242/365 – ESTIMATES

Posted on September 2, 2011 by susan

Word Count: 339

Her husband told her to get estimates. At least three.

“Do you want to talk to them?” she asked.

“No,” he said and rattled off a list of questions for her to ask them. She scribbled as he came up with each. He was the boss, she was the worker. He was management, she was help. She was glad when he finally left for the city.

The first man came the next morning, early. She’d just managed to shower and dry her hair. She showed him the tree half-bent by the storm. “We want the whole thing down,” she said. He was lean, wiry, darkened by summer’s sun. About her own age, she guessed, or maybe a couple years younger. And he had crinkly green eyes. Amazing crinkly green eyes.

He left her with an estimate that she thought sounded fair. He told her he’d lay down plywood so as not to leave ruts on the lawn. Said he’d haul the wood and brush away since she didn’t want it. He said he could come out before the end of the week. Anything else he said in that deep husky voice was fine by her too.

The second man came late in the afternoon. He followed her around, a slight limp slowing them both down. He was older, in his late fifties, she guessed, and didn’t seem to have much hair under his hat. He was jovial, and his price was within fifty dollars of the first estimate she’d gotten. The one from the tanned guy with the amazing green eyes. She said she’d let him know.

The third estimate was way above the other two and the man was gruff and showed up an hour late. She automatically wrote him off.

With a little enhancement of facts up or down she told her husband she’d felt Tree Man #1 was the most professional. He agreed.

When her husband came home Friday evening from the city, he was pleased with the work that’d been done.

So was she.

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241/365 THE STORM

Posted on August 30, 2011 by susan

Word Count: 362

She had jugs of fresh water, new-batteried flashlights, blankets and sleeping bags stored in the basement well in advance of the storm. She was prepared for the end of the world if it came, even if just her small world of home.

At midnight, she listened to the latest reports on the television then unplugged it. She and the kids had taken showers and dressed for bed. Clothes for a few weeks were already laid in neat stacks on the shelves she’d put up downstairs. She went around the house locking windows and doors, unplugging appliances and lamps and the single PC they all shared. With a satisfied nod, she led everyone down to the cellar.

As the wind softly blew at the walls, she fell asleep, knowing her family was safe.
In the morning, and each morning after, she checked the perimeter for leaks, knowing the rain would be heavy. She lit the oil lamp during the day and rationed out water and shared cans of spinach and pinto beans with a slice of bread for each of them in the morning.

The children loved the adventure, the darkness beyond the circle of lamplight was as snug as a robe. During the day they played hide and seek, guessing games of numbers and names, hopscotch and go-fish. Several times during the day, and especially just before bedtime, she’d tell them stories. It was fine family time spent while the storm raged around them and they ignored it completely.

It was sometime in the third week of survival that the neighbors called the police. When they broke through the front door and came down the stairs to the cellar, they found the family in the middle of eating their lunch. All looked up in surprise.

They were checked out by doctors. They were questioned by psychiatrists. They were interviewed by reporters. She told them all the same thing; that she wanted to protect her family through the danger of the storm. They finally let them go back home.

She had the front door repaired and sent the police department the bill. Then she went shopping and started restocking the shelves.

Posted in 100 Days 2011, Apocalyptic | 2 Comments

100/100 aka 240/365

Posted on August 28, 2011 by susan

HURRICANE
Word Count: 417

The biggest storm of the season, the hurricane of hurricanes since 1938, this is what they were promising. She worried about losing her things. Each newscast made it sound worse. Tie down your boats and your children. The winds would surely carry them away. Once they were gone, they were gone.

She, who hadn’t even given away her husband’s clothes yet, who had all her check stubs from 1990, who saved her grown children’s toys and locks of hair tied with blue and pink ribbons for each year up through age seventeen when they’d gone off to college and refused to send her remnants of haircuts that she was no longer privy to, no longer needed to hold hands and dry tears, this hurricane worried her.

She took down all the plants hanging lush and full this late in the season splashing color in the bays between the columns of her porch. She brought in the wicker furniture and picked all the nearly ripe tomatoes and squash. It was strange that after she’d picked the ones she thought were near ready, the ones left behind looked redder, riper, the squash bigger when there were none nearby to compare.

With everything locked up, tied down, put away, secured in some way, she sat down to read and wait. Every so often she checked the news as the hurricane crept its way to her door. It slipped into her concentration and she put down the book and went upstairs to their bedroom. She spent some minutes looking out windows, watching the rain streak and run down the glass. Then she opened his top dresser drawer. An hour, maybe two went by, counted in cufflinks and photos, underwear and anniversary cards and tears.

Outside the breeze blew itself into a wind. Trees waved their arms to music in a dance that rose and fell, rose and fell. She listened to the windows rattle in a vain attempt to free themselves of their sashes. She thought it sounded like a life-changing event, a fierce and bold need to be noticed. To be heard. She picked up his ties, his tee-shirts, his socks, dropped them all in a laundry basket. Went down the stairs.

She took these things outside. She stood at the edge of the porch. The rain swept in a fine mist first one way then the other. One by one she held things out and the wind picked it up from her fingers and took it away.

Posted in 100 Days 2011, Mainstream | Tagged | 10 Comments

099/100 aka 239/365

Posted on August 27, 2011 by susan

THE COUPLE NEXT DOOR
Word Count: 323

The lady next door asked if she could put one bag of trash into my own garbage bin. She and her husband were elderly and had opted for the smaller bins when the town came around to establish a standard. I said, of course.

It seemed she had one bag a week to add to our own and I certainly didn’t mind but it did seem a bit odd that two little old people would fill up even the small version of the trash bin each week.

They’d moved into the neighborhood before we did though I rarely ran into him except out in his own yard mowing or shoveling until the last year, when they paid a neighborhood boy. I hadn’t seen him for several months when she called for help because he had fallen. It was quite a shock to see him laying in front of a wheelchair, legs cut off at his knees. She explained to me that it’d been an accident at his part-time job. I told her how sorry I was and assured her she could ask for help anytime.

The next time I saw him he’d lost both arms at the elbows. I asked him but he wouldn’t speak, wouldn’t even look up at me. She told me it was a slip in the bandsaw down in the cellar. He built birdhouses, she said, as a hobby. Later I found out he’d lost his tongue. Cancer, she said.

Then his eyes, gaping and empty sockets beneath sunken lids. She said glass eyes were not covered by their insurance. I should have gotten suspicious but she seemed so attentive, so caring and dedicated to all his needs.

And then one day, he was gone. Hung himself, she’d said sadly, despondent over his health. She was devastated, you could see that plain enough.

Though now I wonder why I didn’t think at the time to ask, how?

Posted in 100 Days 2011, Horror | Tagged | 2 Comments

98/100 aka 238/365

Posted on August 27, 2011 by susan

MIDDLE EARTH
Word Count: 315

It’s unlikely that Gerard would have found Middle Earth had he not fallen into the sinkhole that swallowed his car in the driveway. Before the police, the fire department, the reporters got there, he’d lowered himself down to grab the GPS out of the glove compartment. He saw the tunnels that spread out right under his lawn, his house, the neighborhood, and along with the GPS, took off underneath his garage.

The tunnels were dim but easily followed so Gerard kept on a main path. He walked for a while without noticing the walls smoothing out, lanterns like upside-down lollipops overhead in colors of lemon, strawberry, orange and grape. He heard a hum up ahead.

When Gerard entered the room the party was ramped up blasting. The music drove a beat that must have felt like tremors up on the surface. A pretty girl with short auburn hair and big breasts asked him to dance. He did, not sure of the steps but following her lead.

He found the bar and ordered a Jack Daniels neat. He downed it and ordered another. The room was huge, like a banquet hall but darkened to intimate club light. He felt hungry and wandered around until he found the buffet where he unashamedly loaded his plate. He didn’t know how long he’d been there, he figured maybe a half hour or more before he realized he’d better get back to the car.

Gerard was just climbing out when the fire and police men were preparing to go down after him.

“Fine,” he said, “I’m fine.” He accepted a hand-up and dusted himself off.

“We got worried. You wouldn’t answer us when we hollered down to you.” The policeman smiled, happy he’d scored a rescue. Then he frowned. “You been drinking, pal?” he asked.

Gerard grinned and nodded.

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097/100 aka 137/365

Posted on August 25, 2011 by susan

GUS THE AMAZING TALKING DOG
Word Count: 512

He said that he just wanted to get out of the business. That years of hoofing it across the U.S. and Europe in two-bit shows and dark-holed clubs was enough. That the last attempt to revive the act on America’s Got Talent was a flop and for him, that was a sign. So he and his partner Moe had split up amicably enough and all he wanted now was early retirement where he could enjoy nature.

So I agreed to at least go for the trial thirty-day guarantee and took Gus The Amazing Talking Dog home with me that day.

“I said a puppy!” my wife grumbled.

“An older dog’s better,” I said, “no housebreaking, no chewing up the furniture.”

‘‘And I don’t bark or bite and I’m good for holding it all day,” Gus added.

She relented when I told her there was a thirty-day trial period and aside from the normal getting used to each other, it was a fairly quiet night.

About a week later things had smoothed into a routine that worked for us all. Gus slept inside all day and stayed up late with me and watched the eleven o’clock news before going to bed.

“May I ask you something?” he said during a commercial.

“Sure,” I said.

“Would you mind if I slept in the den instead of the kitchen?”

“What’s wrong with the kitchen?”

“Well the clock ticks, the digital clocks are annoying, and the streetlight makes it hard to sleep.”

“Oh. But the hair…”

“I’ll stay in the bed. It doesn’t protect my old bones from the cold tile floor but it’d be fine on the rug in the den. And I’m sure there I’d sleep right through the night.”

Thirty days went by quickly and to tell you the truth, I was still flip-flopping about whether Gus should stay. He seemed to follow my wife around like a puppy and had convinced her to let him sleep upstairs with us in our bedroom. It made me a bit uncomfortable during sex. It made me very uncomfortable during sex.

“But he’ll get lonely,” my wife whined.

“We’ll get another dog as a companion,” I said.

“Why do I have to sleep downstairs?” Gus complained.

This time I was looking for a puppy, something to tire old Gus out so he couldn’t make the stairs. But they said it’d be too hard on him and an older dog would be a better companion. The very instant I brought him into the house the two dogs didn’t like each other. Hair raised, low-throated growls, a couple snaps at the food bowls.

“They don’t get along,” my wife insisted.

“But having Gus stay downstairs at night was the whole point of getting another dog,” I whined.

Gus just managed to look sad and shiver until she led him up the stairs. I sighed and sat down to watch the news.

“So he told you it was because of the act? Hah! It was because he was porkin’ my wife!” said Moe.

Posted in 100 Days 2011, Magical Realism | Tagged | 2 Comments

096/100 aka 236/365

Posted on August 24, 2011 by susan

THE GIRL WHO
Word Count: 387

The girl with cochlear implants had seashell ears, pearly pink and superbly formed. Her ears were one of her finest features yet they were useless from the day she was born.

She arrived too many months early and color had not yet painted her eyes. They were crackled crystal marbles and if you looked deeply into them, you could see the inside of her head. She could not see well enough out of them but she tasted the air with her tongue and it spoke to her mind in colors and angles and swirls.

The girl with cochlear implants escaped into a world of her own every night, gobbling up pictures and notes that sang in the air. In her crisp cotton bedding she put them together; a cow with the strut of a rooster, a man with the smile of a child. She wove threads into remnants that became tapestries to line the walls of her memory. New information left them draped onto the floor.

Her physical beauty was known to all but herself. Instead, she gleaned data from comments she sipped from the words they left in the wind. Her deep copper hair became purple. Her porcelain skin was burnt brown. This was how she learned to see people, in relation to her own version of self. As we all tend to do.

She grew up loving flowers and oranges and simmering beef stew. Her sense of scent was the only thing normal. However, if you looked at our world from her perception, normal was normal as normal could be.

She fell in love with a shoe salesman, a man who had the smile of a child and a voice that she tasted as honey. He was a different sort of man, one who fit well into her world but not so well into anyone else’s where he slipped between cracks if he didn’t take giant steps when he walked. Her mother tried to keep him away from her daughter. The harder she tried, the more desperate the lovers became and one day, they ran away.

The girl with cochlear implants now lives at the edge of the moon with her honey-voiced man and two children. One is a boy with the smile of a man and the other, a purple-haired little girl.

Posted in 100 Days 2011, Magical Realism | Tagged | 1 Comment

095/100 aka 235/365

Posted on August 23, 2011 by susan

THE ROOMMATE
Word Count: 444

It began with an invitation I posted as a joke. I mean, where did the man have to go? He was hated by half the civilized world and his own country would surely hang him if he surfaced there. So I twittered that I had a spare room where a deposed ruler might care to recuperate.

He showed up on a Tuesday night without giving notice but as he explained, it would have been dangerous to reply. He looked much shorter in person, though I wasn’t about to say so since there was still an aura about him that was more than a little intimidating. We ironed out the details over a latte I made with my coffee machine, a gift from an old girlfriend. He seemed to enjoy the blend which was one of my own favorites.

His funds were tied up, he explained, and promised me great wealth if I was willing to wait while he re-established his contacts. He gave me a very nice gold chain necklace that with the price of gold rising, I accepted as a sign of good faith. He moved in that night.

He never laughed, never smiled, which I found rather creepy. The first signs of trouble were as you’d expect, arguments over control of the TV remote. He also didn’t care for Chinese or Italian and wouldn’t touch pizza but would pout and mumble and then order in some French. He did drink wine though, and beer. He loved beer. He was adamant about not doing his share of the cleaning and to tell you the truth, was a bit of a slob. His reasoning that he only used the shower once a week defied my subtle hints about his personal hygiene.

It built up to an unbearable scenario and we just couldn’t come to agreement about anything. The smooth charm gave way to childish demands and a general silliness about having his own way. His little slit eyes started to bother me. Days went by where he holed up in his room. I heard giggling sometimes, and I suspect he snuck women in, several, no, many, at a time. After he gave me yet more excuses as to why his connections couldn’t tap into his resources or at least loan him some cash, I finally asked him to leave. I kept the gold necklace. It took a while to get him to physically leave.

He wasn’t a very nice man. The chain, I found out, was only cheap gold-plated. I read in the news that they still haven’t found him. I’m tempted to call and suggest they check the lower East Side.

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094/100 aka 234/365

Posted on August 22, 2011 by susan

SUFFER THE CHILDREN
Word Count: 325

This one’s a keeper, she said, contentedly nursing the newborn boy at her breast. Yes, said her man. He was filled with pride. They had birthed five children in the length of their marriage, and this was the second they’d kept.

Two had been smothered and wrapped in the sheets on which they’d been born. The first one had died of neglect. This boy and the other, now three and a bold bright child, were well worthy of care.

He too grew up strong and clever, a joy to his parents and a close companion to his older brother who took time and delight in teaching his little brother the secrets he’d learned. Like the way to climb the old maple at the far edge of the yard. And where Indians hid in the caves near the river.

She wanted a girl, a little doll to dress up and play with since her boys spent most of their time together or their father would take them out fishing and later, to Little League games where they excelled at the sport. Three babies later she got what she wanted, a perfect little princess with reddish-gold hair and a soft rosebud mouth. And blue eyes–that’s what was wrong with the last one; her’s had been green.

She was their last, the last that they kept, this golden child that completed their family. She too, was much above average in intelligence and physical form. They were happy, well-adjusted, close. In school, all three were favorites of teachers and classmates both. In college, they learned to think for themselves, reach for their goals, find their way to full grasp of their dreams.

A doctor, a lawyer, a professor of words, together they used what they’d learned in their lives to assure their success, neatly severing bonds to the past to start their own perfect families and homes where slow old people weren’t part of the scheme.

Posted in 100 Days 2011, Horror | Tagged | 3 Comments

093/100 aka 233/365

Posted on August 21, 2011 by susan

HEADS
Word Count: 257

“Every boy should have a collection,” said his mother when asked. Though she never cared what or how many, or how. We all wished that she had, for Herman collected heads.

A search of her cellar revealed an eclectic taste. Plenty of bones, skulls, some almost intact skeletons of mice, squirrels, a cat. A psychiatrist, or perhaps an evolutionist with an interest in transition periods, would notice that Herman began to focus his interest, refine his collection to skulls, probably around his late teens. A goat’s skull, raccoon, a horse–wherever he managed to get that–and a large number of deer and dogs. Big dogs, one looked like a German Shepherd, one a pit bull.

More telling were the attempts at preservation of flesh, hair, eyes. Severed neatly at C-4, flaps of skin sealing the wound with neat stitching. Some mummified but most in large pickle jars in formaldehyde. While some are dated, it is easy to see the progression of learning, the quality of the heads as Herman practiced his craft. From the early cats, hair mostly fallen out, eyes glued shut, shrunken from some process that had failed, the specimens gain in overall quality. The last, or so dated, was quite perfect, eyes open, mouth in a natural and relaxed shape, full head of golden blonde curls complete with a tiny blue ribbon.

The rest, those from the more recent past three or four years, were found in Herman’s own home thirty miles away. Those, we all agreed, were close to fine art.

Posted in 100 Days 2011, Horror | Tagged | 6 Comments