Caleb's Public Writing Journal

Me Caleb. Me write good words.

Scene sketch

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?

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.

Writing Prompt: write a short magical realism story about loneliness

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Hello you. Here is a short story sketch I wrote about a Pygmalion-like character with some twists on the original myth. I hope you enjoy it.

Giroff spread the crinkling blinds and peered down on a group of friends passing under his window. His eyes were bloodshot and the flesh around them was swollen and an ugly shade of purple. He stared at the young friends—not so young, maybe not even younger than himself—laughing as they strolled, this one putting a gentle hand on that one’s shoulder, all of them slowing their pace for one who lagged behind, then all welcoming him with playful jeers as he caught up.

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Sci Fi Scene Prompt with Storyboard

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On Saturday Aug 26, 4014, at the hands of her most creative and intelligent inhabitant, Earth succumbs to Man’s destructive nature. The first bombs erupt near the great lakes, spreading a peeling fire across Earth’s western cheek. Flares of white light leak out of the atmosphere as bomb after bomb hit their mark. Black clouds bloom over New York, Milwaukee, Little Rock, Flagstaff, closing in around Southern California.

I crouch in the corner of the anteroom of Father’s L.A. office and public observatory amidst the crates of camera equipment and electronics, holding my hands to my ears against the whirling whine of the air-raid sirens mounted throughout the building. My hands come away bloody. I feel the warmth trickle down my neck, staining the white lanyard Father gave me that morning. It was my job to guard the security card. I got a kick out of the swoosh of the disappearing doors. It seems so stupid now, but none of that matters anymore.

Father and Mother stand near the observatory window on the east wall which looks out over Downtown, holding each other’s forearms and exchanging tearful words, Mother’s sorrowful face is fittingly represented in the dark glass of Father’s oblong oval helmet.

The city behind them is canopied with a massive orange and black cloud, affecting one last sunset at twelve o’clock. The city is ablaze. The streets are clotted with vehicles. Our city’s many proud towers burn and collapse into ruin as people spill out of windows like falling ash.

Father unlatches his helmet and removes it from his suit. I cringe as the blood starts to trickle out from his ears, now matching Mother and myself. He turns to call to me, his hand held palm up and a forced smile on his face. People say I look just like him with his coarse dark hair and lean body, but beyond our external similarities, I don’t have anything in common with him. I could never give up on my family. I could never ignore a chance for survival.

The temperature in the room rises. My terror and adrenaline set me on fire in my mind, melting my eyeballs from their sockets even before the blasts reach the hills where the observatory perches. Our apartment is in the science district, no doubt demolished now. Father offers his hand more urgently, tears filling his eyes now and soundless words on his lips: “I had hope.”

I jump to my feet, struggling to keep my balance as the entire observatory trembles with the aftershocks of the approaching explosions, each blast delivering a more forceful tremor than the last. He had hope? What happened to it? Why hasn’t Father suggested the pendant? He would say the pendant is not for our time, but how can he wait when time’s run out? I have to try, even if it is impossible.

The door to Father’s office is on the south wall. The security panel blinks with a little red light showing that the door is locked, but still functional. The observatory’s generators must be keeping power on in the building; airstrikes have already choked off power for most of the city. In my fright, I take that little light as a divine promise for success, and I grip Father’s security badge from around my neck and run for the door.

Father tracks me with his eyes, his brow drawn in confusion, Mother’s face shaking against his shoulder, sending tears streaming down the silver coating of Father’s suit. I reach the office door. I take the security card in a trembling hand and grip it tight as I line it up to the slit. The movement of the room combined with my hands make the task difficult, and the room is so uncomfortably hot that the sweat on my hands against the slick plastic of the card obliges me to use two hands so as not to drop the card.

At last one corner makes it into the slit, and with eyes stinging with sweat, and a thought-blurring pain now creeping from my inner ear through my head, I jam the card home with my palm. The little red light turns green. It spits the card into my hand, then the door disappears into the frame, exposing Father’s desk. The last place I saw him with the pendant.

A glance back at my parents reveals they haven’t moved from the window; Mother’s eyes are fixed on the devastation raging outside, Father’s hand still extended, his mouth mutely working to convince me to join them for one last family embrace. I shake my head at Father. I can tell by the anguish in his wet eyes that I look as run-down and wretched as him. Suddenly, the whole observatory lit up with a blinding white light, darkens again, then rattles so violently, it throws me to the office floor head first and fragments the observation window into a complex web of white cracks. The next bomb could be the last.

I pick myself up off the white tiled floor, now stained with splotches of my blood, head reeling from the impact and mounting pressure in my ears. I stumble to Father’s desk. It’s real wood, no synthetics, an heirloom from my grandfather’s father, the only conspicuous fixture in the room. When I round the desk, a thin screen emerges from the surface. A warm light reveals a welcome message from the Pan-American Space Agency on the screen along with a prompt for a passkey.

I wave the security card in front of the screen, over the surface of the desk, but nothing happens. I rub my hands over the cracked wood, searching for a trigger, or switch, or something that can show me where the pendant is. I try waving the card more violently. Nothing happens. The room begins to sway drunkenly; the foundation must be compromised. I let out a cry of frustration and fall to my knees before the ancient desk.

And then I see them: golden knobs, fixed into carved panels on the front of the desk. ‘Drawers,’ that’s what Father had called them. At first I try sliding the card over the face of the drawers, then into the small openings around each panel, but there is no mechanical response, and the card does not tug out of my hand. Maybe I need to push it in more? In the long center drawer, I push the card into gap at the top of the panel and the card slips from my fingers into the belly of the desk. After waiting for some kind of response, I try retrieving the card, but the gap is much too thin, and the old desk is a mystery to me. Then I try the knob. I grip it in my fist. I turn. I push. I pull—and just like that, the panel moves and opens.

The drawer is filled with yellow sheets of paper with writing on their faces, several thin, metal probes, and—there, a black velvet bundle pushed all the way to the back of the drawer. The same bundle I knew held Father’s most incredible, and unmentionable of discoveries, and my last hope.

Father’s eyes widen when he see’s what I’m doing. He starts toward the office, but Mother holds him back, shaking all over, pulling at his suit, begging him to stay with her. He struggles against her, and I can see he wants me to stop. Stop? Even now, when my intentions are made clear, even as he knows this could be our only chance, Father chooses certain death. I choose the unknown.

I pull the knob so hard, the drawer tears free from the desk and crashes to the floor. I immediately take up the soft bundle and turn it in my hands. The pendant is heavy inside the velvet, and I can feel its chill through the thick cloth. I peel off layer after layer of velvet, frantically, reducing the bundle from the size of my hand, to the size of my thumb in moments, finally revealing the pendant. The pendant and chain look like tarnished silver with a black crystal set into the face as its only ornament. The humble appearance of the pendant sent chills down my spine. This really is ridiculous.

I don’t know what will happen if I put the pendant on, but no matter how terrible the consequences, they are worth a chance at living, aren’t they? I take one more look at my parents: Mother sobs and writhes in Father’s hands; Father stares at me, tears spilling from his eyes, mouth set in a hard line so I won’t see them tremble. I raise the pendant above my head. Father shakes his head, pleading with his eyes for me to join them. Mother raises her head to look at me, her eyes a mess of puffy flesh and tears. This is the last moment I will see my parents alive.

The final flash lit up the room just as I lower the chain of the pendant over my neck and a supporting rush of frosty air lifts me from the ground. I lost my breath with the shock of plunging from the boiling room to the freezing cocoon of the pendant. The next moment, my parents were in flames, hair blazed off, Mother’s dress and flesh burning together, the same look of pleading on Father’s melting face, dead before they could scream. Then the office catches fire seemingly everywhere at once, spewing black smoke from the metal fixtures and melting the screen on Father’s desk. I didn’t realize I was screaming until my vocal cords painfully gave out a few seconds later, and the secondary blast of the bomb blew in the observatory windows on my parents, and the walls came crashing in around me.

The Earth fell to darkness today; my entire life is destroyed. I am lost, spinning out in space, looking back on a black planet shrinking into the distance. For now, I am alive, with no clue of what will become of me, or if this is the end. But I have hope.

Hello you! I hope you enjoyed this Sci Fi scene prompt. Like all my fiction writing on this blog, this prompt is meant to entertain readers, practice my craft, and inform writers of my process. The prompt was completed over three days with time for story development, structure, drafting, revising. For you writers out there, I’ve included a snapshot of the storyboard I created for this prompt below to show you what I worked from.

Sci Fi Story Board

Sci Fi Story Board

Everett Ricocheted: A Holiday Tragedy

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Thank you for visiting my public writing journal, and Happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate it. I have a special holiday story for you today! I had the idea for this prompt a few days ago, but I have been so busy with other writing projects, I didn’t have a chance to sit down and start writing it until this morning. I did most of the planning and plotting yesterday, then started writing this morning at 4am.

As usual, I try my best to keep errors to a minimum for your enjoyment, but since everything on this site is meant to be completed in a timely manner, and are primarily for practice; some mistakes may appear.

I’ve had a wonderful time crafting this exercise for you, but I guess it’s time to get back to the family. I hope you enjoy the read; I write for you!

Everett Ricocheted

tukeytatts

After winning ‘Best New Artist’ at the 2013 National Tattoo Expo, Everett Ortega moved his family to Forking Trails, a full year sooner than his accountant recommended for a young business, but he refused to live another week in that apartment, and the new accolade was keeping the books full for weeks in advance. He claimed the rush had to do with getting settled before the holidays, with Maggie getting used to the new house before all that excitement. By the time November rolled around that year, all of the employees from the tattoo shop had a letter from the boss inviting them to Thanksgiving at his new house. The place was big all right, bigger than any place he had ever lived in. It reminded him of some kind of fortress. He installed a black iron gate over the front door, and spiked bars in crooked angles on all the first floor windows. The lawn seemed comparatively unkempt to his neighbors; the single maple that stood in one corner of the front yard hung his arms, dead; a long, telling gouge running up his trunk, nearly bifurcating him, leaving him gray and rotting where he stood. Inside, the house was bright, warm, and filled with fumes composed of turkey, ham, and other festive delights. The guests gathered around the drinks and refreshments in the kitchen, thanking him for his employment, congratulating his recent success, and complimenting him on his ideal choice of house and community.

At around eight in the evening dinner was served and everyone sat, awkwardly stirring their food and looking to their host for direction. When it was clear that her husband was not going to say anything, Everett’s wife spoke for her husband saying, “We don’t have any traditions yet. But, in my family, we would go around the table and say a quick word about what we were thankful for. I am thankful for my husband, and all the success that the talent God has given him has brought our family. Now that the world is starting to recognize what we all have for so long, hopefully all our lives will change for the better.” There was a small round of applause, then the guests cheerfully began—first was Antony and his family; then the Frenchman, Beau, who does portraits; Wendall the piercer; and Twitch the shop apprentice—and so on. They were all thankful for Everett.

“All right boss,” Antony said, patting Everett’s shoulder and grinning up the guests, “what don’t you have to be thankful for, big guy? Come on now, don’t keep us waiting, Elizabeth wont forgive you letting the turkey get cold.”

Elizabeth shook her head and laughed, waving the comment by. But Everett did not smile. Under his tangled black beard he gently gnawed on the fat of his lower lip, marking each one of the guests with eyes peeking out from under heavy brows. After a moment he widened his eyes and took a sharp breath like the single scrape of a metal pot brush, turned his face up, and put on a watery smile. “Having you all here…” He straightened in his chair and rubbed his eyes. “Having you all here in my new home… I’m thankful that I had… I have people somewhere who care.”

“Well!” said Everett’s wife, “how underwhelming! What kind of thanks is that? That’s all you have to say? After all the wonderful things all your friends had to say about you?”

“Friends?” Everett asked himself.

A unanimous murmur circuited the table.

Everett’s wife pursed her lips, folded her napkin and took a large gulp of wine. “Can I talk to you for a minute Everett?” She asked.

Everett shifted in his seat. “You’re taking it wrong,” he said. “Just forget it. I am thankful,” he backhanded the air, “for all of you. It’s just taken more time to settle in than I thought. The neighbors here; the neighbors are just different.”

“You’re in Orange County bro,” said Antony, “what do you expect?”

“What does that even mean?” asked Everett. “I haven’t even seen half these people and they already hate me. I took the dog out this morning. The family coming down the sidewalk; they crossed the street; wouldn’t look me in the face. Our neighbors haven’t come to welcome us—not one! I don’t know…”

Everett’s wife had enough. She threw her arm over the back of her chair and laughed from her gut. “You have got to be joking! So now—now!—you’re upset because the community is too quiet? Because people give us too much privacy?”

Wendall swigged his beer. “I don’t think you need to worry about privacy, mate. Iron gates, triple pad locks, metal mesh screens on the windows. I’m sure the neighbors get the hint.”

“It’s my home,” said Everett, “I have the right to protect it don’t I? If they’d let me, I’d have done it at the apartment.”

“Yeah, but this isn’t LA either, big guy,” Antony said. “Besides, Elizabeth tells me you got a cop living next door?”

Elizabeth nodded furiously with a mouthful of wine. “That’s right, Murfa’s husband, a few doors down; Robert something? Robert McKinley I’m pretty sure—anyway, the realtor told us he’s been here since the community was built. You can’t get safer than having a cop right next door.”

Twitch shook his head, not looking away from his plate, “Seems to me like anywhere’s safer than where their murderin’ folk outside your door.”

Everett struck the table with his fist and the tableware clattered. “That’s enough about it. Elizabeth doesn’t like talking about that.”

A frown seized Elizabeth. “I don’t mind it at all Sam, it’s in the past now. It’s only you that mind it still.”

He eyed Twitch with the loathing rage that he could not lay on his wife, “Fine. Fine then, I mind it. It’s enough about it anyway.” The table fell silent, and everyone knew it was time to eat.

After the guests had eaten their fills and stayed their duties, Everett took a hot shower and timidly went into the bedroom, letting the cool breeze from the open window dry the steaming water off his back, and slipped open the top dresser drawer where he kept his bed clothes and large .45 caliber pistol he purchased along with the new house. He was aware, without looking, of Elizabeth’s gaze. He felt her brain trying to work him out. He felt the exhaustion of this exercise more and more in the new house. He wondered for how long he could feel her touching him. She lay reposed on their bed, hidden behind deep masquera-sockets. Somewhere in the night, seeming to be perched just outside Everett’s window and far away at the same time, the great horned owl questioned the dark: Whoo? Whoo?

“Did you take your medicine?” asked Elizabeth.

Whoo?

Everett started. “What was that?” his hand was wrapped round the gun. He whirled on Elizabeth. “Did someone cry for help?” His chest popped and collapsed like one of Maggie’s mechanical toys. In the dim light Elizabeth made out the silver spine of the 1911; her husband’s eyes were white and wild; and she was frightened.

“No. No Everett. It’s only that damn owl—sweet-heart? did you take your medicine?”

The gun rattled playfully in his hands as he tried to smile. “Yes.”

“We’re safe here, Everett. You don’t have to worry anymore. This isn’t Dos Lagos. This is one of the safest communities in Southern California. What happened at the apartments; that’s not normal; even for a rathole. I’ve never heard of something like that happening to somebody before it happened to us; you definitely don’t have to worry about it happening here.” She held out a hand.  Everett took a step towards her. Her eyes flicked to the gun at his side. Everett stopped. He wriggled where he stood. His mind wanted to accept his wife’s words, but screams of terror and images of himself and his wife, motionless in the comfort of their beds; affirmation after affirmation built into his head to never let himself forget that day, to never let it happen that way again flooded his head.

Whoo? Whoo?

Everett rolled onto bed near his wife, closing the pistol in the side table drawer, and drawing his thick tattooed forearm over his eyes.

“Do you ever think what would have happened if we would have done something that night?,” he asked. “I mean, anything—opened the door, banged on the door, called the cops, shouted—anything for Christ’s sake.”

“Yes. I used to. When I didn’t want to; when I wasn’t trying to think about it; when I was just cleaning up the apartment, or doing school-time with Maggie. But it didn’t stop me from doing those things. And it didn’t stop me from moving on, from getting past it. I don’t think about it anymore. I can’t ever forget about it completely, but I don’t run through what I could have done to save her anymore. I have my own daughter to worry about. The man who hurt that girl is locked up. And we moved far away from there.”

“I couldn’t forget it.”

“I said, I didn’t. I just don’t want to bring old evil into our new lives.”

Whoo? Whoo?

“What’s so new about it? This house? Our neighbors? All these damn communities are the same; unbalanced and dangerous systems of animals. You can make close bonds based on trust, but these people—God—these people didn’t give us a chance. They didn’t half look at my beard and tatts before they rejected me. How are we supposed to be a part of this place if they won’t have us, and don’t want us? And what about us? We’re not any different. I’m the same, you’re the same.”

“People are never the same, Everett.”

Whoo—aah!

Everett twisted out of bed and landed, crouched like a cat, beside the side-table, already retrieving his weapon. “Did you hear that? You heard that! Ha! You heard it, I know you did!… Shh—There it is again—listen…” Sam put his ear to the open window. Silence…

Then a haunting voice leaped through the window, chased through the hollow night air by a man’s baritone shouts. “No!” it cried. “Stay away from me!”

Everett and Elizabeth gaped at each other. It was impossible. He had changed everything, moved to a safe residential area, they were part of a home owner’s association for Christ’s sake—could it be happening all over again? Here? In Forking Trails? Everett paced the room with the gun pressed to his temple. He groaned and growled at the images of the body of the young woman in the torn red dress, sunken into the cement stairwell at the apartments, a terrified, hopeful expression stained her face, her eyes locked on his apartment door, her lifeless body limp and beaten and pathetic.

“Everett!” said his wife. “Everett, are you listening to me? Please come sit. Come sit down. It’s probably just kids again. They’re always out at the pool, or haunting the park; don’t worry.” But Everett continue to pace, looking at Elizabeth with wide, confused eyes, like he didn’t know her at all. “Everett, if it’s bothering you, we can call the police, but they’re probably not going to be able to do anything about it. It could be anything.”

“I can’t believe you. Someone could need our help.”

“You don’t know that Sam. And it’s none of our business anyway. You said yourself tonight that these people have made it their M.O. to avoid us, so for right now, for Thanksgiving night at least, my husband can do me a favor, and avoid them too, all right? Trust me, it’s probably some kids playing.”

“That didn’t sound like kids playing.”

Elizabeth shrugged and drew up a corner of her lip. “Maybe it didn’t. It doesn’t matter to us Everett. Please, keep your voice down, Maggie’s sleeping. Just come to bed.”

“Get the fuck back here!” came the man’s voice from outside. It was close; maybe two streets North? The woman’s reply was frantic and breathless; “No, help, don’t touch me, help!”

That’s when Everett heard it; two gun shots sounded in succession; crack-cak! Then the woman’s shrill shriek and an inaudible command from the man. This was the girl from the apartments all over again. He had tried to leave it behind, but it followed him here. He looked to his wife. She sat up in bed, silently picking at her nails, no urgency in her body, she hadn’t even reach for her phone. “I’m going out there,” he said. “I’m not going to let this happen again. Not here. Not to these people.”

Elizabeth still worked at her hangnail. “Okay,” she said. “Okay. I’ll call the cops, all right? I’ll call the cops, and tell them what you thought we heard—”

“Thought!—“

“And maybe they’ll send someone, but Everett, if you think I’m letting my husband walk out into the night with a loaded gun, especially with what you’re going through right now, to face some unknown armed psychos, you’re dead wrong.”

“What’s wrong with you? Didn’t you learn anything from Dos Lagos? Didn’t you lose anything? Wasn’t anything burnt into your head that day? Jesus, Elizabeth, I mean, Jesus; someone needs us.”

“You’re right. I need you. Your daughter needs you. Your employees need you. The people who look up to you as an artist need you. The people who’s tattoos you haven’t finished need you. You’re the one that tells me that it’s more than just ink and skin; that it’s personal culture, and personal journeys. These are all the someone’s that need you. These people, this community, your so called ‘neighbors’ who treat you like Frankenstein’s monster—are they worth more than all of us?”

Everett howled and beat his chest. He tore at his hair and wept onto the cold steel of the gun, running black grease onto his hands and over the thin golden band on his finger. When he could breathe, he pointed a black finger at his wife and said, “If they are not worth protecting, then no one is worth protecting. And If I am made of mortal stuff, then I will die. And when I die I will sink low in the ground with that poor girl’s life on my back—how much more can I bear before I sink through the earth when I die? and dissolve into full darkness? I already tried to run from the bad. I ran and ran. I ran like a hunted hog. I penned myself in this house. But the bad is in the people. Now the hungry dogs bark at my window again, but this time I’m not going to lie in bed with you and listen while they tear us apart. This time I’ll face the cowardly pack.” Everett checked the clip in the pistol, then smacked it home and yanked the slide. Elizabeth moaned like an ungreased wheel, Everett stole from the bedroom, and she was frantically searching for her cell phone.

Outside, the midnight air was clear and cool. Through the vapor-clouds, the stars and crescent moon spangled the night sky, who copied herself in the pool of rainwater cuddling in the dip of the driveway. Everett’s boot destroyed her visage as he stomped through the clouds and stars, into the street and towards the root of the commotion. The street lamps were lit for only the South half of the street, leaving the Northern section under only moonlight. Everett sweated as he made his way down the sidewalk, the heavy pistol in his overcoat pocket, having to grip it fiercely to keep his hand from shaking his whole body. The rose garden across from his house was cheerfully lit and a few residents were strolling the paths with their dogs.

“Help me!” the voice came. “Joshua, stop! Stop, help! Help!”

Everett picked his pace up to a jog. The people in the garden were unwilling to hear, but he knew that; he could not waste a precious second trying to convert them to his cause. He heard the argument grow louder as he drew nearer and nearer to the fray. When he was three streets North of his house, standing in the dark street with no more voices, struggling to hear anything over his panicked breathing and distant sirens, he heard the third gunshot go off so close; Crack! that he needn’t have heard it at all; it’s muzzle flare lit up a parked car at the end of the cul du sac, a block from where he stood. Everett focused in on the man; a lanky teen in a large grey sweater and wild red hair was stumbling around the middle of the street with a young girl gripped by the wrist, being hauled around like a sack of garbage at his heels while he twirled a small revolver round his head and slurred profanities in intervals. He was a boy. Just a boy. Sam’s whole arm convulsed as he pried at the gun in his pocket. When he held it loose, he had to grip it with both hands to steady it. He watched the gun in the boy’s hand, watched its muzzle trail from the girl’s head, to his own, to the sky, from window to window; and in each one he couldn’t help but see Maggie’s tiny body caked in blood. The sirens blared louder in his head, but Everett only heard the boy now, only heard his voice, his movements, his breathing. Everett blinked the stinging from his eyes and bared his teeth.

“Drop the fucking gun and move away now!” He demanded. He said it with such force that the tremors in his vocal folds were simply blown over.

The instant the boy heard Everett, another shot rang out in the air. The bullet ricocheted off a roof top and the revolver seemed to fly from the boy’s hand. Everett crouched and fought a million times to not pull the trigger. He saw the gun pointed to the sky when the shot went off, and now inert on the asphalt. The boy stared dumbly at Everett, mouth agape. He still held the girl in his grip and she struggled weakly against it. She was obviously exhausted, but when she saw Everett, she became revived and tore away from the boy’s grip. She raced, bloody-legged, into the residential shadows. Everett tried to call out to her, but she only glanced back at him with pale-faced terror as she disappeared into the dark. The sirens were becoming immutable and the adrenaline surging through his body made it hard to think. He put his bead on the boy and started walking towards him.

“Drop the gun!” But the boy had already dropped it… “Drop the gun! Now!” Everett crept closer to the boy. He saw his pale pimpled face contorted in terror and a dark patch of pee dribbling down the leg of his pants. Everett sniffed in the hot fear and it enraged him. For a second his finger tensed around the trigger.

“Yo, please,” said the boy, “I don’t want to die. Please. Just shoot him already! This dude’s fucking crazy; everyone knows he’s crazy; please! he’s gonna kill me!”

Then Everett looked at the boy’s eyes and he realized they were not looking at him. He realized it was not him ordering the boy to drop his gun. The red and blue flashes of light that filled the street flashed memories in his mind. The police lights that plagued his nightmares of the horrible days that followed that night two years ago at Dos Lagos when that poor girl was raped and murdered outside his door. He suddenly felt sick. Like a man with a hangover on the first beer of the night, ready to do it all again. He felt wrong, out of sorts, and misplaced. He suddenly felt the need to reach out and grab the boy, to wrap his arms around him, to talk to him. He wanted to hug his wife too, and Maggie—little Maggie—he wanted to hold her most of all. He wanted to communicate something to them then, something of such importance that he couldn’t find words to shape it, or emotion to hold it in. He needed to tell them. He needed them to know the truth. He did it. He brought it to Forking Trails. It was him all along. But how could he tell this boy? This community? He needed to explain.

Everett Ortega turned to face the officer and held up his left hand to explain. But, before he could say a word, the officer leaped back, shouting for him to drop the gun. Everett held up both hands in defense, the pistol still locked in his anxious grip. The officer didn’t think. He shot Everett three times, once through his upraised hands, leaving him to bleed out on the streets of Forking Trails. Even as Elizabeth came bellowing out of the back of the police cruiser, shouting for Robert McKinley’s to stop, the officer kept his gun trained on Everett’s hunched back, ordering her to stay back, that the man could still be dangerous. And as Everett’s dimming eye’s watched the wild-haired boy slipped into the darkness after the mysterious girl, he felt a strange buoyancy, as if his aching body were floating up, into the silverly night. Then, all was silence.

photo credit: Shannon K via photopin cc

East of Ethan

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Thank you for visiting my public writing journal. This writing exercise was inspired by a passage out of one of my favorite Steinbeck novels. You can guess which one by the title. I spent an hour sketching this out yesterday—the 22nd—and a good hour today—the 23rd—spent revising and editing. The exercise goal for myself here was controlling reader emotions, as well as information release control. Also, I was just having fun writing.

I hope you enjoy the free read. Please check my site often for updates; I write for you!

All Ethan cared about was Sarah then—she just didn’t take to Mission Viejo. If she was angry she did not advertise it, not through the usual petty arguments and passive aggressive tactics that some common eastern women were known to employ during the turn of the century, but then, Sarah was not the same woman that Ethan had married three weeks ago in far away New York.

There, Sarah held his hand as they walked through Central Park, sighing as he recited lines from the tattered leaves of Tennyson. But in Mission Viejo she would not touch Ethan through lace gloves. And if she must look at him, it was with tight, thin lips; a mannequin’s courtesy—and only when it was unavoidable.

On the couple’s third morning after arriving in California, Ethan woke to find his wife not in bed. He followed the sounds of coughing and retching into his tiny hotel bathroom where he found his wife, draped over the toilet, her head sunk deeply in the bowl.

“The shrimp,” she coughed, her voice echoing, struggling to work her throat muscles, tearing up at the sound of her amphibian voice that amplified and echoed out of the bowl. “I can’t talk money now, darling… I’m so terribly—so terribly—oh, just leave me here today, darling. You must go without me.”

Ethan ordered her cold water and an aspirin on the way out of the Queen’s Isle Hotel, found a cab, and went on with the day’s business. At about five in the afternoon, Ethan arrived back at the The Queen’s Isle to find his wife, unmoved from the toilet, her hair and dress both laden with blood. The hotel doctor reached the room quickly and examined Sarah; she was still alive, breathing normally, having fainted from severe loss of blood.

“What’s happened to her?” demanded Ethan, “will she recover?” Whiskey was heavy on his breath, “Please, what happened to her?” Ethan advanced on the doctor with his hands held out

“Mr. Newman! Please! She’ll be all right, I’ve stopped the bleeding—sir, I must insist!” The doctor held up his hands, “But she needs rest. I’ll have her moved to St. Mary’s as soon as she’s able, but for now, she needs rest.” The doctor dropped his head. “You know. I have to tell you, friend.” He couldn’t look Ethan in the eyes; then he could, and when he could he took him by the shoulders and steadied him.

Ethan wished the doctor would stop looking in his eyes; he felt like the doctor had stripped nude in front of him, grown old and feeble. “Now, friend, I have to tell you. Your wife is fine. But her wounds were self inflicted.”

“What do you mean?”

“Did you know your wife was pregnant?”

Ethan flinched, breaking eye contact, meeting the doctor’s eyes again. He wanted to say no. He shook his head instead.

The doctor described what he found when he examined Sarah; self-inflicted wounds, a twisted copper hanger, and all the signs of a woman with child. He assured Ethan that his wife was stabilized, and offered to check in every few hours. Ethan remained silent, taking in the doctor’s words. The silence was painful when the doctor finished speaking and before he knew what he was saying, he said,

“You know, Mr. Newman, if your wife tries any more, you understand, monkey business; well, California law is against her. That is, you have your rights.”

At the doctor’s suggestion, Ethan’s eyes turned very cold, his brow dripped over them, and the corners of his mouth twitched. “No,” he said. “That won’t be necessary.”

The doctor tried to hide a shiver. He excused himself, then nodded. He had nothing to say to this, no warning or caution; indeed, the good doctor was already forgetting he was ever called on that evening regarding business with Mrs. Newman.

Ethan thanked the doctor and closed the door behind him. He walked to the bed where Sarah lie unconscious. Ethan’s face had changed; his eyes bulged, a purple vein writhing at his temple—and his fingers had locked into metal grip hooks.

It was true; Ethan had dragged this glimmering prize from the East to the Golden shores of a young California, his head full of Swiss cows and windmills and wide open possibility. It was true; his new enterprise demanded his seemingly continuous presence at banquets, business halls, and country homes, and they no doubt had taken their toll on the young Sarah. But this? To Ethan, such a heartless attempt on his child’s life was inexcusable. Ethan brushed aside a cold rat-tail of hair from his wife’s face; he turned his hand and stroked her cheek, but pulled away at the hard, rubber touch; he screwed up his nose and made a soft, sad noise in his chest. No. This wasn’t the same eager woman he married in New York. Not the same woman at all.

“Wake up,” said Ethan. “I said wake up, damn you! I know you can hear me. Why’d you do it huh? Why’d you do it? Open your eyes, I know you’re awake.”

The drowned little doll on the hotel twin closed her mouth and tightened her lips. She carefully opened her eyes and met her enraged husband with a cold stare.

“So you are awake,” said Ethan with a hateful chuckle, “you sick woman, you terrible… Why’d you do it? Just tell me that, why’d you do it?”

Sarah folded her arms over her stomach, her eyes were glassy but without tears. She made no expression of emotion.

“Am I no good for you? I can’t be that bad, no man’s that bad. You devil! And you know what? It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. Christ you look sick—did you take something? I bet you took something too, didn’t you? Vinegar? Red pepper? Christ! You’re crazy!” Ethan’s face had darkened to a dangerous red. “Well, I got something to tell you, since you don’t want to tell me why you did it.” Ethan went to the bureau and produced a half-empty bottle of whiskey, poured a glass, drank. “Someone upstairs wants us to have that baby because, despite your disgusting attempts, your assault on my child only hurt yourself.” He poured another glass. “The doctor told me the baby is fine.” Drinks. “Your aim sucks. And you’re going to have that baby too. As long as you’re my wife, you’re under my law, and a woman doing what you done here, without her husband knowing, and on her own like this, is certified murder. And if anything happens to this baby—to my child—and I hear about it, then I will testify against you in a court of law and put you in jail to rot. I promise you that. And while you don’t talk much now, I hope you have sense enough to believe me when I tell you I mean what I say.”

Sarah’s mouth, slowly, closed. And her eyes opened, cold and hard. “What do you want from me?”

Ethan set down his whisky, careful not to make a sound, and looked his wife in the face. “Everything I’m going to get,” he said. “Everything. I’m going. To get.”

Detective Jimmy Hallaren of New Mexico

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I wrote this scene sketch this morning to play with my sentence construction. I hope you enjoy the read.

Narcotics Detective Jimmy Hallaren sat in an early model Ford sedan, in the New Mexico desert three miles outside of Santa Fe, his .40 caliber pistol, unholstered, on the passenger seat, his bearded, cracked hand resting beside it, his dark eyes fixed on a dark patch in the road, irregular, like spilt oil that the sun had failed to raise from the dusty highway, a stain set all the more vividly in Detective Hallaren’s memory, set by a sin that a thirty-five year career of loyal duty could not cleanse: his violent, impersonal ending of a young man’s life; all in the name of a paycheck.

Detective Hallaren held a half-burnt cigarette out his open window, the butt between his first two fingers, nails turning yellower in the noon sun. He took a drag of the cigarette, letting the smoke linger in his greying hair, absorbing the aroma; a fitting stench. The police radio gurgled in his ears:

“Yo’ Jimmy,” came a man’s voice over the radio, “you bringing it in soon old man?”

Detective Hallaren lifted the .40 caliber and set it aside, revealing a thin paper pamphlet titled, ‘What Now?’ The author’s name was obscured, but appeared to be of Indian origin.

“Jimmy?” Asked the voice. “Are you there sir? I didn’t mean it about you being old, sir. We were all actually hoping to catch you before you left us for good.” Three or four other eager voices crackling over the speakers echoed the patrol officer’s sentiment.

Detective Hallaren caressed the pistol with his forefinger, then picked up the radio receiver. “Yeah, yeah, I’m here in the boonies; I’ll be at the station in a few; tell the boys I’m just reminiscing about the good ole’ days.”

“Tell them what?” Asks the voice. “Ten-one, you’re transmission’s a bit choppy sir.”

Glancing South, towards Santa Fe, low on the horizon, where the air wavers in the heat, Detective Hallaren saw a flash of green light, but, looking again, he saw… “Nothing,” said Detective Hallaren, “nevermind; I’m out on the eighty-four North; tell them I’ll be in soon. Just do me a favor and don’t let my wife do anything—over the top—at the station; I’m tired.”

“I’ll try sir, but your kids are in town. See you in a few sir; congratulations.” The radio scratched to silence.

Detective Hallaren continued to stare where the flash had been, two or three miles away, where the highway gently sloped, a small dust-devil rising up in its place. Then, like it had been there all along, a crude, yellow van appeared, screeching along the highway at high speed, swerving over the horizon. It was a boxy van, a DIY chop-job for sure; a Chevy truck, it’s bed replaced with a wooden hut, the whole thing hand painted a bright yellow, with black tinted-windows, and a black sliding window cut into the side like an ice-cream truck.

The van swerved so wide that it kicked up dust from either margin of the highway. The rig rattled and coughed so violently as it came that Detective Hallaren was sure its spine would snap any second. The van sped closer and it emitted a red flash that made him blink. A second later, green smoke poured from the windows of the van, accompanied by electric sparks and high-pitched whistles; the whooping spectacle, now no more than a mile from where the detective waited.

“What are you thinking buddy?” said Detective Hallaren, picking up the radio receiver. “Dispatch,” he said, “this is Detective Hallaren, do we have any traffic officers near my ten-twenty?”

The woman’s voice came clear and sing-song over the radio, “Ten-four, detective, units are on their way, now why don’t you ten-nineteen and start on enjoying that retirement? Good afternoon detective.”

Detective Hallaren took a long inhale, hand trembling, then flicked the cigarette butt onto the asphalt and cupped his hand over his quivering lips.

The van was less than a thousand feet out and coming fast; Detective Hallaren knew highway patrol would arrive in the next thirty seconds, and the driver would be long gone by then. But he gave up chasing petty speeders six years ago when they gave him the detective badge. He gave up the heart-pounding stops, the overwhelming questions of safety every time he stepped out of his cruiser; the beat up undercover sedan was a reward hard won. Four hundred feet; orange smoke now too? No front license?

Detective Hallaren felt a rumble in his gut; an explosion boomed from the van, just as it careened past him, horn blaring, a small wrinkled man at the wheel, black ponytail trailing behind, flailing his arms at the interior assailants, lips stretching wide, teeth chomping in terror, glasses fogging white, the cabin full of colorful gasses, white sparks, scattering copper coins and long, red and blue plumage all along the eighty-four.

Detective Hallaren picked up the pamphlet and flipped through it’s pages without pausing, then sighed. “Highway patrol will never make it,” he said.

Detective Hallaren holstered his pistol, crossed his safety belt, punched off his radio, jammed the gear shift into drive, and tore out after the mysterious yellow van.