Talespinning

Word Count:  352

He looked around at his new office, bigger than he had imagined. Walnut furniture. Light steel gray plush carpeting. A few Picassos and a Matisse. Prints, of course, but reflecting his new status as much as the office itself. On the fortieth floor and a corner with windows that looked out on the city. And blinds that could close him inside with the delight of this hard-earned, newly-won luxury.

He did; he closed the blinds and sank into his pearl gray leather chair. Rearranged the calendar and pen. Opened the daily planner. Sighed and leaned back and simply enjoyed it.

After years of open spaces and noise, then cubicles that didn’t reach up to his chin, wide open, doorless, completely un-private, this was a veritable paradise. He was blessedly alone, nobody watching, nobody sneaking up and looking over his shoulder. His father always told him that someday he’d reach this level if he worked hard and he had.

He looked around at the delicious sense of security. Privacy. He could even pick his nose  without worrying about anyone seeing him. He could, and he did. His mother always told him that his finger would stick there someday if he didn’t break the gross habit and he giggled to himself with the delight of a child doing mischief. But his mother said it would happen, and now, oh dear God, it did! He found it impossible to pull his finger back out.

He hadn’t touched his nose in thirty years and here, when he had the freedom to just try it and see, it stuck so firmly inside his right nostril he hardly could breathe. Shame turned to fear and then panic. He tried everything, pulling at his elbow, grabbing his wrist, shaking his head back and forth with his arm wedged in a drawer, but it wouldn’t budge, not even a bit. He started to sweat. Right into his Pierre Cardin suit.

He was caught in this unlovely, unpresidential position when he heard a loud buzz and his gorgeous new secretary–his favorite perk of the job–walked in.

Word Count:  471

She lived all her life at the outskirts of town, beyond the reach of the routines and bustle of regulated life. She grew her own food in well-tended gardens, ate fresh fruit and vegetables summer into fall, canned and dried the last harvests for winter through spring. Still had a good eye and steady hand for meat, patience for the fish that filled the streams and the lake a good mile from her back door.

Her husband had died a decade ago. Her daughter had married and moved to the western end of the state. She saw her daughter once a year in the summer when she’d come home to visit. She saw her husband every night in her dreams. Talked to him as she sat down to dinner. Scolded him for any dirt she’d tracked into the kitchen.

The milkman came by Monday mornings, left a glass quart of milk and a dozen eggs on her porch. Took the dollar she left rolled in the neck of the washed-out empty bottle, shook his head but never had the heart to tell her it cost four times more.

She made do with whatever she had in abundance in bounty or dearth in hard times of drought. Each Sunday morning she’d take stock of supplies and use up what she had, or do without. It was on a Wednesday, however, that the cat first came by. It left grouse on her doorstep. Two days later, a plump mourning dove. She never saw him nor heard his kills in the night but she left out a saucer of milk by the steps. Every morning, she noticed it licked clean.

It came at a good time, with autumn’s bite still a nibble, and her hip stiff and painful each morning and night. She went less frequently out to the stream and rarely out to the lake, but caught more than she needed each time. Making two meals for herself out of one freshly caught. Leaving one out by the milk for the cat. Salting and drying the rest of the catch for the winter.

The two lived compatibly through the most of the winter, the cat and the old lady, until a bad storm late-March left them scrounging the last of the larder. The last of the ground squirrels and rabbits burrowed deeply in snow. The milkman couldn’t make it up to her door for several weeks and the last of the milk, thinned out with water, was gone.

The old woman felt bad, having nothing to share, but the large cat still came to the edge of the trees and waited for morning. Hidden in the darkness, his belly growling, his mind anticipating the hunt, he stretched his claws, curled them back under, and waited for the woman to come.

Word Count:   360

The mountains drip cherry trees down their scattered slate chins. The weeds and small brush clamber uphill like groupies, wild in their adoration of the rock star tall trees.

It’s a peaceful and natural setting. No one would think so at night when the woods mumble and grumble at the loss of the sun. When fur slithers against bark, brushing leaves into a whisper of gossip and warning. When black eyes glint with the crescent of moonlight and whiskers catch the soft touch of a breeze.

The man felt at home there, the mountains like ancestral love, each tree a sibling, the earth warm with the milk of a mother’s breast. He was born in the hollow beneath a black walnut tree, his first scream of life rang into the sky. He learned all the tricks of the wind, the replenishment of rain, the anger of thunder and lightning. He knew well each blanket of season, the lush green of spring, the cold soft white of winter. He was the son of a woman who had slept with the forest.

Perhaps if he’d known more of the world, knew other people, recognized the threads he shared with mankind, he might not have been so protective, though that’s natural instinct too. His mother had taught him all that she could, to be wary of bear and the big cats, but to hold all four-legged creatures and those that flew with respect. He grew up tall and strong as his brothers, his only enemy the same one as that of all living things in the woods. The one being he felt no kinship with, man.

But he watched the few that came through his forest. He learned when they slept, when they were on the move. What they ate. He felt a certain empathy, could almost understand them, but the more he learned the more he understood his mother’s wariness and her wisdom of their ways.

So he never established that bond with them as he had with all other creatures and never felt more than a momentary stab of regret as he gave thanks to the mountain after the hunt.

Word Count: 469

“I’m a witch,” she said and she looked it. Gorgeous long black hair and a dress cut down to there. Huge lavender eyes with a corona of thick lashes; full, full garnet lips. At least that’s my version of witches.

She was walking her cat on a leash in the rain. New York is loaded with pets both pampered and trained to attack, but a cat on a leash is unusual and this one looked like a small panther and I was alone and looking for someone to talk to. Divorce does that; though you think you’re going to be fine, it’s the quiet of after the bustle of an office and a fast meal at a loud restaurant when the loneliness sinks like night into your mind.

“Nice cat,” I said. I’m less than brilliant.

“His name’s Hector,” she said. She stopped and smiled, those pouty red lips splitting open on perfect white teeth. “Mine’s Vivian.”

Vivian didn’t have an umbrella and the rain misted her face like dew on a petal. It never collected and rolled off, just hung there like a netting of diamonds catching the streetlamp light.

We went for coffee. We went back to her place. We made love as the mini-panther watched. I tried to do the right thing and pretended to like him, though I could tell he clearly did not like me.

“You named him after your ex-boyfriend?” I asked. She just grinned wide and nodded. I never asked again about Hector the guy and she didn’t offer much more.

Things go along so much better when you feel you’re in love. I saw Vivian almost every day after that. In a few months I found myself talking marriage, and I brought it up first.

Some women like mystery, like to keep a man guessing. I just wasn’t the curious type. I’ve learned to live in the present. I was anxious to let go of my past. Wasn’t interested in what her life was like before the rainy night we met on the street. She was elusive, never let me stay the whole night. I’d sneak out like a thief in the early gray morning. Hector was up on her bed before I’d closed the bedroom door.

She called me one day at work, something she’d never done before. Through the sniffles I heard her tell me Hector had been hit by a car. I cut out of work a bit early, raced over and held her tight. She let me stay over that night. And every night after.

I don’t like the leash but I don’t mind the collar. She feeds me caviar for treats, steak for dinner, and I’m not alone anymore. I’m Jason, her Golden Retriever, and she lets me sleep every night on her bed.

Word Count:  348

Gravedigger stood off in the shadows of the bordering elms waiting for the end of the service. His arms carelessly leaned on his shovel as he eyed the small cluster of mourners, spent the time figuring out who was the wife, the son, the daughter. Especially the daughter. He still liked the blondes and this one had golden yellow hair that caught sunlight and sparkled lively against the contrast of death.

He was still muscled and brown from the sun but wrinkled with time. His hair was wildly streaked through with gray and uncut but once had been thick and disheveled and black, with a wave that curled on his forehead. Could send a girl into a swoon. Green-blue eyes that glinted like seawater. Now they were cloudy and cold.

Gravedigger grinned. Wiped his chin with the back of his hand, leaving a stripe of grave dirt without being aware.

His favorite chick pick-up spot was always the graveyard. Perfect, he found, for  weeping young women dressed in svelte black, needing someone to hold and console them. They’d come back for a visit in a day or two more. Gravedigger was a patient man. Used to waiting. His soft voice would say something consoling. His gentle hand belied his strength. Within a visit or so he would turn their pain into pleasure. Then turn it to pain back again.

He felt the old twinge as the mourners laid flowers and said their goodbyes. His eyes caught the eyes of the daughter. He nodded in a sign of respect for the dead. She was worth waiting for.

Gravedigger shoveled the earth back into the hole. Leveled and patted it down. Spread some seed. Arranged the flowers, the blanket of roses, the baskets of white gladiolas and mums. Satisfied with his work, he walked the path back to the shed. Stopped several times to read tombstones of women he had once held in his arms. Smiled at the memories. Felt good as he left them to sleep evermore in his graveyard.

Shivered as he thought of one more.

Word Count:  354

He’s the guy next door. Lived there for as long as you can remember. Was about thirteen or fourteen, you think, when his family moved in. Nice people, stuck to themselves but were there if you needed a hand. The father was a decade or more older than you and your husband. The wife was short, pudgy, with springy red hair. Pleasant, always smiling. They were normal, just normal, and so, you thought, was their kid.

They died, let’s see, about seven years ago now. She first, from a cancer that ran through her in six months or less. He from a heart attack a few months later. The kid still lived with them, still lives there now. Never married, but keeps the place up nearly as nicely as they did. Though you never see him much anymore.

As a matter of fact, the last time was during the freak storm in the winter. He helped your husband snowblow the walk and the driveways. You asked him in for hot chocolate when they had finished but he drank it standing outside on the porch.

It’s hard to make the connection between this young man and the guy on the news who they say just killed at least thirteen people. Injured twenty-something more. The youngest, a six year-old girl found dead next to her mother at the scene. Still holding a blood spattered Barbie doll. It doesn’t seem real.

There’s nothing you can do except shudder. Make the sign of the cross for those who have died. For their families, their pain plainly seen in the videos they’ve been running all day. It’s hard to imagine, hard to accept, and you pray the victims are not one of your neighbors too.

You get up and check all the windows, make sure you’ve locked all the doors. There are police cars and vans lining the street, still you can’t help the fear and you jump when the furnace turns on. And just before bed, after the eleven o’clock news, you draw all the shades and hope that they catch the guy next door soon.

Word Count:  486

Too far. It’s just gone too far.

I wake in a fetal position. Blood pounding through my head tells me I am alive. A wicked cramp strains through my whole body but I cannot stretch out.

My fingers play with my fingers, numb and unfeeling as clay. I bring my elbows into my sides to cradle the pain.

It was a bad one this time. The screaming still rings in my ears till I can’t separate the voices, pull out the words. But I know by rote what they’re saying. My shrieks are of drinking, of women, of not being a man; his bellows, my spending his money. Years and years of the same yet we never caught on.

With awareness comes knowledge; too late, too late. For I feel the hardness of close walls and the dearth of fresh air. He believes he has done it, has finally hit the blow that has silenced my accusations forever. I wonder how long I’ve been here, how he was able to rag-doll me into this chest I realize was my mother’s. It was down in the cellar for years. Where am I now?

How did he feel when he thought he had killed me? Was there any horror, any regret, or just fear? What will he do when he must answer to those who may ask where I’ve been?

The pain washes over in waves from my head to my toes. I don’t bleed anymore. My breaths are taken in shallow and slow. I hope I can just go to sleep. But he must need to come back to hide me again, put me deeper down into the ground of the past and reality. Maybe, maybe he’ll come back in time!

He’s really a good man unable to cope. I’m a woman who knows him too well. When did love and affection dwindle away and resentment swell into its place? I imagine him sitting alone on the sofa, scared and sorry, weary and weak. He’ll come back; I just know it. I only hope it is soon. The black closeness is making me sleepy. The small breaths don’t provide enough life. I forgive him, resolve to be more loving, and I wait.

I wake in a fetal position, but wait…there’s a scraping, a digging, a sound! He’s come back, guilt and hope drives him on. Love long thought buried has brought him to save me!

Even the light of the moon hurts my eyes and my voice is a weak raspy whisper. I can raise my arm up with the greatest of willed effort and he reaches down to grasp my hand and it’s warm with the pulse of the living. Then my wedding band, my watch that my mother had left me, my silver bracelet that he gave me last year are pulled roughly away from my hold and he slams down the lid.

Word Count:  301

I am diminished by nightmares. Horrible images flash through my mind in their three-second clarity. Blood running redder than that in my veins. Cliffs that cut open the sky from which people like lemmings tumble over and down. In that instant I recognize faces: the science professor from college I liked; the cashier at Wood-Mart with the big friendly smile; my dentist from childhood; my very first love.

Over and over they loop through my nights. Like a fast-fleeting subway train flickering lights through the windows. A still-animation of those I met once, lived with a while, discarded.

I walk through my days a shadow of self, slices peeled off in the nights. I am bare of illusions, hope and belief all gone.

This is my hell. My living has turned into dying a night at a time. Years shed like scales from my eyes.

Why hadn’t I seen it while my vision was clear? What blip on my screen went unnoticed?

Tonight, with what little is left of my soul, I know I will not see morning. There is not enough of me left to reason it out. The good things I’ve let fall from my grip as I reached out for things I knew nothing about have passed hissing their way through my memory and into my dreams.

But the next day I wake up and try to catch hold of the wind and the things that it offers. The old man on the corner, his face crumpled under his hat and his hand held out, shrunken and black. A young woman with songs in her eyes. A child holding hands with a toddler, keeping him close to his side.

I grab it in handfuls, swallow each moment, and plod my way back into night.

Word Count:  371

These are the hands that maneuvered the broom that swept the body onto the shovel. These are the hands that were inside the gloves that touched the shovel that carried the body and flung it into the woods.

I didn’t kill the vole. It was lying there lifeless on the back porch when I opened the door to go out to the garden. It may have fallen out of the sky during the night, or struck dead by God in answer to prayers. Or left by a neighborhood cat as an offering of love.  I really don’t care how or why; dead is dead.

Since my promised-to-love-you-forever husband up and left me I’ve been subjected to labor that comes under man-jobs and I deeply resent it. I wish I could call him to come over and get rid of dead voles and spiders and such but even if he were around I wouldn’t want to owe him any favors. I do much more important things like balance a checkbook and clean the refrigerator and stove. I’m sure his would be crusty by now.

Another day, another gift from the gods: a large trout found under a bush. How else to explain it except maybe an egotistical male eagle who believed he could carry it aloft from the river to a perch up in the tall pine. A single, likely divorced male eagle who didn’t have a female to find what he’d lost.

Then the raccoon. Likely passed out from a drunken night out with the boys. Stiff as a log dead on my lawn.

I need to find me a man to take care of these sorts of things. I’ll even put up with the snoring, the ink-stained shirt pockets, the hopelessly bad sense of direction that keeps him from carrying his plate from table to sink.

And I meet them, the single male neighbors, the ink-stained men at the office. Thing is, when I tell them about eagles and dead trout and voles and raccoons in my yard, their eyes get that glazed fearful look and they scurry away.

I’ve heard the rumors, but truly, my ex-husband is alive; just not around.

Word Count:  338

“A little dry, isn’t it?” he said of the pot roast, and “Another minute would have been good for the beans,” he said.

She said nothing but watched as he ate.

Too many years of worrying. Too many years of undercooked chicken and too spicy stew. Every year, every day, laying on a new blanket of guilt until weary, she lost all ambition to please him. To create him his own perfect world.

Soon the beans and meat were served stringy in the hopes that maybe he’d give up and leave. When he didn’t, she found that he’d grumble but eat whatever she put on his plate.

She started with shoelaces in the spaghetti. Held back a giggle when he devoured the rubber soles of old boots. He grumbled but it became white noise in her ears, a soft constant buzzing that was simply a part of their lives.

He never expected an answer; never carrying his complaints any further than giving them life. For her part she focused on watching him chewing–and chewing, and chewing–instead.

Over time it began to be pleasant. Meals were no longer a stress nor even the blankness of years spent together across a table over food that no longer was anything more than expected, comfortable, routine. This became interesting and she found herself trying out new things. Writing down recipes he seemed to complain less about. And a section, of course, for those over which he complained the most.

One day he came home from the doctor’s with a sad, worried frown. “My polyester count’s high,” he said. “And the doc thinks that rubber is clogging my arteries and I may be at risk for a stroke.”

“Oh, poor dear, don’t you worry,” she said. “I’ll more carefully watch over your diet. It’ll be all natural foods for you now.”

So she cut out shredded shirt salads and the rubber-laced meatballs. Took a saw and cut  down the chair legs a smidge. Served the sawdust Chinese-style like rice.