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“I push the stick up to get the airplane to gain altitude and push it down to lose altitude. Then I push it to the right ...”
“I get it, darling. You’re the engineer but, at a risk of sounding trite, it isn’t rocket science, even though your remote-control design is brilliant - one might even say, inspired.” “You are my inspiration, my love. I’d do anything for you.” “You’re sure the signal can’t be overridden by the pilot?” “Correct.” “Then let me do it myself.” “Are you sure?” “Let me crash the plane, darling. After all, he is my husband.” Remember so many years ago that awful misguided young woman nastily called you "a male chauvinist pig" just because you held the door open for her? How many little pleasures did she miss out on?
Well, thank you for being "my chauvinist pig" - for holding all those doors open for me, for helping me on and off with my coat, for giving up your seat for me, for picking up those restaurant tabs and giving me all those wonderful times. Please be there to open the door for me when I cross over to your restful world. Thanks. Steven was ecstatic when he discovered dictation in his word processing software. By speaking into his computer’s microphone and having the words appear onscreen, he was twice as productive with his writing.
He fell into a writing groove. He sent submission after submission to publications, and they were accepted like never before. Then the publications were contacting him left and right for his work. Steven couldn't keep up. His projects became more burdensome then enjoyable, and he was becoming miserable. “Maybe I should go back to writing with a feather quill and a bottle of ink,” he lamented. “Simpler times.” Jessica cursed her bad luck as she watched the morning bus pull away without her. Climbing aboard the later bus she calculated that if she hurried she would have just enough time to buy coffee without being late for work.
When Jessica got to the coffee shop it was exceptionally busy and she fidgeted nervously thinking, ‘What rotten luck.’ With only two minutes to spare, Jessica grabbed her cup and raced out the door narrowly avoiding a collision with a young blind man and spilling her coffee everywhere. Looking up at the disabled man Jessica thought, ‘I am so lucky.’ This is what real Thanksgiving looks like around here, not some Hallmark TV thing starring some sitcom queen from the 80s.
Rain and unraked leaves on the front lawn. Cheap Wine Rack white wine. Overcooked butterball, gluey instant potatoes and a pumpkin pie from Walmart. Hick relatives you see annually. Half-broken Christmas lights still up from last year that we just plugged in again. Starting counting down the minute everyone arrives. How long until the election results become an argument? How long until they finally leave and you decide again this is the last year doing this with them? Come three a.m. she would be sitting at the dark granite countertop, lights ablaze, downing a bucketful of Tiramisu. She was sick and tired of practicing self-control, trying to keep the monsters from sneaking out of their hiding place. She could only feel hate, self-hate, for being cowardly all that time, and for avenging it years later. She thought she could stave off the grief of being violated by violating his five-year old son. Children never forget, and she knew that firsthand. How would she ever redeem her soul? An eye for an eye makes one more miserable than ever.
“See that he doesn’t consume alcohol. Even a small quantity can be fatal,” I heard the doctor telling my son.
I’ve no doubt my son will take good care of me but I, a past athlete, don’t want to be confined to a room only to prolong a painful life. I’ve lived a full life; have no more dreams to realize. Having done no wilful harm to others, I’m ready to explore the other world, if there’s any. When I close my eyes, I see my wife beckoning me. I reach for the hidden bottle of brandy. Middle schoolers unloaded armfuls of snowballs at the group. Through snow caked glasses, Kasey led everyone to the mound of parking lot snow.
Kasey and his friend’s snowballs made satisfying thuds on the cars the enemy hunkered down behind. Eventually they had to sweep their arms to gather enough packable snow. Hard chunks imploded next to them. The enemy was using fender boogers. Casey motioned to his soldiers. “Watch out for chunks.” When the ammo was gone, Kasey peeked out. An overweight boy was walking the middle of the street, waving two middle fingers. “I have a slow metabolism, jerks.” Verda Law has been tapping her empty teacup in front of an idle coffee server for over half an hour.
If there was anything, she could possibly be thinking of at that particular moment, it might surely be an EXIT. Yes, Verda wanted dearly an exit from this environment where everything had been colonized by a pandemic. All the exits were pointing to different directions but that was not what she wanted. She wanted an exit to a new year in the same year. I hope that we will not have to celebrate new pandemic in 2021. The sound of a wooden block is our alarm. Then a chorus of yawns as we rise slowly. It’s the third morning of the five-day retreat and I’m certain I’ll never get used to the 5 a.m. start.
We’re allowed five minutes to get ready, which is just enough time to relieve ourselves and run a hand through our unruly bed hair. And then we settle on our mats and cushions, waiting for the gong that signals the start of meditation. “Set your intention!” the monk urges. The gong rings. My eyelids close. I think of a favorite fast-food breakfast. As a kid I spent a lot of time with my Grandad Claude,helping on his small-holding. He grew vegetables and kept chickens; he also sold fire-wood by the sack-full, using unwanted timber from his employer's estate.
Visiting the site sixty years after his death, time seems to have stood still:- Here the dilapidated sheds, there the tangled wire -netting from the chicken coops... Wounded at Gallipoli,Claude also survived three years on the Western Front, where he lost two brothers. Despite everything I never knew a kinder, more considerate man. Every year I wear my Remembrance Day poppy with pride.... Diana watched her English professor's face as he read her paper. She hoped he would "get it". She braced herself for his reaction.
He read: "flickering candlelight, dancing flames, glowing gaslight, shining rainbow, blinding sunlight, dazzling sunset, blazing campfire, flooding torchlight, dancing moonlight, twinkling starlight, streaming moonlight....."the first of painters" Emerson had written." The professor stared at her in dismay, "What is this? No plot, no character, not setting! It's not a vignette or a flash fiction. What is this?" He didn't "get it" she thought. She said, "I wanted my readers to visualize light not darkness." The gardener was cleaning up piles of leaves and branches from the local park – previous night’s storm debris – when the eucalyptus tree fell on him. There’s no starch-or-cut on the body. Only he couldn’t wiggle his toes.
He went to the nearby hospital himself on foot. Later, I was surprised to find him in emergency ward. He looked fine, with no apparent pain, his wife sitting alongside. I met the Doc on rounds: “Irreversible damage to thoracic nerves in the back”, he said. “Paraplegia has set in. It’ll soon affect his heart and lungs. His life is in God’s hands.” I looked up and saw HER standing at the counter in dark glasses, leopard print dress, and nasty looking heels.
The woman seated next to me leaned over and whispered, “Wasn’t SHE was in that movie ‘whatcha-call-it,’ you know the one with ‘what’s-his-name,’ the spy thingy.” “How could I forget?” I lied. I had no idea, of course, but along with everyone else in the café, I couldn’t take my eyes off of HER. SHE ordered an espresso macchiato. Everyone took note. Celebrity-itis had taken over. After SHE left, it took more than an hour for the buzz to die. Then we all said, “She will kill herself”, but the garden had blossomed and the scent of flowers covered the odour. And we all later said, “She will be fine”, but the full moon painted her skin into a sullen colour: the tarnish; the mist; the blood hanged above her backyard.
And it was there that we screamed, that she, herself, had fallen in love with the dissolving flesh, the rotten torso. This is not a tribute for her; this is just to say that the flowers had had a strange scent that year. With the rain come the secrets. Lipstick on her collar told a tale on Debbie.
Before leaving home, she gazed in the mirror and saw a cranberry mark on her turtleneck collar. Furrowing her eyebrows, she wondered if her sister mistakenly kissed her sweater instead of her cheek? Did she buy a designer sweater and not remember doing it? The lip marks resembled a kissing lips emoji. Looking closer, she discovered the lips were cranberry, same as her lipstick. Laughing, she realized that when she slid the sweater over her face, her lips brushed the collar. She had accidentally designed a sweater, Kissing Lips, by Debbie. We weren’t ready for darkness so overwhelming.
It was unlike anything we’d ever encountered, an abyss illumined only by our headlights, on a road that swerved without signposts. Danger enveloped us. In the shadows, we glimpsed the remains of the unlucky ones. Would we make it through, or would we be unlucky too? How much longer would this take? Would this tunnel ever end? It felt as though the walls were closing in on us. We were running low on gas. We were running low on hope. But then, ahead in the distance, a needlepoint of light pierced the darkness. After six long months his mother succumbed to the dread disease.
When they got home from the funeral, his wife went straight to bed. He put their daughter to bed and went to sit quietly in the family room. Later, his daughter tip-toed into the room, climbed up onto his lap. "Why did Grandma have to go? She said she would be with me forever." He took a small gold ring from his pocket. "This was Grandma's. She said I was to give it to you when the time came. Keep it close and Grandma will be with you forever." She had her four months of wondering what would come next to her table, and it ended that day. The day which reminded her that her hand was never empty. A strong invisible hand faithfully held hers.
She illustrated herself as a green leaf cut of a tree, tossed to the ground, and buried. The warm soil embraced the troubled leaf and transformed her into one of a kind that ready to thrive. In the fourth month, she sent an application, within a week got a yes phone call, and will start her another journey at the beginning of December. “Batter up!”
Jimmy shuffles from the on-deck circle to home plate. He doesn’t have his usual confidence. His mom and dad are in the stands but that makes things worse. He is in a slump: his batting average is down, and coach has moved him to left field from shortstop. If he didn’t improve soon, he would never make Allstars this season. The first two pitches are walks. “Good eye!” his dad yells. Then two strikes come over the plate. Jimmy chokes up on the bat. Get ready. He sees the ball leave the pitcher’s hand. “It’s a home run!” I’ve been trying to write this for weeks but could never find the right words.
I’ve started so many times but a few lines in and it all seems to be too difficult and what I really want to say gets lost in the words that I have written. Even when I think I might at last have it right, my fear of your rejection rises and I lose all confidence in what I am doing. So maybe this time I’ll keep it simple and just write… '…I love you.' When I was a timid thirteen-year-old, I fell asleep on the bus at summer camp. With the seat to myself, as per usual, I pressed my forehead to the window and felt it vibrate against my skull. Fox-faced, gossipy Sophie glared at me and whispered into her friend's ear. A gaggle of boys began to use the empty seat next to me as a card table, dealing out the deck right over my head. Their raucous laughter eventually lulled me to sleep. Fitfully. I awoke to one of the boys nudging my arm, card outstretched in his hand. "Wanna play?"
With no neighbours and vast snow drifts engulfing all roads around there were no friendly faces to share a smile with this Christmas. Brewing my hot chocolate forlornly, I heard a tap on the back door. Startled, I hesitantly opened it fearing it was a ferocious bear.
Thankfully, it was only a friendly little robin. “I guess you are lonely this Christmas as well” I confided. “I have got plenty of bread take some crumbs” I offered. The robin chirped with happiness. I marvelled, “Even the tiniest of gifts bring the coldest of places the warmth of Christmas." “I’ve lost it,” I glowered at the drooling carpet-slippered males lolling around the Rock-On Retirement Home’s lounge room.
“It’s gone forever?” “What’s lost?” octogenarian Fred Formby squinted. “Can’t see a thing through these damn glasses.” “Eh. What’s that you say?” septuagenarian Arthur Arbuckle tweaked his hearing aid. Centenarian Charlie Cartwright appeared to be dead. Rheumy eyes and deaf ears wouldn’t help. These lads were of no use. As for Charlie… Then a newcomer strolled in…six feet of silver-haired macho male; a sexagenarian swinging a gold-topped cane. “Ricardo Romanovsky,” he bowed low; kissed my hand. My libido was restored. |
