Talespinning

Word Count: 493

He became her shadow, replacing the one she had grown up with and known all her life.

She hadn’t an inkling that the switch had been made, he was so well-versed in her ways. The attitude of suggestion, the stance of confidence, the clinging close to her step. She should have, but then, we often lose our sense of wonder of self, of discovery, of turning fingers into ducks on a wall. So much we take for granted may be lost in an instant.

The shadow was clearly in love with her, had watched and followed her from a distance for a long time. Hopping around corners, silently mimicking her style. He’d adjusted to fit into her footprints and practice her stride. He was a half-shade taller than she but he learned to work with the lighting. And he grew his own dark hair long.

Love makes one patient and impatient both. On a dark street one night he followed her into a theater. While she watched the movie, laughing and crying and oblivious to what was going on right behind her, he wrested her shadow away and flew up to the mezzanine, knocking it silly and leaving it for dead under the third row. With almost too much excitement, so much that he tripped in the aisle, he slid beneath her seat on the floor, his black heart pounding. The movie ended. The credits rolled by. The lights came on and then, without knowing what she was doing, she took him home.

It took a while to put it all together, to see the little changes and interlink them into an image that suggested something not normal was going on. There was a drag at her heels when she left the apartment. She scratched her head as her shadow bounded in front of her up the stairs coming home. The hall lights were tricky, the steps pleating the shadow into plateaus. She told herself that it simply was natural and she’d never noticed before.

There was no question though, that this was an odd and unwelcome alliance when one night, while she sipped a glass of Merlot and forked cubes of extra sharp cheddar in a mood of reflection, the shadow took on a life of its own.

She had just broken up  with a long distance lover, or rather, he’d broken up with her. The phone lay on the floor where she’d dropped it, dropped it to keep from throwing it in her confused and utter despair. The wine slowly mellowed her anger, softened and slowed her thoughts to a place of reason and realization. As the evening painted the room in dark shadows and her mood into the dim color of sadness, she flicked on a small light. And looked at the floor in shock and surprise.

For as she sat huddled and empty on the couch sipping wine and sorrowing over lost love, her shadow was dancing! Dancing!

Word Count: 481

Once you have heard the scream of a string bean being julienned, it will haunt your days forever.

Most people don’t know–I never did–that all living things have feelings. Not only physical like pleasure and pain, but emotional feelings like fear. I noticed it first as I popped open and slid a knife around the shell of a clam, severing the muscle that tried against all hope to keep it together. I thought I saw it cringe at the splash of wine vinegar. Then felt its flesh resist at the cut of my teeth into its soft succulence. Curious, I watched the next few more closely, saw it pull back from the teasing tip of my knife. Still, I didn’t consider vegetables and fruit to do the same.

It’s torture, I suppose, the unexpected wrenching away from the plant. I wondered why some of the tomatoes tried to hide under leaves, elude me. I honestly think they can see or at least feel my shadow overhead blocking the sun.

The more conscious you become of possibility, the more you can learn. Potatoes seem like such losers. They grow underneath the ground, in the dirt, unassuming little tubers with no soul. Their eyes, though, their eyes. Until I studied one closely, I never knew they could see! But they don’t whimper or scream. They may have eyes, but no mouths, you see. I do feel sorry for that and so, besides animals, fish of all sort, and mollusks, I will not eat a potato.

The string bean was one of a bagful I’d picked from my garden. It bore the cold water washing and snipping off of its stem tip without incident. Lay in a pile of its brethren awaiting my knife.

I picked him up–for upon closer inspection I found it indeed was male–and laid him still on the cutting board, carefully holding him in place as I drew a line down the length of his belly as steady as surgeon with scalpel. And he screamed. I dropped the knife, shocked as I was to hear such a noise from a string bean. I held my breath, put on my glasses, swear I saw him writhe on the board. I came closer, put my ear down to where I guessed was his head. Difficult to hear, to listen, to understand, and to this day it brings tears. He told me the truth about vegetables. Then he died.

So that left me with rice, lentils and such, as a staple. If they shout out in fear, come to life as they hit boiling water, they, at least are so small that even if I listen carefully, shut the windows and lean in real close, I cannot hear, or as yet have not heard, so much as a whisper of life. In my heart, I hope this is true.

Word Count: 649

I’m telling you, the man had a parrot named Shakespeare that could speak every line of MacBeth. He stumbled a bit on Much Ado and hated Romeo & Juliet but was halfway through reading Julius Caesar when I first heard him recite at a barbecue at the guy’s house one summer night. All he had to do, the guy said, was read through it once and he’d remember every word. And he was a speed-reader at that; he’d go through a book in a month, less if the guy left the light on in the living room at night.

Frankly, I’ve never been fond of Shakespeare but when this parrot recited it, it was so well done that I’d become enamored with both the narrative and the characters. He seemed to understand each so well and spoke in such fine voice that the words came alive. His intonation was spot-on to add drama to the soliloquies in particular, but his interpretation and understanding of the language Shakespeare used was what involved me to tears.

So I bought a parrot myself. I put King Lear in the cage with him and waited. He pecked at it. I opened it up to the first page. When I came home from work it was still opened to the first page, and covered in parrot shit.

“What are you doing!” I cried. I switched the book to Taming of the Shrew which I’d found more interesting and relative and left that open. Worse! It was shredded as well as shat upon when I got home.

“The parrot next door can read and recite Shakespeare like nobody’s business,” I told him. “Bad parrot! Bad parrot!” I warned.

At the end of the first week I was beside myself. I threw out the desecrated tomes and brought the parrot back where I bought him. I explained my dilemma to the owner and told him that this parrot not only refused to recite, he wouldn’t make any sort of attempt to read.

The man was truly embarrassed and I did feel bad for him. “I think he’s more into horror,” he said, “like Stephen King, you know?” But he promised to keep a lookout for another Shakespearean parrot.

About three months later he did call and I went down to see what he’d gotten in. It was a beautiful female, brilliantly colored, bright-eyed and alert. “Yes, but does she like Shakespeare?” I asked. He poked her with his finger, a gentle nudge just under her breast.

“O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?
Deny thy father and refuse thy name.
Or if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love
And I’ll no longer be a Capulet.” *

I paid dearly for her and brought her home. She spouted off from Romeo and Juliet though I did give her other works which she seemed to read at a steady pace though when I asked her, would not repeat. I brought her over to the neighbor’s and he agreed to allow the two to study together for an hour a day. “Remember, he hates Romeo and Juliet and may not like listening to her,” he warned. I agreed to stop the sessions if it annoyed him and she showed no interest in anything but.

About a week later, I woke to pounding compounding the doorbell blaring repeatedly at my front door. Bleary-eyed, I made it down the stairs and threw opened the door to see my neighbor looking very upset in the six a.m. dawn.

“He’s dead! He’s dead!” he shouted and we both turned as one and hurried into my own living room. I threw off the drape and we both saw immediately and knew then the power of prose. Her perch was empty. She lay feet up on the bottom of the cage, cold and still, her breast pierced by a needle.

*William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, 2.2