Tag Archives: very short stories series

#19 – Perfectionism Takes the Gold

Extraordinarily Brief Stories for the Attention Span-Challenged,

Steph sat down to write. Next to her was one of her three cats. It was the one who farted a lot. Even in her precious, furry, deep-breathed sleep, the flatulence persisted. 

The house was cold and the tight and muffled feeling in her ear distracted her. She was trying to understand what it was saying but the sensation mostly made her feel anxious and irritated. She didn’t want to write today. She wanted to lie on the couch, eat Doritos, and snuggle with her flatulent cat. 

“I promised myself I’d write though,” she said to herself. So she sat down and began typing:

Zelda always felt that humans were more red in tooth and claw than any animal she’d ever encountered. It wasn’t that she was raised in the woods or anything like that. In fact, she’d been raised in 1970s Brooklyn – back when it was a very different place than it is now. She lived in a third-floor walk-up with her mother and her Depression-era grandparents. 

What the hell did she know about Brooklyn? She realized she could change it to Chicago, though she didn’t know enough about the Windy City to make it believable. She highlighted the paragraph and deleted it.

“But it doesn’t have to be perfect,” she reminded herself. Again. “Honestly, it doesn’t even have to be believable. You wrote a story about an asshole cat teaching yoga three weeks ago,” she laughed a little.

She no sooner finished her giggle when Perfectionism emerged; that raven-haired beauty full of rage, shame, anger, and fear. “I fail to see what’s so amusing,” she said with that voice that coated Steph’s brain like an oil slick. “As you know, if you’re not writing something of great brilliance, that just proves you suck. Which, by the way, you do.”

She couldn’t entirely disagree, though she felt Perfectionism’s approach was a little harsh. Nevetheless, she returned to the keyboard:

My first memory of Pelko was when I was six. I was at the Canadian-American border with my grandparents who still lived in Canada part-time. Being at the border has no relevance. Being with my grandparents does. Particularly my grandmother. 

She stopped and looked it over. She did have a pivotal moment at the Canadian border with her grandparents when she was six years old. While she was sitting in the backseat of their car and staring down at the sheen on her patent leather Mary Jane shoes, she was violently gripped by the understanding that she was going to one day die. Just like that. She would be no more. Bite the dust. Cease to exist. And it scared the hell out of her. “No need to revisit that one today,” she said, deleting that paragraph as well.

“That’s best,” said Perfectionism. “It’s hardly a legitimate story idea. Who cares about your revelation?” Perfectionism temporarily wrapped her lithe and sinewy black-clad body around Steph’s frontal lobes before sliding down into her gut. “Ya know what?” she asked, not really seeking an answer. “You should just give up. It’s pointless, really. So why bother?”  

Steph tightened her hands into fists. Not as a result of some burgeoning idea to wage war with Perfectionism. (This was a lost cause, she’d already learned.) It was mostly to warm her fingers. Sure, she could turn up the heat in the house. But she knew she didn’t really deserve that sort of comfort. 

“Honestly, I’m not really sure why I bother,” she said. “I mean, I guess at the end of the day, that’s who I’m doing this for…”

“That’s the person for whom I’m doing this,” Perfectionism interrupted, holding up her hand to observe her obsidian black nails and then poking their pointed ends into the soft tissues of Steph’s lungs to make her cough. It was an unpleasant feeling.

What was also unpleasant was the January sun shining behind her heavily curtained windows. She longed to sit in the warmth and life-affirming brightness of its beams. But it was four degrees outside. Fahrenheit. And her 100-year-old windows were drafty and leaked. 

Gathering her resolve, Steph sat down and began typing again. “You can do this,” she said quietly to herself, while Perfectionism, with her dog-like hearing, just laughed at the statement. And so it went. One silly sentence after another came pouring out. She’d type it and then erase it. Type another and erase it. She did this over and over. Then finally, she began to type:

Steph sat down to write. Next to her was one of her three cats. It was the one who farted a lot. Even in her precious, furry, deep-breathed sleep, the flatulence persisted. 

The house was cold and the tight and muffled feeling in her ear distracted her. She was trying to understand what it was saying but the sensation mostly made her feel anxious and irritated. She didn’t want to write today. She wanted to lie on the couch, eat Doritos, and snuggle with her flatulent cat...

She shut her laptop, stretched, and yawned. Grabbing her farty feline and a bag of Doritos from the kitchen, she headed to the couch where she situated herself under a thick blanket, snuggled in with her cat, and began to diligently consume the Doritos. Perfectionism was sitting right there next to her, of course.

She wasn’t going anywhere.

#18 – The Sentinel Tree

Extraordinarily Brief Stories for the Attention Span-Challenged,

“The secret to keeping plants alive is striking that perfect balance between care and neglect,” Fiona remembered her father telling her as he tended the flower and vegetable garden that flourished behind their old house. Throughout her childhood, she’d marveled at that verdant patch that blotted the otherwise vast moonscape of south-central Wyoming. Beyond that garden, nothing else seemed to thrive. Nothing, that is, except for the single American Linden tree a quarter mile beyond the garden and under which she now sat.

“That’s what’s known as a sentinel tree,” her father had said. “It’s a guide. A landmark, see? You’ll always know where your home is when you see it.” She’d looked up at him, observing the auburn streaks in his sheen brown hair, the reddening of his freckled skin, and a degree of seriousness behind his blue eyes. Eventually, her eyes grew tired from looking up at him and into the sun. “The Linden symbolizes peace,” he continued. “And the bees love the flowers. It’s not exactly native to these parts where the cottonwoods are happiest,” he’d said pensively. “But this one is a survivor. It was here long before you and me and will be here long after we go. So long as someone tends to it.”

Those words stuck with her. As did the notion that success in keeping plants, or anything really, alive was striking the perfect balance between care and neglect. It was a balance she wasn’t certain she could attain. Especially the neglect component. As a child, Fiona’s mother had coddled her. It seemed better than neglecting or hurting her. But her mother had inadvertently taught Fiona that life was supposed to be easy and comfortable and when it wasn’t (as was increasingly the case now) it was somehow personal. That she had been cosmically wronged. 

Her mother would not tolerate Fiona facing any sort of adversity. This despite the fact that such experiences were essential for Fiona to acquire some very needed tools. So Fiona’s toolbox, in that area at least, had for a long time been as empty as the promises from her neighbor that he’d fix the loose hand railing on the front stairs of the old house next time he was out her way. 

Meanwhile, if her father saw the unintentional damage her mother was causing, he did not come to Fiona’s rescue. While they shared a deep love for the garden plants and that sole Linden tree, he was otherwise emotionally guarded. Even withholding. But not in a steely resting Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry face sort of way. It was far more subtle, covert, and therefore insidious. Because she simply didn’t see it. 

The thing is, her father knew how to smile and laugh. He was good at being with people. While he may not have sustained long relationships, he was the master of first impressions. And he had a knack for making folks laugh. She recalled the spring when she was nine and her father and mother took her to the bakery in Cheyenne. Gobsmacked by the huge display of delights, she’d stared at the rows of cakes and cookies for what seemed like hours. At last, she tapped the glass in front of a pink cupcake. “Don’t tap the glass, Fee,” her father scolded, then winked. “It frightens the cupcakes.” Though Fiona’s mother rolled her eyes, the woman behind the counter giggled. And Fiona broke into a full belly laugh at the idea that she could frighten a cupcake. 

So it perplexed her and upset her in the following years when the phone calls started. She’d answer the ring and different voices would ask for the village idiot before laughing and hanging up. Surely, she thought, these were wrong numbers. They couldn’t have been talking about her dad; the man who knew how to conjure bright red tomatoes, brilliant orange sunflowers, and deep green zucchini from an otherwise dead patch of earth. To her, he was a magician.

Sitting under the Linden tree now she thought of her father who’d long since abandoned her, her dementia-ridden mother for whom she now cared, and the mighty tree to move to Arizona. There he could dodge the harsh Wyoming winters while the political climate of the country grew colder and more bitter by the minute. She started to receive the occasional attacking text from him in the middle of the night accusing her of being an unpatriotic Marxist, among other things, because of her left-of-middle viewpoints. She didn’t know what to make of them at first. Given that she understood him to be kind, compassionate, and funny, she wondered if he was having brain issues. Here she was five years later and sitting with the truth of it all. She shook her head hard as though trying to shake off this reality. How ignorant she’d been to believe her father would be as repulsed by the misogynistic hateful narcissistic dominating the news as she’d been. He was not. 

Pressing deeper against the bark of the tree, she noticed it had developed an increasing number of ridges and cracks as it aged. She could relate. Pulling a pad of paper and pencil from her bag, she set to doing what she came out there to do. She began composing a letter.

Dear Dad, 

As I’ve gotten older, I recognize how comforting it seems to cling to old and outdated ideas. But I also recognize that pushing back against progress and lamenting better days hurts me far more than embracing change and seeing what I can learn. Is it always good? Of course not. But what is? (Don’t answer that.)

I’m not writing this to try to convince you of anything or change your mind. I do want you to know, however, the negative consequences that come with the attacking messages. And not just how they affect me, but you as well. Here’s the truth: you have a strong and resilient daughter who loves and cares for others and who isn’t afraid to speak her mind. She’s kind, generous, considerate of others, and deeply contemplative. By most accounts, she would appear to be the product of proud parents. (These are, incidentally, all values I’d relish in my own children if I’d had any.) And yet, her father – confounded by some wholly unexplored threat of lack and limitation – repeatedly rattles off what he deems as her shortcomings, care of the myopic media sources that routinely (mis)inform him. 

I can’t relieve you of the decades of unchecked anger and frustration you’re experiencing and now feel justified in unloading on those whom you love. If I could, I would release you from that particular brand of misery. But if I’m being brutally honest, I’d say that what little bridge is left between you and me could easily crumble from one more attack. If that doesn’t trouble you more than your belief that spewing hatred is the way to make America great, then so be it. But it should. 

Whatever you choose to do, I’m going to keep working on myself in an attempt to see where I can be kinder and more generous – and to shed light on my blind spots. It feels a lot better than stewing in anger and believing the world is screwing me over. I’ve already spent too much time there. I hope that you someday leave that darkness too. So from under the glorious old Linden tree that once connected us, I send you these words from a loving-kindness meditation: 

May you be happy. May you be healthy. May you be free of suffering. May you be at peace…

She reread the letter three times and sighed. These days, she felt both deeply lost and yet on the precipice of figuring something out. And she was old enough to know that maybe it was something she needed to but didn’t necessarily want to face.

Looking up into the canopy of the tree, smelling the fragrant flowers and smiling at its clusters of small hard fruits and lovely heart-shaped leaves, she felt a deep affection for the tree that she hadn’t in over a decade. Her father was not the village idiot. But neither was he a magician. 

Knowing it would make no difference, she decided against sending the letter. Instead, she sighed, crumpled the letter, and shoved it deep in her bag – certain that the sentinel tree would never again mark the way home for the man she still knew as dad.

*(Heavily modified excerpts from The Winter People by Jennifer McMahon)

#17 – Motorcycle Jesus and the Collectors

Extraordinarily Brief Stories for the Attention Span-Challenged

It was an impossibly sunny morning as Frank the Tank meandered down the curving street that created the periphery of the town’s center. The old garbage truck seemed to be sniffing out treasures – crumbled papers, nail clippings, discarded styrofoam containers sticky with rancid grease, things of that nature. 

“Sure is a nice one out there today,” said Horace, one of the three sanitation workers assigned to Frank. “Beats the hell outta them days in January when we was freezin’ our asses off.” 

“Hmmmm.” Sam, the driver, nodded in what one could assume was agreement.

“That’s for damn sure,” said Clive, the third worker, who stared out the window and yawned. He tied his bandana tighter around his head and smacked his lips – a habit he’d picked up in juvie. 

Horace held up his latest whittling project in the sunlight and admired his work; pleased that such a satisfying craft was making a comeback. “Whadya think?” he asked, shoving it into Clive’s face.

From what Clive could see at that extreme close-up position, it appeared to be a motorcycle whose rider was a man with long flowing hair. Jesus perhaps. But with a helmet. 

“Ya like it?” Horace asked. His voice took on a subtle childlike need for approval. 

“I’d like a lot more if you’d get it out of my face,” Clive responded, swatting at the wooden piece.

“That’s what she said,” laughed Horace; the snappy comeback ever elusive to him. He pulled back the wooden piece and stared at it intently.

Although Horace lacked eloquence, he wasn’t stupid. He had what Clive and Sam called automotive intelligence. His happy place was on a creeper staring at the underbelly of his car. He took his explanations of the workings of an automobile to passionate new heights. It was pure science for him. And like most science, it was pretty accurate, sometimes boring, and always very sure of itself. 

As Sam gingerly turned the steering wheel to direct Frank up to the next load of garbage, the truck’s brakes squeaked in protest and it farted out a puff of smoke. Aging for a truck was no more dignified than it was for a human. Maybe even less so, thought Horace, having seen his fair share of old trucks and their innards. He did not consider himself old though, in spite of the fact that the fingers and thumb of his right hand were smarting more than they used to after just two days of whittling. He gave them a gentle massage.

“Sounds like Frank’s needing a break,” Sam grumbled. Horace and Clive knew that what that really meant was that Sam needed a break. Set to retire that year, they both wondered what was next for Sam. Especially Clive. They wouldn’t go so far as to say they worried. Not out loud, at least. It’s just that Sam had been a collector for nearly fifty years. By comparison, Horace and Clive had only logged twelve and eight years, respectively. This was long enough for Horace to see his youngish kids grow into youngish adults, and for Clive to see the light at the end of the tunnel in terms of finally getting his psychology degree. 

Sam pulled himself out of Frank’s creaky cab and meandered to the large magnolia tree that grew just beyond the city hall. With some effort, he settled at the picnic table nearest the tree. Clive sat across from him while Horace opted for sitting on the ground at the base of the tree. It was in explosive bloom and overlooked swaths of land drenched in a rainbow of colors created by the kids in the middle school’s 4-H Club who’d planted a spectacular path of petunias, impatiens, snapdragons, and marigolds that wound in and around the government buildings. Horace had been a part of that when he was in middle school. And Sam’s kids had for several summers participated in the same event. He’d always assumed his grandbabies would too – had his kids not picked up and moved to Atlanta, Baltimore, and Detroit. Still, he didn’t want to complain. That’s just the way it goes, was his motto and he was well known for saying it with a smile and a passive shrug. If he were being honest though, it sucked that that’s how it went with his kids.  

Sam took a deep sigh and poured lemonade from the thermos that he brought with him every day. His wife Thelma had gotten him the thermos the week before he started collecting and he’d never once lost it – a point in which he took great pride. Its red paint had long since worn off in the places where he held the well-nicked, well-dented, and much-loved vessel.

Horace started whistling. “Look at them birds over there,” he said, pointing to a cluster of cardinals, grackles, and sparrows that had perched on a weathered old fence that bordered a stand of lilac trees. “It’s kinda like they’s got together to share in a bit of gossip,” he said with a mischievous smile that showed even through his thick red beard. 

Clive turned his head and studied Horace as a psychological specimen for a moment – as he was wont to do. Horace generally didn’t notice when he did this. Today was no different. 

Horace leaned his back against the tree and pulled out his whittling project to give it some touch-ups. “It’s like them birds is saying, ‘Hey there now! Who among ya couldn’t use a wee new friend?’” he observed, taking some fine-grain sandpaper to motorcycle Jesus’s face before turning to Clive. “Ya know what I mean, Clive?” 

Clive cocked a brow and nodded at Horace. “Oh yeah, sure.” He then turned to Sam and shook his head. 

Sam released a low almost clandestine laugh and he noticed that something in the moment felt balanced – that there was a rightness to the world. He looked up at the wide blue sky and closed his eyes to the warm sun. At that same moment, Frank let out a long hiss, followed by a longer sigh and a clunk that Sam felt almost certain heralded an end.

“Oh boy,” said Horace as he got up and walked over to Frank to investigate. “Don’t like the sound of that ONE BIT. Frank? You alright?” he called out to the weary old truck. 

Clive and Sam sat at the table. Clive cleared his throat and looked at Sam. “Ya know, I, uh,” he stammered, “I’m gonna miss you, Sam.”

Silence came over them for a moment.

“And I’ve never had a chance to thank you for everything,” Clive continued, then shook his head. “No, that’s not true. I’ve had plenty of chances but just didn’t know how to say the words, ya know,” he rubbed his face with his hands in slow circles. “I mean, you helped me clean up. You got me this job. You put me on the right path…”

“You put you on the right path,” Sam corrected him. 

Clive smacked his lips again and squinted in the sunlight. “Maybe. But I wouldn’t be here today without you. And I know that to be the absolute truth. You’re more of a father to me than my own will ever be…”

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Horace called out. “Seems Frank’s up and left us for truck heaven.” 

Sam nodded to Clive and patted him on the arm. “No thanks are necessary,” he said. “But you’re welcome.” 

Clive smiled.

Sam paused and thought about how he hadn’t just spent fifty years collecting refuse so much as stories. Both the stories that were real and the ones he told himself.

“Who’d’ve guessed?” said Horace who’d made his way back to Sam and Clive, shaking his head. “Traitor truck. I was thinkin’ he’d take ya to retirement at least, Sam.” 

“Yeah,” Clive said. “I thought so too.”

Sam looked at Frank, then back at his fellow collectors. He smiled and shrugged. “Guess that’s just the way it goes.”

*(modified excerpts from the Signals catalogue)