in a cold sweat from dreams in which she was burning, writhing in the flames. Her arms flailed like tree branches in the wind, reaching toward me. I watched helplessly.

Perhaps two weeks into this endeavor, whenever I felt one of Miss Marigold’s fits coming on, I would ripped the book from her hands before she could tear out the page. I stood up and held it behind me, stepping back. I thought that after a few seconds, she might calm down from her fit. She would see that she and the picture could coexist in peace.

Instead, Miss Marigold pulled at my hair and scratching at my face until I returned the sketchbook. I tried to push her away, but she was stronger than she looked. I stopped struggling when my chest began to hurt from the weight, and only then did she let me go. Once I had regained my breath, I found her a few feet away from the ledge, staring at the water below. I stayed back until she turned to me, smiling.

“Well,” she said with a contented sigh. “Let’s try again, shall we?”

My parents wouldn’t allow me to go out when it rained. “Your Miss Marigold will survive one day without you,” Mom would say.

I wondered if she sketched then, too. I’d ask my parents if she could come inside from the rain, but they laughed and told me not to be silly.

The day after a bad storm, I found her by the waves. I noticed that her picture was a smudged, watery mess. The pages of her sketchbook were wrinkled and deformed. But Miss Marigold only smiled and continued sketching.

I don’t know why I kept returning. Perhaps it was because I wished to see the Beautiful Lady again. I was drawn to her. At school, at home, in bed, I felt a string tugging on my heart. She called to me. So I returned, day after day, just to see her portrait be torn apart or crumpled or soaked in the lake.

The pain that came with her destruction only increased. I knew what would happen if I tried to stop Miss Marigold from destroying it, but something within me still made me want to try. The Lady stared at me through the paper. She called to me, begged me to save her. I cried at night, wishing that I could.

Snow began to fall. We went to the city for the holidays to visit family, and those two weeks I spent away from the Lady were spent in pure agony. I grew irritated at my cousins and snapped at family members. I spent most of my time in any empty room I could find, lying on my back and staring at the ceiling. Only then could I attempt to visualize the Beautiful Lady. Still, it wasn’t enough. Her image liked to slip away from me just as I began to get comfortable.

When I returned from the city, I rushed back to Miss Marigold’s side and sat by her as she put the finishing touches on the picture.

I knew what was coming. I knew that in just a few moments, Miss Marigold would lose her calm and wouldn’t regain it until she had destroyed the Lady.

It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that Miss Marigold got to choose whether her artwork lived or died, whether she existed or didn’t. I wanted to decide, I wanted the Lady to be mine. That’s what she’d say in my dreams.

I’m yours, she’d call as she folded in on herself in the flames. I belong to you. Why would you let a stranger do this to me?

“She’s pretty.”

“Yes,” she frowned. “She is, isn’t she?” Her lips twitched. “Too pretty.”

Her body recoiled like a spring preparing to be released. But before it happened, I grabbed the sketchbook from her lap.

“No!” I screamed, sprinting away from her.

“Give it back!”

“Stop it, it’s mine!”

She ran after me, but I tripped on a loose stone and fell onto the rocks. Sharp pain shot up my leg, and my palms tingled when they hit the ground. The sketchbook slid on the icy floor toward the edge of the cliff. The world froze. If the Lady fell over the edge, into the water, it would all be over. But it stopped a few inches from the side, and I jumped up and raced toward it, Miss Marigold a few steps ahead of me.

She stopped at the edge and leaned down to pick it up. Pick it up or push it over. She seemed to catch fire before my eyes, her skirts billowing about her in reds and oranges, a blazing sun silhouetted on a grey sky. In the back of my brain I thought, water.

I slammed into her thin body. Her weight dragged her over the edge.

I didn’t hear her screaming. I didn’t hear her bones crack on the rocks or her body hit the lake below.

Instead, I picked up the sketchbook, and gazed at the Beautiful Lady. She was nearly finished, but a few curls at her shoulders were only outlined, not filled in with charcoal. I didn’t trust myself to complete it. It was enough.

I kicked the charcoal over the edge and tossed her yellow hat away like a frisbee. The rock ledge was just as I had found it that first day in October. Only this time, Miss Marigold had been traded for her artwork.

“Where did you get that?” my parents asked later that evening.

“Miss Marigold gave it to me.”

“Aren’t you getting a bit old for that imaginary friend stuff, Sweetie?”

“Don’t worry, Mom. I’m done with Miss Marigold, now.”

I hung the picture in my room, and the lady watched over me at night. Outside, tree branches tapped on my bedroom window. The rest of the world was quiet.

 

DANIELLE EYER is an emerging writer and playwright based in Montreal, with a fondness for musical theatre, big cities, and typewriters, although she’s never used one and doubts she would enjoy it. Roman Payne said that “all forms of madness, bizarre habits, awkwardness in society, general clumsiness, are justified in the person who creates good art.” Luckily, Danielle benefits from every one of these.

Copyright © 2018 by Danielle Eyer. All rights reserved.

‘A Sense of Dread’ by Mark Towse

Fiction, Short Stories

2

Illustration by Andres Garzon

 

Tom has been waking up the last few days with a sense of dread. Always very anxious, but recently experiencing severe bouts of panic, Tom’s heartburn has been almost unbearable. Today is no exception—Tom feels that this impending feeling of dread will manifest itself in some shape or form, and it’s making him even more anxious than ever.

He leaves the bed and pulls the covers back over his wife, telling her he is going to make a drink. He leans over, turns off the alarm clock and heads down to the kitchen to grind some coffee beans. He grabs the pestle and mortar from the cupboard, deciding that he needs to alleviate some stress, and starts grinding the coffee with an unnecessary ferocity. Most of the coffee spills over onto the floor, so he gives up, unable to cope with the prospect of picking it out from the already dirty tiles. He sighs, grabs the teabags and shouts, “I’ve made a small mess, but don’t worry! I’ll clean it up.”

The pots are piled high, so he rinses two dirty cups and fills them with water once the kettle boils. He begins to dip the bag into the first one, but it bursts, so he empties both cups in the kitchen sink and then bends down to spoon the powdered coffee into the filter.

He starts to sob.

Eventually, he gathers himself, pours the coffee and takes the cups with him through to the hallway and up the dimly lit stairs, towards the bedroom. He stops halfway up to look at the picture of him and Judith on the wall, their wedding day, and a snapshot of history when everything was okay—before the accident. He studied the photo as he had done many times—her skin like porcelain and a smile that just drew him in from the moment he saw her. She had Chrysanthemums in her hair. On the day itself, he thought they were daisies until Judith had laughed and corrected him. His own face too was one of genuine happiness; after all, he had just landed the love of his life, and nothing could stop him.

Christ, I love you, Judith.

As he reaches the top of the stairs, he tries to elbow away an annoying bluebottle fly that is buzzing around his head, causing him to spill some of the coffee as he trips over the damned vacuum once again. Tom rushes to the bathroom, puts the coffee on the edge of the tub and grabs a towel from the rack to wipe himself down. He sighs, leans over and turns both taps, watching her as the water rushes in, filling the tub. When it’s half full, Tom turns off the water and heads into the bedroom to help his wife out of bed. She’s heavier than usual, but Tom doesn’t comment. He knows it will only get him in trouble.

Tom carries Judith into the bathroom and helps lower her in the bath. He asks if the temperature is okay, not bothering to wait for a response as he lights some scented candles and pours in some bubble bath—the lavender one she likes. The colour contrasts nicely against her pale skin.

His mobile phone begins to ring, and immediately his pulse quickens. He knows it’s his boss—he didn’t go in last week and ignored the e-mails. Questions were being asked, and it would only be a matter of time before they found out. It had started small, a little bit at a time from a couple of clients, but a few bad bets and he started to get careless. Once a gambler!

He lets it go to voicemail.

Tom checks his reflection in the bathroom mirror and even through the steam, he can make out his sallow skin that frames the large dark circles under his eyes. He has seen better days. His mostly grey hair is matted and unwashed, and he hasn’t shaved for nearly a week. He contemplates showering, but the thought of the required effort distresses him, and so he splashes some water on his face instead and swallows some toothpaste straight from the tube. His wife recently told him that toothpaste causes cancer. He had laughed at this, pinched his nose and asked for a kiss. Tom enjoyed the times they fooled around like that.

He walks through to their bedroom, lifts up his dressing gown and, for the next few minutes, masturbates furiously—a habit he has picked up over the last few days. Once he’s done, he goes back downstairs with his coffee, being careful not to trip over the vacuum. He puts some bread in the toaster and opens the fridge to find he has no margarine left. In fact, there is nothing spreadable at all. He sits and waits for the toast to pop up. Eventually, it does, and even though he prepared himself for the pop, it still startles him, and he estimates his heart rate increases by at least ten beats per minute. He takes the toast and places it on the cleanest plate he can find from the dirty stack of pots, but when he reaches for his coffee, the toast slides from his plate onto the kitchen floor.

He wants to cry again but refrains as he bends over and collects it from the dirty floor and gives it a quick shake. He takes a bite and chews solemnly, washing it down with a swig of his coffee. He stops to pull some hair from his teeth, no doubt gathered from the floor and then pours the remainder of the coffee down the sink.

Tom looks down at his overhanging belly and suddenly feels the impulse to go for a run. He considers it very seriously for a few seconds before deciding it would be quite an upheaval, so he switches on the television instead. He flicks through the various channels until he finds a nature documentary. Settling into his chair, he begins to pick at his immature beard and pulls out a huge dark hair with the follicle still attached. Tom chews off the follicle and begins to think he is losing his mind.

On TV, the deer is running for its life, closely followed by the jaguar that is hungry for its dinner. Tom changes the channel quickly, suddenly contemplating how savage existence is.  He convinces himself that if reincarnation is real, he would no doubt come back as a deer. Or worse, he’d come back as himself.

In his melancholy state, he finds himself wandering back to the early years, before marriage and back when he and his wife told each other everything. Judith said she once ate a worm when she was nine, and that was pretty much the worst thing she had done. He confessed to her about a few things from his not so clean past, including his previous gambling problem and how he had kicked it well before they met. It was true, at least in the way you can ever really kick an addiction.

Tom snaps out if it just in time to see the jaguar bring the deer down.

He shouts upstairs, “I’m just going for a lie-down love. Let me know if the water gets cold.”

No reply, but that’s standard when Judith bathes. She hates to ruin the experience with chatter and normally scolds him if he tries to talk to her before she’s out the bath. He lies down on the couch—eyes closed but his mind is wide open, and the bad thoughts come. He pulls more hair out and realizes there is zero chance he will be able to get any sleep, so he gets off the couch, does one press up, and walks back to the kitchen to put the kettle back on.

Someone knocks at the door.

Tom runs back into the living room and ducks behind the couch, as though the knocker has x-ray vision.

“Tom!”

His breathing increases rapidly, he is very conscious of it, and he is sure they will hear it.

“Tom! It’s Irene from the apartment next door. Are you okay?”

She knocks again, and Tom tries to squeeze into an even smaller shape. Irene shouts through the door, “Tom, I’m coming back with a key. I haven’t seen you or Judith for a few days. I’m worried.”

There is some relief that it’s only Irene, but he doesn’t want the nosy old bag coming back. He curses Judith for giving her a key and estimates that it’s been nearly a year since they went away and left it with her. They still hadn’t got it back.

He straightens up and shouts from behind the couch “Irene, it’s all good. I’m not decent though, and Judith has gone to stay at her sister’s for a while.”

“Oh… okay. Did you take your garbage out by the way?”

When he hears her footsteps moving away, he gets up, moves back in the kitchen and makes two teas with unwashed cups: one for his wife and one for himself. He takes them up to the bathroom and places them on the edge of the bath, next to the cup he made earlier.

“Have some tea darling. You look cold—this will warm you up,” he says.

He smiles at her before disrobing and stepping into the water, “Room for one more?”

As Tom squeezes in on the opposite side of Judith, being careful not to disturb her, there is a loud knock on the door—one with a sense of urgency.

“Tom, are you in there?” a male voice shouts.

He takes a gulp of tea and swills it around his mouth.

He had considered calling it in as an accident when it happened. That’s why he put a dead bulb in the landing area and moved the vacuum to the top of the stairs — tripping over it three times since. In a way, it was an accident. He tried to convince himself of that anyway.

“I think we are going to need more scented candles,” Tom says as he leans over and kisses his wife on the forehead.

The thought of living without her, though, was too much to bear. Not to mention the additional lies and deceit that would be required.

She died for nothing.

Work are onto him now anyway—the emails from his boss and the voicemails asking to see him urgently. He feels like the deer from the nature documentary.

It was a dead cert!

There’s another loud knock at the door, “Tom!”

Tom stands up and reaches across to the cabinet to retrieve the small brown packet and then sits back down on the edge of the bathtub.

He didn’t mean for her to fall down the stairs—he was only trying to stop her from calling the police. He had grabbed the arm of her nightgown, and when she yanked it away, she lost her balance and tumbled all the way down. She moaned for a while—an awful wail that has stayed with him over the last few days. He won’t miss that.

“Tom!”

He just wanted to unload, share the burden—work through it before it got out of control. If they came up with a plan, they could probably find a way to put the money back before anyone noticed and then he could get help again. Going to prison wasn’t an option—he wasn’t cut out for that.

He should have known. Judith was always so black and white.

She is now, he thought.

“I love you, Judith,” he says as he empties the packet into his cup before taking a large gulp of tea.

 

MARK TOWSE has only been writing short stories for two months now, but his passion and enthusiasm are unparalleled, and this has recently resulted in his first paid piece in the publication Books N Pieces along with imminent publication in four other prestigious magazines. Mark currently works in sales and is ready to sell his soul to the devil for a full-time career as an author. He resides in Melbourne, Australia with his wife and two children.

Copyright © 2018 by Mark Towse. All rights reserved.