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Elephantine

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I don’t know much about elephants, except that they’re very large and very intelligent – intelligent enough to use about twenty-five different sounds for communication. But as little as I know, I thought I was certain about one thing: elephants are not capable of speech.

Nevertheless, yesterday afternoon, at Salt Lake City’s Hogle Zoo, I came face to face with an elderly African elephant named Christie. And she spoke to me.

I was standing near the elephant enclosure with my daughter, observing a demonstration of the relationship between the elephants and their trainers. My daughter wasn’t interested in any of it, but I thought it was fascinating. At one point, a trainer asked Christie to back up to the fence and raise her foot, and Christie complied beautifully, letting the trainer pick at her toes.

After the demonstration, Christie was left standing in the elephant pit, along with Zuri, her seven-year-old calf. Most of the crowd had thinned out by then. My daughter was already pulling on my shirt, asking that we leave, but I wanted to stay, just for a few minutes longer.

It was a cold afternoon. Snow was floating down. Little piles of it were pushed up along the sides of all the walkways, and the bushes wore it like white caps. Something about the cool, crisp air mixed with the sent of hay and elephant held me fast. I felt as if I were waiting for something.

I watched as Christie approached her feeding station, which was a metal box filled with hay hanging on metal chains. The only way to get to the hay was through an opening near the bottom of the cage, which was just big enough for Christie to stick her trunk into. I watched as she pinched off tufts of the dry grass with the strong, finger-like projections at the end of her trunk.

Before long, Christie managed to knock the bulk of the hay from the chain, down into one corner of the cage. The hay fell into such a position that Christie couldn’t see it.

She knelt down and pushed her trunk in, again and again, each time without success. I felt a pain in my chest, watching Christie grope in vain. Finally, she made a frustrated trumpet blast with her trunk and turned her back on the feeding station.

Young Zuri, who had observed her mother’s struggle, crept up to the cage quietly. She was small enough and low enough to the ground to see where the hay had fallen, and she set to work. She stuck her trunk in and skillfully manipulated it until she was able to reach the hay. Instead of putting the grass in her mouth, like she had before training demonstration, Zuri scooped it out into large piles in front of the cage.

When Christie saw what her calf had done, she flapped her ears. She took a big trunkful of the hay and stuffed it in her mouth. I smiled as she swayed happily.

And that’s when it happened. Christie turned toward me and lumbered up to the edge of the enclosure. She looked right into my eyes, and she spoke.

She said, “You need to quit your job, Kyle.”

I was absolutely dumbfounded. I knew she had spoken to me, but I also knew it was impossible. I thought that someone near me must have said it. I looked around. There was no one but my daughter, who was taking off her shoes and plucking rocks from the soles, as if nothing had happened.

But I knew Christie had said it. I knew it. I couldn’t see her mouth move, because of her trunk, but I heard those words.

“Quit your job,” she had said. Could it really be?

Christie dipped her head, as if in confirmation of my unspoken question. Then she slowly turned and walked away, a few grapefruit-sized balls of dung falling from under her tail.

After my initial shock, I took up my daughter, and together we went to get some ice-cream at the food court.

I sat for a long time, watching my daughter eat her rainbow sherbet, thinking about what had happened and what it meant. My daughter told me she didn’t hear anything, but she wasn’t paying attention. I was. I was…

I don’t know why Christie chose me. I don’t know why she said what she did, but her message was clear: I needed to quit my job.

So, what else was there to do? The next day, I went into work early, I walked into Mr. Teller’s office, and I told that son-of-a-bitch that I quit, because Christie the elephant told me to do it.

I’m still adjusting to the reality of what I’ve done and what it means for me and my family. But I feel secure in the knowledge that I did it for reasons that are bigger than I am, for reasons that are, in fact, elephantine.

This short story was a response to a one-word prompt. The word was “elephant.” If you enjoyed reading this, pleas follow me on Facebook and Twitter. Thank you for reading, and keep writing.

I Just Wanted to Help

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It was shortly before one o’clock on Sunday afternoon. I was sipping a cold cup of coffee while reading the news on Facebook, a habit I find pleasurable despite the incessant reports of violence and corruption. The daily phantasmagoria reminds me that, while the world might be losing its way, at least my moral compass still points north. I’ve also become rather addicted to iced coffee.

My wife was busy chopping bell peppers for lunch, and I was doing my best to ignore her, when she suddenly yelped.

“What’s the matter with you?” I asked, not looking up from my iPhone.

“Nothing,” she said in a labored voice. I heard a clink as she set down the knife, and I looked up to see her grimacing as she rubbed her left hip. “It’s just this sciatica pain. It’s bad this time.”

This will be my wife’s fourth and final child. Her previous pregnancies were uneventful, besides the giving birth, of course, and even that was over and done with in one push. But this time my wife has had every pregnancy related malady in the book. (There is a book, by the way: What to Expect When You’re Expecting. Spoiler: Don’t expect anything good.) I’m not sure if it’s her way of cashing in on all the sympathy she missed out on the first three pregnancies or if she really is experiencing chronic discomfort, but she does seem to experience it most often while I’m relaxing.

I took a slow sip of coffee, returning to the news. “Why don’t you take some ibuprofen?”

“I can’t. If we had Tylenol, I would take it, but we keep forgetting to pick some up. It’s really bothering me, though.”

She meant I keep forgetting. She also meant that she would like for me to stop what I was doing and go purchase some Tylenol for her right now. But she’s been terribly oblique and moody this pregnancy, so I didn’t push it. I sighed, took one last drink of coffee, and pushed back from the kitchen table.

“I’ll go pick some up for you,” I said resolutely.

She protested, but only halfheartedly, and soon I was lacing up my shoes. She thanked me and kissed my cheek, which helped relieve my annoyance. But it was Sunday, after all, and I didn’t really have anything else to do. Anyway, I was hungry, and the idea of choking down another bell pepper salad made my stomach clench.

A few minutes later, I pulled into the Smith’s parking lot. I took out my phone and texted my wife:

At Smith’s

Let me know if you need anything else while I’m here

The sidewalk leading to the Smith’s entrance was filled with outdoor swings and hundreds of clay pots in a Southwestern style. When the pots were first set out a month ago, they were ridiculously overpriced at forty dollars a piece, but now each one boasted a 70% OFF sticker, making them only completely overpriced. They aren’t worth half of what they’re asking. It’s just another marketing scheme, another greedy company looking to shake down the American people, another compass pointing south.

When I reached the point on the sidewalk where the pots and outdoor swings forced foot traffic into the street, I became delayed behind an old woman with diaphanous white hair, bent nearly double, pushing a walker with tennis balls on the feet, moving at negative speed. I couldn’t pass her by way of the street because of an enormous pickup that was slowly cruising through the pedestrian crossing.

That’s why you don’t go out when you’re this old, I thought. Doesn’t she have family or a caretaker to run her errands?

After what seemed like an hour, the truck passed, and I skipped around the woman, muttering a sarcastic apology.

As I rounded the last of the outdoor goods, I saw a collection of images that triggered an instant understanding in my mind. A greasy sign made from the side of a discarded cardboard box; deeply tanned skin under filthy, nondescript clothing; a rusty coffee tin set out on the floor with a scrap of paper taped around it — taken together, I knew I was about to encounter one of life’s more pathetic constituents: the homeless beggar.

There were two of them, a young mother and her daughter, who couldn’t have been more than ten. They were both too thin, and the little girl wore a vacant expression that made my stomach feel cold and hollow, the way I imagined the inside of one of those overpriced pots felt.

I reached for my wallet, knowing I had a few dollars on me that I was willing to part with, but then I removed my hand. I waited until I passed in front of them, until they saw me, until the mother said:

“Please, sir. We are hungry.”

Then, I made a show of it. I took out my wallet, grabbing all the bills without looking, and handed over my money with a most saint-like expression on my face.

“God bless you, sir,” the woman said in an accent I couldn’t place. It might have belonged to any of those far eastern countries that no native-born American could identify on a map with confidence. It was an exotic, dangerous accent, and I suddenly felt like I understood everything about this tragic pair’s life.

God bless me indeed, I thought. I don’t believe in God (how can I, the way the world is headed), but it must be uplifting for two degenerates to encounter a man who just wants to help. I replaced my wallet and strutted off without a second glance at them.

When I entered the store, I found a woman engaged in a desperate struggle to separate two small shopping carts, which had become entangled together. She became so agitated that she actually lifted both carts several inches off the ground and brought them back down with a metallic crash. This obscene gesture gained her nothing except a few turned heads from passersby. I shook my own head at the display. Some people just don’t know how to act in public.

I had watched this battle for several seconds, patting my thighs and willing for this woman to either triumph over the carts or to give up so I could collect my own cart, when a young couple, who had just finished their shopping, came up behind me to return their cart.

“I’ll take that, thanks,” I said, grabbing the cart and directing it toward the sanitation stand.

I pulled out several wipes and cleaned the handle bar. I placed the other wipes in my basket, just it case (it truly is disgusting what people do when they think no one is looking). Then I went on my way, leaving that silly woman and her struggle behind.

As I ambled up and down the aisles, I couldn’t stop thinking about the beggars. I wanted to congratulate myself on my benevolence, but now that didn’t seem right. My initial sense of complete comprehension regarding their lives had faded, replaced by an uncomfortable doubt.

Were they really so desperate, or did they make more money at begging than I did at web development? Was it all a scam? Had I been a fool to give them money?

My mind was so distracted with these thoughts that I spent a half-hour touring the store with nothing in my cart to show for it. This won’t do at all, I thought at last. And so I decided that their authenticity didn’t matter. Should I avoid every good deed because of doubt? That kind of attitude is exactly what’s wrong with this country. Who was I to judge? If they were gypsies, so be it. If they were truly in need, then all the better. Anyway, it was only three dollars.

My thoughts turned to my stomach as I spotted some yogurt on the shelf. I lifted a large tub of Chobani to read the label, but the tub was slick, and it slipped from my hands before I could catch it. The top burst open when it landed, and thick globs of yogurt spewed onto the floor.

I glanced around, hoping no one had seen my accident, but saw that I was alone in the aisle. I quickly picked up the tub, replaced the lid, wiped away the excess yogurt from it, and placed it back on the shelf with the others. Then I decided I wasn’t in the mood for yogurt and moved on.

After a few more rounds through the store, I settled on a large baked chicken and a cold soda. I began checking out at one of the self-service kiosks and found myself wondering if my three dollars would actually help that mother and her little girl. I would hope, if it were my wife and daughter, that someone would be as generous as I had been — more generous, in fact. After all, was three dollars really enough? How many people stopped to give them money?

I felt that disturbing, pot-like chill in my stomach again as I fed the machine my money and took my receipt. I left the change (don’t you hate the feeling of change in your pocket?), grabbed my bags, and headed for the exit, leaving my cart abandoned near the kiosk. But before I left the store, I saw the mother and daughter through the sliding glass doors, still standing there with their sign, and I stopped.

As I watched, three people walked by without so much as a turn of their heads to acknowledge them. I felt an uncomfortable heat replace the chill in my belly. I really am too optimistic about the human race, to think that anyone would stop and help. 

I remembered the hot chicken in my bag. I could give it to them, give them a warm meal to go with the money. But no. What if they didn’t eat chicken? (Can a beggar afford to be a vegetarian?) And, also, what would I eat? I looked back into the store, considering. It’s only six dollars for a whole chicken, and it wouldn’t take me long to get it. But as I looked, I saw that old woman, the one with the walker who had blocked my path, standing at one of the registers, making a horrible face and lifting her hands out of her reusable shopping bag with a look of bewilderment.

Her hands were covered in white goo. A phlegmy moan rattled in her throat as she complained in a trembling voice that the yogurt she had just purchased spilled all over a greeting card she had bought for her daughter. The cashier rolled her eyes. She picked up the bag with two fingers, holding it at arms length, and picked up the phone to call a manager. The people in line behind the old woman groaned and rolled their eyes, too.

On second thought, I didn’t need to go back for a chicken. Beggars do alright, otherwise they wouldn’t be begging. I gave them a lot of money — three dollars is a lot to someone with nothing. Yes, there was no need to worry any more about it. All that was left to do was to smile and nod at them as I left, reminding them that there were still some good people in the world. Maybe their gratitude would help ease my mind about the whole thing.

But as I left the store, the mother, in that same slimy accent, said:

“Please, sir. We are hungry.”

I stopped. A man, who had followed me outside a little too closely and had to yank on his cart to stop from colliding with me, sighed his annoyance as he pushed his cart passed. At first I thought the beggar woman must have been addressing him. I stared at her, wanting that to be true, wanting some gratitude in return for my good deed. But in her face, there was none. She was… holding out her hands… to me, looking me straight in the face without a hint of recognition.

“Please, sir,” she repeated, gesturing with her upturned palm.

The heat inside me, which rose a moment ago in pity, flared up in anger. I shook my head and smiled mirthlessly. “No, no, you see, I already gave you money.”

At my negative reaction, the woman waved her hand as if to shoo me away, saying something in her own language that sounded vile. As another customer left the store, she looked past me and delivered her same plea to them.

I wagged a finger in her face, forcing her attention back to me. “I gave you money,” I said, my voice unsteady. “You remember? I gave you three dollars.” I demonstrated with three trembling fingers.

She only flashed her black eyes at me, and then she was asking the next passing customer for money.

I repeated myself, stepping closer to her. She spat at my feet.

Something inside me twisted, a polar flip, and I felt my heart pounding in my chest. This ungrateful, stupid woman. No wonder she had to beg for money. No wonder she was dirty and poor. No wonder she subjected her daughter to such a contemptible life. She didn’t even have the sense to remember her benefactor. She was broken — completely broken — just a shell of a woman, no more human than the chicken in my bag.

“You listen to me!” I said, coming within a foot of her, inhaling her stench. “If you won’t be grateful, then I demand my money back!”

She scowled at me. Her daughter did the same, the expression on her young face no longer vacant, but exuding a hate I wouldn’t think possible in a child so young. I held out my hand, mocking the mother’s gesture, and demanded my money again. She slapped my hand away and began spewing a series of unintelligible imprecations at me, waving her arms hysterically.

I was blind to the world around me, to everything but this hateful pair.

“You worthless bitch!” I yelled, reaching for the coffee tin, intending to retrieve my three dollars by force. But before I could touch it, something closed tight around my wrist and tore my hand away.

I turned to see a huge man, his muscles bulging under a dainty shirt, bald, with a thick goatee and tattoos up both arms, looking down on me in disgust.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing? Leave that mom and her kid alone or I’ll fix you up.”

I wrenched my arm from his steely grip and stumbled back. I felt all the heat that had occupied my belly rush to my face. Tears blurred my vision.

“I—” I started, but I couldn’t think of anything to say.

Then I noticed the small crowd that had stopped to watch me, among them, the old woman with the walker and the woman who had battled the carts. Their arms were crossed, their eyes narrowed as they shook their heads and muttered their disapproval of my behavior. They looked at me like I was the problem, like I was the filth. It was too much to stand. I was so embarrassed and indignant that my mind went blank, and I couldn’t do or say anything to defend myself. All I could manage to do was turn and run.

When I reached my car, I yanked open the passenger door and threw in the groceries. I smacked the window with my hand and cursed. I glanced back at the group. They were still huddled around the beggars, pointing my way, probably wondering how someone could be such a heartless monster. But they didn’t know anything. They were the problem. Not me. They’re just too lost to see it.

Then I noticed a small scrap of paper pinned under one of my windshield wipers. I was enraged by its presence and irrationally attributed it to the beggar woman and her daughter. I tore the note free and read:

Hey, you dropped your phone by your car. Couldn’t find you in the store. Put it on the front passenger tire. Be careful. It’s a nice phone. Have a nice day.

I stared at the note, wiping the tears from my eyes so I could be sure I had read it correctly, confused and somehow more infuriated than ever. I turned it over. There was no name or contact information, just the note.

I checked the tire and there was my iPhone 6 plus, a little dent on one corner, but otherwise unharmed. I gripped the phone so hard that I heard the eighty-dollar case groan. I kicked the tire, painfully tweaking my toe. How dare they touch my stuff! They should have let it be. They had no right! I bet they wanted to steal my phone, but couldn’t crack my password, and now they’re trying to pass off their failure as a good deed.

I dropped into the driver’s seat and slammed the door. I gripped the steering wheel, placing my forehead on it, trying to slow my breathing. Then my phone buzzed in my hand. It was my wife:

Don’t need anything else. Thanks for getting the Tylenol. You’re the best!

I let out an intense scream from my gut that would have sent those beggars and their sympathetic morons running had they heard me. I threw my phone against the passenger window. I beat the wheel with the heels of my hands until they went numb.

I had forgotten the damn Tylenol. But it wasn’t my fault — It was that stupid woman and her stupid little daughter! God damned gypsies! I should call the police on them, I thought, on all of them. I should do something. But what was there to do?

Once someone’s compass is broken, what can be done to fix it?

My Robert is Dead!

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A bus stop somewhere in Northern Utah. It’s nearly eight o’clock in the evening and the summer sun is just now realizing that it has overstayed its welcome. A woman, about fifty years old, sits on the bench, scratching her newly styled hair. It’s short, curly, and dyed the color of old blood. A man, who can’t be younger than seventy, shuffles breathlessly to the bench and lowers himself beside the woman. His knees pop audibly. In one arm, he cradles a small gift.

The heat from the bench seeps through the old man’s stiff trousers. He shifts his weight and becomes aware of a sour odor coming from his crotch. “My doctor told me the sunshine’ll do me good,” he says, dabbing sweat from his brow with a once-pink handkerchief, “but I think he just wants me to die faster. Feels like California heat, don’t it?”

The woman stares at her off-brand sneakers and says nothing. She wraps her arms across her protuberant belly and begins rocking back and forth.

The old man wonders if he’d spoken loudly enough. He’s used to being asked to speak up by his wife and daughter. It’s been nearly ten years since his hearing began to fail him, but he obstinately refuses to wear his hearing aid. If my ears are meant to go, he thinks, let them go. There’s not much worth listening to anyway.

“I said it’s terribly hot,” the old man says, nearly shouting. “It started as such a nice day though.”

“It didn’t,” the woman says flatly.

The old man shrugs. “It wasn’t too hot this morning. Not too cold either—not that I mind the cold much. I’m not one of those old men who ache whenever the wind blows.” This is a lie. He aches all the time, and even now he longs for a warm bath and some Aleve to ease the pain in his joints.

“Who cares about the weather?” The woman looks up at the old man for the first time. Her face is yellow and wrinkled, aged beyond her years, and her eyes are wide and trembling. She looks away suddenly. “I just… I’m sorry.” She isn’t, really. “It’s just, there’s more important things than the weather.”

“That’s true,” the old man says. He thinks about his daughter in California, her present sitting in his lap, wrapped in gold, tied with a red velvet bow. Will she really come like she said? If her mother were here, she would make her, but… “You know, my daughter’s supposed to come up for Independence Day.” He gestures to the gift. “It was her birthday last week. I tried to call her, but you know how kids are. She texted me.” He scowls at the word. “Anyway, I got her the first book in that Outlander series. My wife was simply obsessed with them. I didn’t wrap it though. Had it wrapped in the bookstore. It’s poorly done, but what can you expect nowadays? Everyone’s in a hurry over something. Not my wife, though; she used to do all the wrapping. But that was before—”

The woman suddenly begins to sob. She covers her face and bends low over her knees. She’s making horrible gasping noises between cries like a child with whooping cough.

The old man is stunned. He sets the gift to his side and slides closer to the woman, tentatively placing a hand on her shoulder. “Now then, what’s this? Did I say something to upset you?”

She looks up at the old man, her brow tightly corrugated, her expression defensive—shocked, even. Then the corners of her mouth curl down and her face screws up into a mask of pure misery. “It’s my son.”

The old man’s mouth, which hitherto has hung slack with confusion, forms an ‘O,’ and he straightens up in his seat (as straight as a seventy-something-year-old man can, in any case). He looks at the passing cars for a moment, thinking how to start. The woes of aging parents is an epidemic that no doctor cares to address.

“Let me guess,” he says. “Your son promised to come up for the holiday, too, but now he’s not sure he can make it.”

The woman sobs even louder than before. The old man pats her back.

“The older you get,” he says, “the more knowledge you accumulate. Now, I’m very old, and I like to think I know a thing or two. And one of the most important things I’ve learned is that children are their own people. We try to teach them right, to give them everything we can, but sometimes there’s nothing we can do. Now, your son, does he live far?”

“He’s dead!” the woman shouts, drawing the attention of a young couple who are passing by on the sidewalk. They take one look at the two elderly folk sitting on the bench and hurry by like old age is catching. It is; they just haven’t accepted that yet.

So her son is dead, the old man thinks. What a cruel turn of fate. Death and its first cousin Sorrow have made themselves intimate with him, and he understands their debilitating effect. It’s comforting, in a horrible sort of way, to meet others who have been likewise acquainted.

“Excuse me,” the old man says, “that is something quite different. I’m sorry for your loss, truly I am. I should have known. You see, death is no stranger to me. My wife—”

“He loved that stupid bike,” the woman says with a sigh. She wipes the snot from her nose with the inside of her sleeve, leaving a shiny trail on her wrist. She seems to be preparing herself for a recital. “I told him a thousand times to be careful on the streets.”

“Ah, yes,” the old man says, “motorcycles are dangerous machines.”

“Motorcycles? No, it was nothing like that; that would have made sense, but this?”

The old man gives the woman a confused look.

“My son had been trying to lose weight for years,” she continues. “He worked from home. He didn’t get out much. He was the kindest man, but he worked from home, you see? I bought him a bicycle for Christmas one year.” Her lips tighten, threatening to let loose another wave of cries, but she stays strong. The old man is glad for it. “He loved that stupid bike. He loved to ride it. He said—he said it felt like flying.” She smiles weakly. “He rode it to work every day. Every day.”

There is a high pitched screech as the route 446 bus slows to a stop in front of the pair. The woman quickly wipes her eyes and digs through her purse for her ticket. The old man pulls out his own ticket from his shirt pocket; it’s not his bus. Apparently, it’s not the woman’s either, because she replaces the ticket, hugs her purse close, and resumes her bent posture.

“You know,” the old man says, rubbing his chin, “I used to ride when I was younger. I didn’t even have a car in those days. Of course, it was much safer then. The roads weren’t filled with so many people. I don’t even drive now. I could, if I wanted to,” another lie, “but it’s not worth the risk. People get crazy behind a wheel. It’s no surprise so many bicyclists are killed each year. He was struck then? By a car?”

The woman bites her lip, looks toward heaven, gives it a knowing, sarcastic look, and shakes her head woefully. “Oh, he was struck alright, but not by a car.”

The old man blinks. He is becoming weary of this woman’s oblique explanations. He considers that he might have avoided this conversation altogether if he had just stayed home and ordered his daughter’s book from Amazon like everyone else did these days. But there’s no help for it now.

A mother and daughter strolling by, hand in hand, catches his attention. He notices that the daughter is wearing a heavy felt shirt. It’s too hot for a shirt like that, he thinks. If his wife were here, she would have a word or two for that mother. But she isn’t. How long had it been? Six months now? He realizes the woman has started speaking again and forces himself to give her his full attention.

“My Robert was very conscientious,” she says. “Every time we spoke over the phone, he assured me that he was being careful. We spoke almost every day. He loved me dearly. Every day, that is, until… Until he was murdered.”

“Murdered?” the old man says, now utterly perplexed. “My God, by whom?”

“By God.”

The old man’s face contracts into an expression of incredulity, but, becoming aware of it, he quickly changes it to one of deep thought. Where is his bus?

“God plays a role in all our deaths,” he says sagely.

“He murdered my Robert,” the woman insists. “My Robert was riding home from work in the rain—I told him never to ride in the rain; the roads aren’t safe; people can’t see; no one can see… But he loved that bike, the bike that I gave him. God struck him dead with a bolt of lightning, not five miles from where we sit. A bolt of lightning, straight through the head. The doctors said it was the metal bike that drew the lightning. The bike that I gave him.”

The woman is a mess now: fluids leak from her eyes, nose, and mouth, and she’s pulling at the sides of her shirt, writhing in her seat.

At this point, the old man feels a powerful desire to run, if only his knees could take it. But being unable to escape, he feels obligated to say something. He touches the woman once, lightly on the shoulder, then withdraws his hand as if from a hot stove and buries it in his pants pocket. He pinches the bridge of his nose. “That’s a bad turn,” is all he can think to say.

“He killed him. He killed my son. And for what? My son was an honest, religious man. He was a good man. He was a good man. I taught him to be a good man, to care for his mother. And who will care for me now? I’m alone! I’ve been alone for years now! How could God be so cruel?”

The old man looks up at the darkening sky, feeling suddenly very out of place and disoriented. Years? Her son has been dead not for days or weeks, but years? He looks around the street, at the cars speeding by, his vision blurring their lights into streams of yellow and red. Where is his damn bus?

“Excuse me,” says a young man, stopping in front of the bench. His sudden appearance halts the spinning in the old man’s head, pulling him back to reality.

The young man wears a large, greasy coat, patched with silver tape. The hood is pulled down low over his eyes. His large work boots are covered in something black. He looks at the old man uncertainly and says, “I just ran out of gas. I’m trying to get home to Provo. Could you spare a dollar?”

The old man stares dumbly at the young man for a moment. He has heard this routine a hundred times. It’s almost always bullshit. But it doesn’t bother him anymore. He derives a strange sort of pleasure from giving money to those who have the bravery to ask for it. Small amounts of course. Rarely more than a dollar. But it’s a pleasure he seeks out when he can. He remembers himself and leans to one side, reaching for his wallet.

“Excuse us,” the woman says, her tone an affectation of distress, putting a restraining hand on the old man’s arm. “If you don’t mind, we are in the middle of a conversation. I don’t know who you are or where you come from, but you have no right coming up to us and begging for money. Go bother somebody else with your lies.”

The young man looks down and shuffles his feet, his dirty cheeks reddening. When he looks up again, it’s at the old man, a pleading look in his eyes.

The old man, for reasons unknown to even himself, removes his hand from his back pocket. He becomes suddenly very interested in the gift in his lap, too ashamed to look the young man in the face.

The young man nods, rubbing his mouth with a greasy hand. Then he sulks away. Before he’s out of earshot, he mutters, “Old prick.”

The old man’s hearing works well enough to hear it. He feels heat radiating from his cheeks. He purses his lips and gives the woman a sideways glance. She apologizes, saying that she can’t stand people like that. They have no shame, no decency. She says she never gives their type money.

“They just want alcohol,” she says, “or drugs.” The woman’s face screws up, and the tears start flowing again.

The old man closes his eyes. He wonders why alcohol and drugs are so bad. He remembers a time when he tried to buy a homeless man a bottle of alcohol and was stopped by one of the employees before he could. They told him the homeless man couldn’t have alcohol, that he was not allowed to drink. The old man felt bad about that. He wasn’t sure if he felt worse for not getting the alcohol or for being reprimanded by the young employee. His wife always said his heart was in the right place, but…

“You know,” the old man says, as if coming out of a dream, “I lost my wife, not six months ago.”

“My Robert is dead!” the woman shouts, pulling at her hair.

There is a high pitched screech as the next bus arrives.

The Wolf of Wasatch

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Think fast, Destiny. He can’t be more than a hundred feet away.

I could keep the rifle and try to force him to take me to a hospital. But I don’t know how to use a gun; I don’t even know how to hold a gun. Even if I managed to shoot him before he came into the tent, I’d be killing my ticket off this mountain. I push the rifle back into its clips on the bottom of the chest.

Still, I need to protect myself. After seeing all this, I know Waters can’t be trusted. I pick up the ivory-handled pocketknife with the initials S.A.W. carved into the blade and turn it in my hands. It’s small enough to conceal. That’s good. But I’m not confident I could take Waters down with a two-inch blade if I had to. He’s so much larger than I am, and with my leg—

Waters’ boots crunch through the snow just outside the tent.

I’ll take my chances with the knife. I’d rather avoid a fight in my condition, but if Waters turns out to be the man I think he is, I’ll need it sooner or later. I slide the folded knife into my pocket.

I replace the wooden panel over the hidden compartment and toss in the newspaper clippings, the magazines, and the journal. I can’t afford to be precise; he’ll be here any second. I stuff the half-folded blankets over the stash and lower the chest’s lid. Then I start scooting back to my cot in an awkward, one-legged crab crawl.

Shit! I’ve left Teen Vogue lying on the floor by the chest.

Waters’ silhouette darkens the tent’s entrance. There’s no time. I lunge for the magazine, landing squarely on my injured thigh. I feel the wound tear open and hear a dull pop. I muffle a scream with one hand, and with the other, I snatch up the magazine.

The tent zipper slides up. I lift myself onto the cot, positioning the magazine under me, and assume a half-reclining pose as Waters parts the flaps with the barrel of his rifle and steps inside.

He stops on the welcome mat to stomp the snow from his boots, shaking his head like a dog, sending white powder scattering to the floor. The Wolf of Wasatch. The news got it right with that title.

Under one arm, he’s carrying a bundle of sticks and chopped wood. He kneels in front of the stove and drops the bundle into a heap. On some of the wood, I can see fragments of what looks like a bloody handprint. Waters sees them, too. He lays down his rifle and peels off his gloves. Then he stacks the wood so the bloodied sides don’t show.

“Got a rabbit,” he says, in his usual, nearly unintelligible growl.

Unless he’s got it stuffed down his pants, there ain’t no rabbit.

But for once I keep my mouth shut. He’d know something was wrong if I spoke. The gash in my leg refuses to be ignored, sending tremors of pain through my entire body, and I’m still out of breath after retreating to my cot. I need to regain my composure. I roll onto my left hip, trying to relieve the pressure on my leg. To my horror, Teen Vogue crinkles under me.

Waters lapses into one of his coughing fits at that moment and doesn’t seem to notice. He wipes the phlegm from his mouth with a muddy sleeve. God, he even smells like a dog. I wonder if abandoning social mores is a backwoodsman thing or a psycho murderer thing. Maybe it’s both.

He looks up at me for the first time since he arrived, probably confused with my unusual silence. There’s so much sorrow and pain in his eyes. I could almost pity him. Almost. Pity, I reserve for decent human beings. True, I don’t meet many in Hollywood—everyone’s got an angle, some advantage to gain—but I’m pretty good at picking them out. My dad? Decent. My agent? Not so much. Waters? The contents of the chest made it perfectly clear.

I force a smile for Waters. Mixed with the pain, I’m sure it comes off more like a grimace, but it’s all I can manage. The smile he returns to me is both kind and concerned, the sort of smile my dad gave me when I told him I landed my first audition. Waters would’ve made a decent actor himself.

Front all you want, Waters. I’ve got your number now. I run a hand over the small lump in my pocket. The knife isn’t much compared to his rifle, but it’s enough to give me hope.

Then a violent gust of wind shakes the tent, making me jump. I watch the center pole sway, holding my breath until the wind passes and the tent settles. Then I let out a sigh.

Looking back at Waters, I can see that something is very wrong. His smile has vanished. His eyes are wide and trembling. Suddenly, he spins around like he’s just realized where he is. He looks at the side table, at his bed, at the stack of black bins… My stomach rises into my throat.

I make my own quick assessment of the tent, trying to see if I’d left anything out of place. As far as I can tell, it all looks the same as Waters left it. The only thing I really disturbed was the chest. It’s closed, and there’s no more magazines or anything else lying around that could tip him off. No, there’s no way he could—

Waters whips his head toward the chest and stares at it. My heart beats like a Questlove drum solo. Three seconds pass. Can a sixteen-year-old die of a heart attack? Six seconds. Nine.

He knows.

Mother

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When my bedroom door is securely locked, I rush to my desk, push my MacBook Air aside, and lift the heavy Olympia onto the desktop. It was considered a “portable” typewriter in 1957, but hulking next to my laptop, it looks about as portable as my desk. That’s okay. I don’t need it to be portable; I just need it to work.

Just outside my bedroom door, I hear the joyful shrieks of three children as they romp around the hall. I had locked the door just in time. A minute later and I would’ve had to see them. I hate closing the door in their faces, leaving them out there alone. But I can’t leave that door open, not after nine.

It occurs to me that the man in the apartment directly under mine isn’t banging on his ceiling. At least, not yet. He’s always home on Monday nights, and he hears everything. I can’t even take a shit without running the sink. I’m hoping that his television is turned up too high or that maybe he’s taking a nap. But if my neighbor doesn’t start banging soon, if he can’t hear them at all, then I’ve got bigger problems than Mother.

I remove the typewriter’s hardshell cover and feed in a sheet of paper. I begin typing out every detail of what’s happened, starting with the ominous blackout at eight fifty-five. The work is slow and clumsy at first, but I pick up a steady rhythm as I go.

One of the children falls hard against my door and whines. The other two ignore him and continue their play. The child who fell sniffles and tries to open the door.

“Daddy?” the child says. I think it’s one of the boys, but who can tell with kids? Anyway, he can’t be more than three. “Daddy, I fell.”

I want to say, No, buddy, I’m not you’re daddy, and you need to get your brother and sister the hell out of here posthaste. But I’ve learned it’s better to keep my mouth shut. It doesn’t change anything. The knob twists again, and when the door refuses to open, the boy slaps it. I hear him rejoin his siblings, like it never happened.

But it did happen. If only I had an audio recorder or a video camera to prove it… I have both on my phone and my laptop, but even they go dark after eight fifty-five. Nothing electronic works during these blackouts, charged batteries or not.

I type out what the child had said to me and then note that there’s now a fourth pair of feet, stomping out of the kitchen and into the hallway where the children continue to roughhouse. I know exactly who those feet belong to, and the thought of her sends a chill slithering up my back.

“Enough! Enough! Enough!” a woman screams, each word getting louder and more frenzied as she approaches the children. It’s Mother. My knees close together, and my elbows tighten against my ribs. I know what’s coming next, but I need to keep typing if I want to get it all.

The children keep right on playing, despite Mother’s protests, crashing and laughing, caught up in the ecstasy of their play. But Mother will put an end to their noise. She always does. I blink away the film of tears blurring my vision.

“Why can’t you just listen!” Mother continues. “Just stop it! Stop it! Stop it!”

The children do not stop. They never do.

Now, my neighbor is banging on his ceiling. Good. If he didn’t hear it by now, he never would. Thank God for small favors, I think. But I can’t thank God. Not until this mess is sorted out. It’s his fault this is happening in the first place. It makes me wonder who’s really running the show.

My fumbling fingers punch the keys until the margin bell chimes. I return the carriage to a new line—zip—and punch the keys until the bell sounds again—a miniature prize fight happening at high speed.

Then comes a sickening thud, the sound, I’ve come to understand, of Mother’s fist colliding with one of the children’s heads. The child begins crying loudly. The other two join in, like backyard dogs spreading a bark at night. It’s a piteous, heart-jabbing sound, a sound that would make even the worst parent fall to their knees and embrace their child. But this is Mother, and that just won’t do. The children’s cries enrage her. Thud! Smack! Thud!

My hands shake as I struggle to keep up with the action, typos and misprints abounding, the type bars jamming up every few words.

“You—will—wake—your—father!” she says, each word punctuated with a violent strike. “I’ll—teach—you—to—listen!”

The children’s mixture of cries and screams grows louder with each blow. Mother shouts and strikes, shouts and strikes, shouts and strikes. I don’t know how much time passes before the first child falls silent, but it seems like forever. Moments later, the second child’s screams are cut short, followed closely by the third. All that’s left is the heavy breathing of Mother.

I’ve broken down completely, sobbing like I’ve just been beaten myself, blindly slapping the keys, terrified, outraged, and confused. She beat them. She beat them until they were quiet—until they were dead.

But Mother isn’t finished yet. With a feral scream, she attacks the bedroom door, pounding and scratching. The doorknob rattles like crazy. I’m paralyzed with fear. The first time this happened, I wasn’t prepared. She came flying in through my open door, her face a study in misery and rage. “It’s your fault!” she had bellowed. “You made me kill my babies!”

I’m sure the door’s locked, but will it stop her? Can it? If the door does give way, I don’t know if I’m more afraid of Mother getting in or of having to see the children’s bodies again. Their faces, I know, are bloodied and mashed, their bodies twisted and huddled. The youngest, a little girl, is crumpled under her brothers—the first to go—her Batgirl skirt pulled up and wet.

Mother suddenly runs from my door, wailing as she heads into the kitchen. This is the final stage of this waking nightmare. Drawers crash open. I hear silverware clatter to the floor (I don’t even own silverware; I use the plastic picnic ware from Smith’s). After a few seconds, she finds what she’s after. Mother gives a final, grief-stricken howl. It lapses into a gurgle. I hear her body collapse to the floor. It will be another ten seconds of listening to her squirm while she bleeds out on the linoleum before she dies—again—and the bodies disappear. Then—and only then—will I open my bedroom door.

The ten seconds pass as I finish typing my record. The apartment falls quiet, except for my neighbor, who has launched a second assault on his ceiling. The lights flicker on. My MacBook Air’s screen wakes up. My phone beeps in my pocket. It’s over.

When I finish typing, I’m nauseous and sweating and still crying. I force myself to get out of my chair on watery legs and go to the door. My hands are shaking so hard that it takes me several tries to unlock the door. I pause for a moment, noticing for the first time the remnants of what might have been a latch on my bedroom door, the metal setting and holes covered over with a thick coat of white paint. I shudder. Whether it was installed by the children’s father, or the previous, unfortunate occupant of this apartment, I don’t know. I pull open the door and let out a sigh. The bodies are gone. Mother is gone. They’re all gone.

Every night since last Friday, I’ve been haunted by these spirits. I’ve tried telling my friends and my parents, but they all think I’m just trying to scare them. I have no desire to live here anymore, but I just signed my lease, and I can’t break it without paying fifteen hundred bucks. I can’t exactly cite “murdering ghost” as a reason to violate my rental agreement.

But I don’t care if I’m paying rent. I got my record. The neighbor heard it. It’s real. Until I can find someone who can help, I’m staying the hell away from this place. I guess it’s back to living with Mom and Dad.

That’s okay. I could use a little parental love right now.

I hope you enjoyed reading this short story sketch. I spent three days and around six hours on it. I would like to keep polishing it, but I don’t have the time right now. I’ve been very busy working on two novels, and I haven’t had as much time as I would like to post on this site.

Thank you for reading. If you enjoy my work, please connect with me on Facebook and Twitter for story prompts and updates on my writing projects.

I Didn’t Ask for This

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This can’t, like, really be happening to me. What have I done to deserve this? It’s been hard enough just trying to get through middle-school with nobody liking me, but at least there was always the hope that high school and college might help people forget how much they enjoyed looking down on me and calling me names. If they find out about this, about me, they’ll have an actual reason for hating my guts, and I’ll never be able to get away from it.

“Do they have to know?” I ask in a small voice.

“Does who have to know?” the doctor asks. His voice is calm and, like, sincere. He seems nice enough. At least he doesn’t look at me like there’s something wrong with me. I can’t seem to remember his name… I know we’ve just spent, like, twelve hours together, but I can’t remember if he ever told me his name. I search for a name tag on his stiff, white lab coat, but there’s nothing, not even a logo. “Tara, what we’ve done today, what you and I have talked about, what we’ve discovered—none of it is anybody’s business except yours and mine, do you understand?”

There’s something in this doctor’s eyes and the way he moves his mouth and dips his head that makes me feel like he really cares and, like, it’s okay to talk with him about this. Maybe he’ll be able to help me after all.

“It’s just, life’s already hard enough. I’m used to the kids at school and the teachers looking at me like I’m something horrible and smelly, but I could always move away from them. I can’t move away from my parents. If my parents find out—”

“Your parents don’t need to know anything about this, Tara—not unless you would like them to.”

I wouldn’t like them to. If my parents knew about this, they’d probably sell me to the government for, like, experiments—anything for a legitimate excuse to disown me. This doctor makes me feel safe, like this could be our secret and my horrendous life didn’t have to get any worse. At least not yet. “I don’t want anyone to know, especially not my parents.”

“That’s fine,” the doctor says with a gentle smile, “that’s all fine. What’s important right now is that you come to terms with it, that you learn to control it. This isn’t an easy thing for any thirteen-year-old to deal with.”

“I’m not even sure what it is. How can I come to terms with it if I don’t know what it is or why it’s happening to me?”

The doctor sits back in his cushioned roller-chair and rubs his chin with his fingers. “I’m not sure either, Tara, but what I am sure of is that you are very lucky we found out now, together, before things got any worse.”

I know what he means. He means before I hurt anybody again. I feel guilty, and a little less comfortable talking with this man. “That wasn’t my fault. I didn’t know what I was doing. Jennifer and Stacey just wouldn’t let up. Usually I’m able to ignore it, all the teasing and name-calling, but they just wouldn’t let up. It’s not my fault.”

“One of those girls is dead,” the doctor says in a matter-of-fact tone, “and the other is not likely to recover. Whether you feel it was your fault or not, these girls and their families would not have suffered if it weren’t for you. I think you can appreciate how important it is that we move past the denial and start coming to terms with your powers immediately.”

Suddenly, I feel, like, very uncomfortable sitting here in this doctor’s big, grey office and I, like, feel very much like I need to get out of here. I’m not even sure where here is or how I got here to begin with and, like, I’m not even sure who this doctor is. My head is muddled. I can’t put the pieces together in my mind. Why am I here?

The doctor narrows his eyes at me and bites his lip. “Tara, can you tell me how you are feeling right now?”

I feel hot, like when I have a bad cold and the front of my face feels like it’s literally going to blow open from all the heat and pressure. A moment before, the room felt cold and large, but the air around me is so tight and hot now—so hot—and I can feel the sweat, like, gluing my shirt to my chest and arms and all I can think about now is how I can get out—how I can get out right now. I become aware of the pain in my fingers as I dig my nails into the armrests of my chair.

“Tara,” the doctor says, his voice an accusation, his face full of worry. “Tara, I need you to take a deep breath. You know what happens when you get upset. I can assure you, I am here to help you.”

Help me? I don’t even know who this doctor is or what he wants from me. I feel like the time I snuck a beer from my dad’s cooler on the Fourth of July, like I wasn’t acting or thinking right. I can hear my chair rattling and its legs thumping against the floor.
“Tara? Now that’s quite enough. If you don’t calm down I—Tara, do I need to call your parents? I thought we had an understanding, but if you can’t be reasonable…”

My parents? Would he actually call my parents? I thought he said—what did he say? I just can’t remember. None of this is making any sense. What did he do to me? He’s trying to do something to me. He’s trying to, like, trick me. He’s trying to, like, hurt me. He’s… He’s just like everyone else.

Yes. I can see it in his face. He’s not concerned about me, he’s afraid of me. He’s afraid I’ll, like, do something to him. Maybe I will. I feel whatever this is inside of me, whatever this thing is that’s made me do the things I’ve done pushing to the surface. It’s going to happen again and there’s nothing I can do about it but sit back and watch.

He picks up his desk phone. He’s trembling. Sweat is popping up on his forehead. It’s dripping from his palms. He’s, like, burning up. Steam rises from his hand holding the phone and he screams and throws it on his desk.

“Tara!”

But he’s not shouting at me, he’s shouting toward the door, like, he’s calling for someone to come and help him, like he’s supposed to be helping me, to keep me from doing what I’m about to do. I feel so angry, so angry and sad, and I can see him, like, getting smaller and smaller while I, like, get bigger and bigger and, like, farther and farther away. I’m above him now and the whole room feels too small. I feel like I’m literally about to burst through the walls and ceiling and I can see, like, the little doctor below me screaming and his face is, like, all red and bubbly and I’m, like, somewhere else, like, far back, like, watching this all happen, just like it happened before, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. I can hear them trying to break down the door, but they can’t because I’ve become so big and so hot and the room is, like, literally catching fire.

This is it. I’m doing it again. I’ve done it again, and they’ll all know now, my parents will find out, the whole world will find out, and there will be no where for me to hide. They’ll all hate me now, forever and ever. They’ll all say horrible, nasty things, the worse things they’ve ever said and I literally don’t know what will happen to them when they do. It’s not my fault.

This is my response to a prompt I posted yesterday: “A thirteen-year-old girl finds out she’s “blessed” with paranormal powers, much to her dismay.”

If you enjoyed reading this sketch, please follow me on Facebook and Twitter. Thank you for reading and, as always, keep writing.

The Walking Dead

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The following is my response to today’s Daily Writing Prompt: “A bobblehead collector is talked out of suicide by a member of his collection.”

Saul burst into his home office and slammed the door so hard that all of the bobbleheads, occupying the nine shelves of the three bookcases lining the wall opposite of his desk, began wagging their heads. Although he was no longer crying, his labored breathing and high-pitched whines made it clear he could start up again at any moment. He paced in front of the door, pressing his hands against his cheeks until they turned white. He gripped his hair and tugged, wagging his head like one of the figures on his shelves.

Then he thought of something that stopped him altogether. He went to his desk, covered with papers and books, including Home-Based Business for Dummies, and pushed his swivel chair aside. He knelt down and opened the bottom right drawer. His face lifted when he saw what was inside. A weak smile appeared on his lips. He lifted out a long, black pistol, gripped tightly in both hands. His face was resolute. He held the pistol in front of his face to inspect it, pulled back the slide to load it, placed it under his chin, sucked in breath and—

“You need to reconsider,” said someone behind Saul. It was a coarse, calm voice, a voice that was both familiar and foreign.

Saul stopped crying, wiped his eyes and nose with his sleeve, then spun around to see who had spoken. There was only the shelves of bobbleheads. “Who said that?”

“Killing yourself, you need to reconsider,” the voice said.

Saul’s eyes widened. He looked at the bottom shelf of the middle bookcase and saw that one bobblehead was not looking straight ahead like the others. It was officer Rick Grimes from AMC’s The Walking Dead. His head was tilted back, looking up at Saul through hooded, narrowed eyes under the wide brim of a brown sheriff’s hat. He had a severe expression on his stubbled face and his hand gripped a poorly painted revolver at his side.

“Rick?” Saul said.

The bobblehead looked down, shook his head, then looked back into Saul’s face. “Yeah, it’s me,” he said, his lips not moving. “I don’t know if you’re looking at me with what? Surprise? Sadness? I’m just telling you how it is. You need to reconsider.”

Saul wiped the snot from his nose. He let his head hang down as his face flushed. “I’m just so tired and confused. I just can’t deal with it anymore.”

“Feels like there’s a lot of that going around. But whatever ‘it’ is, we all carry it.”

“I’m just not equipped to handle life anymore. I’m not a happy person, Rick. And the only thing that kept me going was the hope that I could make this business work, that I could make a better life for my family. But I can’t. I failed. The investors don’t want anything to do with me. They said there is no market for my idea, that it’s ‘underdeveloped.’”

“People out there are always looking for an angle, looking to play on your weakness. It didn’t work out, so what? You need to pull yourself together, not apart. What about Annie?”

“She’ll be sad for a while… But sooner or later she’ll realize how much of a loser I am and she will be relieved that she has the opportunity to find someone else while she’s still relatively young. I’m just an idiot. An idiot! I’ve just wasted six months of my life, of my wife’s life, put her through all that stress, put financial strain on my family, and for what? What do I have? My biggest accomplishment in life is this damned bobblehead collection.”

“You believe that? I’ll stay down here, we’ll talk as long as you want, but you forget about this killing yourself stuff. So it didn’t work out, so it was just another pipe dream. Maybe I—maybe I’m just fooling myself, but that doesn’t mean you should give up. We’ve all done the worst kinds of things just to survive. I killed my best friend for Christ’s sake! But I’m not sorry for what I’ve done, because it’s in the past, because I’ve changed. You can still come back. You’re not too far gone. You get to come back… And I know you can change.”

Saul sat back on his heels, slowly turning the gun over on his lap. “My wife says that I should take this opportunity to pursue my television blog, but how can I do that when Annie works fifty hours a week? I couldn’t live with myself knowing that watching T.V. and messing around on the computer is my only contribution. She says to find a way to make money at it, but obviously, I’m a horrible business person. I just want my family to be safe, to have some security, and I want to provide it myself.”

“Now, I need you to hear what I’m about to say. You are not safe. You need to fight for everything you get. You need to contribute to your family, but that doesn’t mean you can’t do that with your blog. You have the opportunity, right now, to focus your time and energy on the thing that will make you happy. Don’t throw that away because of guilt from the past, or the fear of the future. That guilt, that fear, they’ll try to use you. They’ll try to kill you. But you are not going to let that happen, because you are a strong man, you want to live, for yourself and for your family. Now you think about today—only today. You do what you need to do, and after that: what happens, happens.”

Saul looked down at the pistol. He took a long, slow breath. He threw his head back and let all the air flow out of him. He felt lighter then, like something had gone, something had changed. He was full of an energy, ready to get started on something new. There was a soft knock on the door.

“Saul? Saul are you okay?”

Saul looked back to Rick, his painted face looking forward, like nothing had ever happened. But Saul thought he could see Rick giving him the slightest of nods. Saul dropped the clip into one hand, emptied the chamber, then replaced the pistol in his desk drawer. “I’m going to be just fine, Annie,” Saul said, “Just fine. I’m just thinking over what we talked about. I’m going to do whatever it takes to make it work.”

“That’s great news, honey,” Annie said through the door. Saul could tell she had been crying. “I’m sorry we got into it. I’m trying to make this better for you. I need to go to work. I’ll leave you to it. I really meant what I said. I love you. I just want you to be happy.”

Saul could hear Annie leave. “I love you too,” he said, more to himself than his wife. Saul got to his feet, went to the middle bookcase, and picked up Rick Grimes. He swept his arm across his desk, knocking the papers and books to the floor. He placed the bobblehead next to his keyboard, sat down, woke up his computer, and started typing. Now and then, he would stop typing, look down at Rick, tap his oversized head, and smile.

What is Conflict?

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In a previous investigation I talked about what a story is and I defined thirteen potentially essential elements of a story; that is, thirteen things that every story must have. But there was something missing, a driving force that may not exist in the most mundane story, but should be present in any good story. That force is conflict.

Conflicts drive a narrative forward; they are the challenges that must be overcome, the trials that reveal who a character is and how they have changed, the motivation behind all the actions that shape a story. I want to share with you a diagram I’ve been working on that breaks conflict down into its parts. This diagram should aid in the purposeful creation of conflict in your stories.

Before I explain the diagram, take a minute to look it over:

Conflict Diagram — Click to enlarge.

Conflict Diagram — Click to enlarge.

In my diagram, conflict begins with a desire — the feeling of wanting to have something or wishing that something will happen — then an opposing force is introduced — which can be internal or external — and together they create conflict.

Here’s a handy little equation to remember what conflict is:

Desire + Opposition = Conflict

We must begin with desire, because without desire, there can be no opposition, since there is nothing to oppose, and so there could be no conflict. Desire is always internal, it is a movement of the brain (and soul if you like) and is by its very nature personal and internal.

Next we introduce the opposition. Desire alone does not create conflict. Conflict arises when there is opposition to attaining a desire. Opposition comes in two types: internal and external. The simpler of the two is internal, so let’s start there with the opposing desire.

Opposing desire is the conflict between two or more desires that are, or seem to be, mutually exclusive; that is, the character’s desire becomes impossible if one of the opposing desires is fulfilled.

An example of an opposing desire could be: A character wants to save her drowning son, but she also wants to save her helpless daughter being mauled by a bear. Another example: A character wants to solve the murder, but he also wants to get out of the dangerous P.I. business. Yet another: A character wants to get married, but she also wants to have the freedom to go where she wants, when she wants.

NOTE: What about fears? Are not fears internal opposition? Yes. But fears fit under opposing desires. If I’m afraid to die, then I want to live; If I’m afraid to go outside, then I want to stay inside. So if a character wants to stop a bad guy from shooting a woman, but he is afraid to die, then the conflicting desires are to save the woman, and to stay alive.

NOTE: Conflict does not arise simply from the prospect of not satisfying a desire. If I have the desire to write a book, there is not conflict because I worry I might not write a book. That is not conflict. Conflict would be: I want to write a book, but I don’t want to take the necessary time away from my family.

External opposition is the conflict between desire and any force external to desire. I classified these forces as opposing circumstances. Exposing circumstances are of three types: personal, interpersonal, and environmental.

Personal opposing circumstance is the opposition to a character’s desire by some physical problem related to that character.

An example of a personal opposing circumstance could be: A character wants to attend a concert, but they are too ill to leave their bed. Another example: A character wants to give an eloquent speech, but they suffer from Parkinson’s disease and their speech is slurred. Yet another example: A character wants to save her drowning son, but she can’t swim.

NOTE: Not being able to swim is a physical problem. It is not something you can overcome by any internal process.

Interpersonal opposing circumstance is the opposition to a character’s desire by other characters (human or otherwise) who have the ability to communicate and reason.

An example of an interpersonal opposing circumstance could be: A character wants to get into a club, but the bouncer refuses them entry. Another example: A character wants to cross a bridge, but another character won’t let him cross without a fight. Yet another example: A character wants to win the girl, but another character thwarts his attempts.

NOTE: While interpersonal conflict is motivated by conflicting desires between two or more characters, the thing that actually causes the conflict is the physical action of the opposing character(s).

Environmental opposing circumstance is the opposition to a character’s desire by anything in the outside world, excluding other characters. This includes natural disasters, weather, technology, animals, time and space, etc.

An example of an environmental opposing circumstance could be: A character wants to get home, but is confronted by a pack of wolves. Another example: A character wants to save the world, but he is stuck in a cave on the face of a cliff. Yet another example: A character wants to finish his book, but he is old and he doesn’t have much time left to live.

That’s all I have time for today, but I will be returning to this conflict diagram in future entries. I hope this diagram helped you gain a better understanding of what conflict is and that it becomes a useful tool for your creative writing.

As always, if you have any comments, please use the form below or post to my Facebook. Thanks for reading, and keep writing!

Character Development Web — Part II

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I’ve been toying around with my character development web, or character chart, a sort of visual character sheet to help me quickly identify the key attributes of a fictional character.

This is a work in progress and I will continue to add, remove, and rearrange items as time goes on. You are free to use this character chart in your own storytelling process. Please leave comments below or on Facebook about what you think can be improved, expanded, etc.

You can find the updated character development web below.

Character Web — Click to enlarge.

Character Development Web — Click to enlarge.

Life-Changing Technology

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The following is my response to a writing prompt from the book 642 Things to Write About: “Describe something you wanted badly and, once you got it, never used.”

I’m not promoting this book at all. I got it for Christmas from my wife, so I figured I would put it to some use. I hope you enjoy!

When I was fifteen years old, all I wanted was a smartphone. I had these grand ideas about handheld technologies, like if I just had a smartphone, then I would be able to accomplish all the things I hadn’t in life, like I would be an unstoppable force of productivity, like I would have the edge I needed to get ahead. I’m not sure where this fallacy came from — maybe from sci-fi fiction, maybe from advertisements — but there it was, and it was powerful.

I remember asking my mom for one of these devices every so often, only when I was feeling particularly desperate, because I was well aware of our financial situation and as strong as my desire was for a handheld device, it didn’t normally outweigh the guilt I felt in asking for one.

Still, I would daydream about these devices, about playing impossibly immersive and impressive games on them — I was a big gamer in my younger days — about getting my life in order with digital calendars and scheduling programs — even though I never used a normal calendar and I never made schedules — about unlocking a whole world of music that I never knew — even though I rarely listened to music, and had little interest in it — and about so many other silly ideas that took hold of my imagination.

So one day, when I felt I simply could not stand to be without a handheld computer for another second, and having no means whatsoever available to me of acquiring one legally, I decided my only reasonable course of action was to steal one (remember, this is coming from the same fifteen-year-old mind that believed a smartphone would change my life). I won’t go into the details of how or from where I stole these devices — I ended up taking two different ones in my over-zealousness — even though it would make for more entertaining reading, because I don’t want to romanticize theft, and because this story is about my unrealistic expectations and not about playing Robin Hood.

So, I stole two devices, a BlackBerry and a Palm-something-or-other, and afterwards I sat down for a victory soda at a nearby breakfast joint and prepared myself for unspeakable happiness.

I opened the BlackBerry first. Boy did it look sleek! I’d never held a phone like that before, it looked like everything I had imagined. I powered it on and was greeted with a colorful, glowing welcome message on the display. I thought to myself, “This is it; this is what you’ve been waiting for; this is a defining moment in your life.” But my joy and wonder were short-lived. After clicking around for a few minutes, I found that many of the programs were quite useless without being connected with a cellular network, which I didn’t have. I didn’t even have an email account. I did find a notepad program and solitaire (or snake, or paddle-ball, or something), which I played for a total of maybe two minutes before moving on. I clicked and searched and hoped, but in the end, the device was as impressive and useful to me as a chalk duster, so I returned it to the bag.

The Palm device was next, an ugly grey thing, nowhere near as handsome as the BlackBerry. But I refused to let my dreams die just yet. I powered it on and started clicking around. Ahah! A calendar where I can schedule all my important events. But I didn’t have any important events. The calendar interface was so small and clunky that I wasn’t sure I even wanted to have any important events, because it would mean having to interact with that horrible program. It seemed like much more of a chore — clicking here, then scrolling there, then clicking here — than using a paper calendar would be. It did have a music player! But I didn’t have any digital music. And even if I managed to get some, I didn’t know what I would get. The Beatles? I returned the device to the bag alongside the BlackBerry.

I sat at my booth for a long time over my Diet Coke, brooding. “I put my freedom on the line for you,” I thought, “and how did you repay me?” And that was that. I left the bag with the devices still inside on the seat of the booth, finished my drink, and walked out. I was disappointed, a little angry, but that much less naive and covetous than I had been.