092/2012 Living Will

Word Count:  385

I didn’t think I would change my mind and I didn’t, even after the diagnosis that gave me three months at the most. Now that I’m closer to the end of it all I want more. I ask the doctor about the new therapy that’s been in the news. He tells me it hasn’t been proven. But I’d be willing to try, I say. He smiles that same odd smile he used when I’d asked him about a transplant. That’s his answer. There’s really nothing he can do.

And he can’t. It’s out of his hands. Out of mine.

I made the living will years ago when younger and healthy but with a door that could always be opened, always be changed with my mind.

I’m forty-eight. As of six months ago I’d had no signs of health issues. Non-smoker, non-drinker, get sex as often as I can and no proof that it’s ever hurt me or led to this shortening of my life. Congenital heart failure, passed down from my father’s side but I never knew. Dad was killed in a car accident when he was still in his early forties.

Would I have signed papers had I known this? Probably. When you’re in what you feel is your prime nothing like your own death makes any sense. So a document, albeit legal, has no reality to you either. It’s just the right thing to do. So you don’t live for years like a carrot which is something, oddly enough, that you can relate to even as death, an unknown, you cannot.

No to the transplant, no to the promising new process, no to super fast food via a tube. No CPR, no to any last chances at all.

It’s hard to breathe now and they will give me oxygen and morphine to help hide the pain. I ask the nurses, beg the doctors, even tell the cleaning lady I want to live.

But the living will, that simple document that was supposed to help in case I couldn’t tell them what I wanted, overrides any choice I make now.

I’m sorry, says my doctor, but once it’s been filed with the state it’s in the database. There’s nothing else we can do. While I was busy living, extraordinary means has been redefined by law.

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091/2012 Maternal Instinct

Word Count:  179

It was hard, oh so hard, to watch her children go to bed hungry. Every night, waiting, hoping that she could provide them with a meal that could fill their bellies for once. That they could sleep with satisfied smiles on their faces. That she could kiss them goodnight without worry about another stretched-to-the-edges new day.

The little one was whimpering. She picked him up, held him close, crooned him back to sleep with a lullaby she’d learned from her own mother. Paper thin walls, hollow-core doors, the people on the other side listening, uncaring.

She was getting desperate. And weak. What little was available she gave to the children, leaving only a few crumbs for herself.

Then one night, finally, she was blessed with opportunity. It sounded like voices just outside her door. A child’s tiny whine, a father’s reassurance.

And at last, she was ready when the closet door opened and a sleepy-eyed, tender and tasty little girl wiped her tears and a man pointed inside, about to say, “No monsters. See?”

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090/2012 Girls of The Night

Word Count:  260

She woke up in another strange room, in a strange bed with a stranger. She was only sixteen. This wasn’t going so great after all.

She took the cash off the dresser she’d insisted he pay up front. Dressed quickly and left without looking to see if he’d gotten up. She didn’t care. There was no need to kiss him good morning or even goodbye.

The two girls met at the diner at the corner of Seventh and Fern.  Shared coffee and forced giggles and dollar bills. They shared backgrounds as well: broken homes with abusive fathers and mouse mothers and brothers who snuck into their beds at night.

A year on the street is a decade. A night is a warm place to bed down. Friends are a network and strangers are everyone else. Neither is trusted, except for that one bond you can make with someone whom you trust to cover your back.

This bond was broken a week later when her friend was the next one found in the alley. They said her eyes were wide open, catching the last of the stars fading to morning. Word was her throat like the rest had been cut. It took till mid-morning to find her when a stranger called the police.

She went back to Ohio broken and broke and not because someone had found her. As far as she knew, no one had looked. She went back to Ohio all on her own. The father, the brothers, the mealy-mouthed mother were really all that she had.

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089/2012 The House Painter

Word Count:  420

It was silly, of course. She couldn’t leave the top four clapboards unpainted simply because she was afraid to go up two more rungs. So she talked herself up the ladder and…froze.

Paint can and brush in one hand, her other gripping the ladder, she hung there suspended in time. An artist’s model, reluctant to move. She’d tried reaching down through the rungs to hang the can on the S-ring. It proved too hard to do without fear of falling. The instant she let go of the ladder vertigo struck. So there she was, stuck to intention rather than moved into action. She didn’t know what to do.

Cars drove by on occasion; it was a quiet street with most of her neighbors cleared out in schoolbuses and SUV’s off to work. If she hollered, no one could hear her. Besides, she’d made the foolish mistake of trying this on the back of the three-story house.

Oh she did try to step down the same way she stepped up there but somehow the rungs seemed much further, rounder, shrinking away from her foot as she tremulously waved and poked it around. She wished she could just drop the paint, let it fall to the ground in a blazing white splash on the azaleas. Two windows beneath her would take a hit too. It would be worth it, she thought, if she thought it would help her get down. But the hand that gripped the can handle and brush also had two fingers wrapped around the side of the ladder. No matter how hard she willed herself to let go, fear laughed at her plan.

Shoolbuses squealed to a stop and she hollered out but kids, being kids, didn’t listen or hear. The postman delivered by truck and zipped through barely stopping. She heard the UPS man come by and yelled at the top of her lungs. She heard his radio blaring; he evidently didn’t hear her.

She tried catching the commuters as they came home. Most drove straight into garages, sliding through remote-controlled overhead doors. Traffic slowed down to near non-existent around six. She watched lights go on, first in kitchens, she guessed, and then dens, then upstairs, bedroom by bedroom. It was chilly and the stars sprinkled the sky.

I don’t know what finally happened. The news didn’t report it at all. And I, living forty miles north and in quite a hurry to get there, just passing by, still wonder about it today.

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088/2012 Fear

Word Count:  415

I’ve read about this, how your heart beats so loud and so fast it feels like it’ll burst out your neck. How the world can hear it because it bangs inside on the drums of your ears. I keep my mouth open to help breathe. I can smell my own sweat, wet and hot on my body. They’re chasing me and I’ve just managed to slip them and hide.

Not for long; they’re bound to check out this alley and find me. I’m so scared and I desperately need to pee. Finally my breath slows, my chest isn’t heaving with the effort to hold in my heart. I dare look around.

There’s a dumpster but I know it’ll clang like an alarm if I try to open it. Then I notice one half of it is flung back to the wall. I look up to a fire ladder I’m sure I can’t reach, and where would it lead anyhow? The alley yawns to the street where I ran in, and closes like teeth at the other end.

They’re coming closer. I hear voices, footsteps, sounds. I need to hide better. Hide somewhere. If they find me…

My hands shake so bad I hardly can pull myself up and over and in. I don’t dare pull the cover down. The garbage smells rank but I must, I must burrow in deeper. Silent as a mole, nimble as a rat, I layer myself under wet cardboard boxes cold as dead skin. Half-open bags of garbage, slimy with spills of old rotted food and moving with maggots. I try to settle my stomach as I tried to settle my heart.

Voices flash through the alley, bounce off the walls like the lights. Someone jumps up on the dumpster, pokes through the top layers. I hold my breath for what seems like forever. A shout somewhere far away and they scuttle away.

For a while I can trust myself to breathe normal. I know I must be patient, think of a plan. Where to go, where to hide, who to turn to who won’t turn me in.

It was just an old lady, just some broad I’d no thought to kill. She screamed and she fought and she held onto her purse like a crab. I saw fear in her face as I raised my arm and she fell. But I was one man against an old lady. Now I have half the city cops chasing me down.

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087/2012 The Wait

Word Count:  318

There has been an explosion. I am afraid my children are dead. I’ve cried out for them and they would answer me if they could. And the baby, she would be crying, screaming from hunger alone.

I don’t know how long it has been, maybe hours. There is a dim morning light that ribbons through. There was no fire. That’s what surprised me, scared me the most; the thought of us burning, burning, turned into torches of flame. Just a blast of orange than black as the house fell away. I’m in the cellar, pinned down by the first and second floor. Still clutching Jennie’s little pink sleeper from the laundry. The kids were upstairs in their rooms. I don’t know where they are now.

I cry out for them. Blood gushes from some place in my core with every syllable of name. Sticky, now slowing down. I should but I won’t because it won’t matter; I should hold the pink sleeper against the wound. But I can’t.

I drift in and out. Call when I can and listen. Drift out just waiting to hear them. Listening so hard it takes too much strength I don’t have.

I wake to noise and bright lights. Men shouting. I hear movement right over my head. I hold my breath listening, waiting for the squeals of the baby, the screams of my daughter and son. Hoping this time they’ll answer, this time they will.

Each breath is shallow and silent. I hear no jubilation, no shouts of discovery, no emergency sirens screaming away.

Someone is close, pulling back rubble, the lights trying to reach me, the sun poking through. I shrink back into the darkness, safe from the day and the reality of what our lives, my life would be if they find me. I close my eyes and wait patiently, still listening. I’m sure I hear the baby cry now.

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086/2012 The Cave

Word Count:  362

In the woods only the cave was off-limits. So the cave was where the boys went.

Two best friends since forever. Same block, same school, same church, and same set of problems: an older brother who did nothing but tease; a younger one who did nothing but cry and tattle. The two boys were tied closer than brothers could be.

The woods ran along the back yards of both sides of the street. Reaching in to touch the road at the bridge that jumped over the stream where the boys sometimes fished. Yawning open as the street met another at the corner. Closing shut at the dead end four blocks down. It was paradise for boys growing up, from age seven to twelve or so. Then fifteen and sixteen again when they smoked their first cigarette, drank their first beer pilfered from some dad’s refrigerator when they thought nobody was likely to notice.

But at ten, these two were still young enough to be Indians back from a hunt. Astronauts alone on the moon. Were boy-scout smart about campfires. Had strayed off most of the trails and found their way back. Knew all the boundaries where the trees thinned out into somebody’s lawn. Where the stream led to, this way and that, and the easiest places to cross. Soon the lure of the black mouth of the cave was too strong to resist.

They were smart boys and cautious. Each had a flashlight, a whistle, a canteen and a plan if they were to run into trouble or get lost. They never intended to separate but deep inside where the tunnel forked off, they decided to each take a path. Blow their whistle if help was needed. Turn back on a dead end. Sit and wait for the other to find one rather than go deeper and deeper inside.

It took only six days to find them. Each boy at the fork in his path. Though they couldn’t know it would bring them together, they’d sat instead and waited. Blew their whistles, drank their water, ran out the batteries of their flashlights. And within hours of each other, each died.

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085/2012 Best Friends and Bears

Word Count:  318

Gavin told his best friend Eddie  that he’d share half his last gummy worm, lie to cover to his mother, jump in and save him from a bear. Eddie said yeah, he would too.

It happened that soon after, on a camping trip out in the woods, their words were tested. Not a bear, but a coyote. And they never actually saw it but they both heard its howl sing through the dark night.

As the song whirled in closer, close to the campfire that was supposed to keep all teeth and fangs out, the boys huddled together, eyes flashing at the teasing of leaves by the wind. Eddie’s arm around Gavin. Gavin, shivering so hard he was tough to hold onto but Eddie held on.

Gavin was one month ahead in getting his driver’s license. Eleven months ahead in getting a car. And Gavin was years ahead in who crashed a car first and Gavin got out of the hospital three months sooner than Eddie. Eddie confirmed to the police that Gavin had swerved to avoid a deer. Gavin said he thought it had been a bear.

They went to college, married lovely girls, started work at the same skyscraper in the City, different floors. Gavin was a step ahead in management. A floor above. Eddie barely saw him anymore. Then Eddie got a chance for a promotion, in times where if you had a job at all you felt blessed. Even as the buzz went around about more layoffs, Eddie came to Gavin for a good word.

Gavin told his best friend Eddie that he’d share half his last gummy worm, lie to cover to his boss, jump in and save him from a bear. Eddie said yeah, he would too if it was in his power. And I always thought he would have too, even though his best friend Gavin gave him a bad review.

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084/2012 Mirrors

Word Count:  237

I don’t think she understood the lie of mirrors. That what she thought she saw in perfect clarity was in reverse. A benign half-smile to her was seen as smirking by the global eye. A wink she thought was reassurance meant something else.

Each day she would apply her makeup, comb her hair, adjust her collar. Thinking that the wing of golden hair hid her left eye. Once out the door she never thought again about her image. Reassured herself that she was honest to the truth.

Little things piled up and tripped her notice. She found herself explaining explanations of her words. While “let it be” became the program, she only tried the harder to explain.

When it came there was no lightning, just the sudden angry thunder in the air. It took her unaware and yet she wondered, sought for answers, looked through drawers and closets for a clue.

She stared into her mirror now for hours. Searching for some light trick she had missed. But even though she spotted every freckle, every mole, it seemed to her that they had always been there.

It came to her to wound the part of her that had offended. To cut out that which she herself had never found. The mirror image smiled to hide the smirk she didn’t see. In genuine surprise–but for an instant–she realized she’d plunged the knife into her heart.

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083/2012 Through The Window

Word Count:  359

She escaped every night through the window high up in her room. Holding her breath as she swam through the pane, leaving small whorls in the glass.

By day she would watch the birds flying, people emerge from their doors. She would stand there and no one would see her; no one looked up. There were children waiting for schoolbuses. Their laughter pealed up to the sky, mixed with the clouds to drift away out of view. There were old ladies who creeped off their porches, dressed in nightgowns with oversized fading sweaters on top. Fuzzy feet shuffling, shuffling. Each step a thought of a friend who had broken a hip. Cautiously bending to retrieve morning papers they hardly could see to read.

She was lonely. She’d never had a sister, a brother, or friend. It was just two weeks since her mother had died. Two weeks that seemed longer since she hadn’t been out of the house.

Tonight she was looking through windows. Windows when new are no more than transparent walls. Old windows ripple and slip. These she could easily swim through into the night to a dark room where she touched faces of strangers just to feel the warmth.

He was sleeping, his arms flung over his head, his legs in a perpetual run. He was dreaming. She watched him a while, bent down, then slipped inside. Into his bed and into his dream and she stayed by his side the rest of the night.

In the morning she rose to leave and he asked her to come back again.

She did, every night, for a while. Then one summer evening he opened the window to let in the warm scented air. Her world had shifted, changed by this one simple act. She became wary, scared by the large gaping hole that made the night and his room into one.

She told him her fears but he laughed them away. The next night he waited; stood by the closed window looking into the dark. And he knew that he’d never see her again. And the seed like a bubble left in the glass was his own.

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