Tag Archives: very short stories series

#10 – These Three Words

Extraordinarily Brief Stories for the Attention Span-Challenged,

“Why do they always shake them?” she asked, only to be provocative. She was bored and the guys were ignoring her. 

“Gotta shake those money-makers!” Roscoe cackled, brown juice from chewing tobacco dripping from the corners of his crooked and disgusting mouth. Roscoe made her squirm. She didn’t want to say that she hated him but, well, yeah. She hated him. 

“Hmmmmm,” she sneered at him. “Leave it to you to impart such mind-blowing wisdom, Roscoe,” she said, leaning back in her chair, watching the young woman’s mammaries bounce and bobble and swing. To her, it looked more painful than sensual and made her wonder if gay men liked to watch testicles swing – even though they were well aware of the discomfort involved.  

“You know me,” Roscoe yelled over the clichéd raunchy music track. “A real road scholar!” 

On cue, she glanced sideways at her boyfriend, Carl. It was what they did whenever Roscoe said something stupid. By now my neck should be permanently turned to the side, she thought. But Carl was otherwise occupied – his eyes following the path of the woman’s nipples like some white trash backwoods eye exam. 

She glanced back over at Roscoe. He possessed a certain kind of confidence that life was nothing more than a cosmic joke – which in his case was true. Still, she had to admit that he was happy most of the time while she more often than not felt irritated, bored, and restless. Especially since the plant closed.  

“I’m tired, you guys,” she said, twisting the straw in her drink. “Let’s get outta here.”

“Stop your bitchin’,” said Jeb, Carl’s brother. She gave him the evil eye and his mouth swung shut. It was a playful exchange though and he smiled at her and winked. She’d always liked Jeb; wondered if maybe she was supposed to be with him. It wasn’t that he was better looking than Carl. Nor was he particularly aspirational. There was just something about him that left her questioning.

She’d been doing a lot of questioning lately though; increasingly haunted by a compulsion to cast off the white trash badge (of which she’d always been proud) and try on a new persona for a while. 

“And leave all this?” her best friend Maggie had jokingly asked her when they met up at Caster’s Bar last year and she suggested they skip town and get an apartment in Louisville. “And anyways, what about Carl?” 

What about him? she’d wanted to respond. But it was no time to be flippant. She’d learned the hard way how conversations could be taken out of context and then spread like wildfire through Harken Falls. All it would take to strike that match would have been for mealy-mouthed Martha Comston (rather unaffectionately referred to as ‘cum stain’) to overhear their conversation. And that chick was never far from earshot. So the three phantom words floated above the two square feet of vacant, dingy-carpeted land surrounding their table before vanishing into thin air. 

Maggie got knocked up just a month after that conversation and was too busy with a newborn now to meet up at Caster’s anymore – any dream of her moving to Louisville (or anywhere else) dead in the water. 

The strip joint was crowded for a weekday afternoon. More crowded than usual. She leaned forward in her chair and tried to imagine what it would be like to be up on that stage. There was no judgment. She knew a lot of the girls that danced there. Had known a few of them since kindergarten. We all do what we have to do, she thought. 

The young woman who’d dazzled the mostly male crowd sauntered off stage to be replaced by an older woman. Gravity had done some work on her breasts and they didn’t possess the perkiness of her predecessor’s. Some of the men, and even a drunk woman in the corner, made no secret of their disapproval of the replacement. Wondering how they would ‘measure up,’ she reached under her jacket and cupped her breasts in her hands. She was surprised by the surge of anger she felt for even entertaining this thought and knew she had to leave.

“I’m gonna take off,” she said defiantly, getting up from her chair and hoping that Carl, or at the very least Jeb, would follow her. Neither did though. They sank deeper into their seats, nudging each other and laughing while throwing back their fourth PBR of the afternoon.

She moved swiftly through the club, tripping on a beer bottle and nearly falling. A few people laughed and she felt like crying. She pushed open the door and stepped out into the blazing June sunlight. She stopped to get her bearings and noticed a sequin pasty stuck to the top of her shoe. Peeling it off and looking at it glimmering in the sun like a rare treasure, she stared straight up Front Street and sighed. 

“What about him?” she finally said aloud. 

*(Modified excerpts from The Book Thief by Mark Zusak)

#9 – Number Nine

Extraordinarily Brief Stories for the Attention Span-Challenged

The MANY men in my family tried to raise me with indifference to gender, teaching me how to change a tire, throw a punch, build a fire, that sort of thing. I think they may have overshot though. No, I didn’t blossom into adulthood as a pyromaniacal auto mechanic with a penchant for getting into fights. First off because I’m not the type to blossom. But also, I am cursed with what some folks call “dainty wrists.” I do, however, have a closet full of men’s blue mechanics’ shirts complete with an embroidered name tag that says Sam – which happens to be my name. And these shirts comprise the majority of my wardrobe. 

I mean, I’m not a complete pine stump barbarian when it comes to fashion. I do accessorize them with various items as they fit my mood and/or weather. Plaid shorts or skirts, fish-net stockings, army boots, leather jackets, maybe a big blocky cardigan. It’s not a look you find in glossy magazines and I get glances from women as they pass me by. Especially young women who are my age – these denizens of fashion who regard the current trend of paint-splattered shirts, torn jeans, and all things neon as haute couture. Leg warmers? Come on. And yet I’m considered a fashion faux pas.

“You’re a pretty girl,” my mom always says in regards to my wardrobe. “I don’t know why you think you have to try to prove a point.”

“I’m not trying to prove a point,” I always respond, although I suspect she’s right. I probably am trying to prove a point. I just don’t know what it is yet. I’m 22 though. I reckon I have some time to figure it out. 

“You could go to college and start over,” she also always says, leaning in closer and staring into my eyes, like she’s certain college will solve all my wardrobe malfunctions. 

“Start over?” I always ask. “Start over what?” I’m not trying to be obtuse. I really don’t understand her line of reasoning.

She never gives me an answer though. She simply sighs and up into the air go her big burly hands – the kind that could effectively build fires, change tires, and throw punches – and which she did not pass down to me. Then she walks out of the room. 

It’s not a productive conversation, to say the least. But I guess productivity has never been our thing – my mom’s and mine. She has a much more productive relationship with her dog, Stanley. I suppose he’s easier to understand. Even though they don’t speak the same language. Though I’m not sure we do either.

The shirts – the ones I wear every day – belonged to my dad’s much younger brother, Sam. As a peacenik and a conscientious objector who managed to stave off shipment to Vietnam, he asked that I never refer to him as Uncle Sam. Fair enough. 

Throughout my childhood and adolescence, Sam was hands down my favorite family member. He took me on excursions from our small rural Illinois town to Chicago several times over those years. 

“Ya gotta see the bigger picture, Samantha,” he said the first time we went. I didn’t know what he meant, but Chicago was bigger than anything I’d seen up to that point. The biggest thing I’d seen in our sleepy town was the 1976 Bicentennial parade that went down Main Street when I was eleven – half my age now. Some of the girls in my school rode their bikes in that parade. I never understood girls. Even then. I’d preferred Matchbox cars to Barbies; insects to jewelry; mud to perfume. And with only two older brothers, I felt distinctly out of touch with my fellow uterus-bearers. I remember being taken that parade day though by the shiny red and blue streamers sparkling in the sunlight and the white ribbons in my classmates’ sun-kissed blonde hair and feeling a tinge of jealousy that I didn’t understand. 

“The small-minded folks with their narrow scope, they’ll eat you alive,” Sam said that day. “Chew you up and spit you out just as soon as they’d rat out your own mother for hanging the wash wrong.” I remember wondering what that meant, but assumed it was some brand of brilliance that required decoding I wasn’t yet sophisticated enough to possess. 

That may have been what made Sam my favorite. I sensed that he was different; that he also struggled with conventionality. He’d worked for years as a steady and reliable mechanic at Lloyd’s Body Shop. Then one day, he moved into a trailer outside of town and started taking on work as a shade tree mechanic. When I was fifteen, he began to disappear for weeks at a time – wandering off to California, northern Canada, and eventually Thailand. I was envious. I suppose at the time he thought that traveling to some far-flung place seemed like a good idea. I had no idea he was trying to get away from himself. 

When I was 17, he pulled me aside at our family’s annual July 4th reunion and began ranting about the inhumanity of man toward man, along with some other garden-variety rhetoric that had become all too common for him. “Ya know,” he paused. “Lennon said that nine is the highest number in the universe.” He smiled. 

“Yeah?” I said, unsure of the Lennon to whom he was referring. I wanted so much to understand his world and still thought that when I got older and grew up, I would get it. 

Sam nodded and a smile crossed his face. “Yeah. Cuz after that, Samantha,” he whispered, his eyes off in some dreamy place, “you go back to one.” He held up one finger, then twirled it a few times and tapped the tip of my nose. He got up and walked away. The Lennon to whom he was referring was, of course, John and not Vladimir, which is spelled differently anyhow.

I didn’t know it at the time, but that would be my last conversation with Sam. He disappeared a week later and his body was found two weeks after that. The coroner deemed it a suicide. It wasn’t until weeks later when leafing through one of his heavily illustrated journals that I learned about the voices. 

To this day, I wonder what the voices sounded like for Sam. If they were men or women. Or maybe both. I wonder if any of them sounded like me. Maybe that’s a weird thing to wonder. But my middle brother hears voices now. He tells people they sometimes sound like Sam, but won’t reveal whether it’s our uncle or me. 

And no matter how old or grown up I get, I’m not sure I’ll ever know what to make of that. 

*(modified excerpts from Crying in the H. Mart by Michelle Zauner)

#8 – Negative Hands and Blank Slates

Extraordinarily Brief Stories for the Attention Span-Challenged,

By the time I awaken, the notifications have already started rolling in. Though it’s more accurate to say that they awakened me. Each jingling tone from my phone feigning flattery; inveigling into my unconscious until it too is forced to awaken. “Your input is crucial,” they say. Or “without you, I cannot form an opinion.” These are, of course, the interpretations from my unconscious who cannot actually read and whose intellectual meanderings are consistently either suspect or spot-on. 

Today, it is the former. 

I know my opinions don’t matter. I’m nothing more than a lowly assistant. I have no chops. No street cred. Not yet, at least. The notifications remind me of such. Because what they really say is REMINDER! BE AT THE SITE NO LATER THAN 6AM and YOU WILL BE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE INSTRUMENTS AND TAKING OF COPIOUS NOTES, YOU WORM. Okay, they don’t call me a worm. The subtext is there though. 

I realize I have to pay my dues. We all do. It’s part of the deal. And I’m aware that I won’t always have to idly stand by and pretend to care when one of my least favorite post-docs waxes poetic about something like how a sequoia can withstand a thousand years of earthquakes, fires, and wind, to finally just one day fall. He states these observations in such a way that they come across as less a lamentation and more a sociopathic rant.

“Yeah, it’s a real shame,” I typically respond shaking my head and, in the case of tree at least, thinking that at 1000 years, the tree had a good run. My grandmother is not even a tenth that age and isn’t faring nearly as well. 

My phone chimes again. It’s mocking me. I’m sure of it.

REMEMBER TO BRING THE THERMOS

I roll my eyes. As if I’d forget the thermos. I know full well that the scientists can’t make any sweeping discoveries without coffee and that what the message is actually conveying is to remember to make coffee. I sigh. Again, paying my dues. 

I didn’t sleep well last night. It was all the excitement, I suppose, of being party to some of yesterday’s discoveries. Even so, I’ve never slept well the first night in an unfamiliar place. My sensory organs thrive on routine and are priggish about change. Particularly at night. My ears find solace in the muffled sounds of cars, people’s voices, and music fading in and out as the evening slowly stretches its long bony fingers across the city. Meanwhile, my nose is accustomed to the scent of exhaust from the aforementioned cars, the twinge of mustiness from my couch’s throw pillow, and the red and orange smells of warm Indian spices from my neighbor’s apartment by 7pm every day. (4:30 on those dusky winter afternoons). 

Last night, however, my ears were accosted by some rather ghostlike and inchoate owl calls as I pressed a stiff, white, science lab-issued pillow over my nose in an attempt to conceal the odor of wild rosemary and thyme growing just outside the tent. It wasn’t that it was a bad scent. Just strong. And unfamiliar. And it was making me hungry, if I’m honest. 

Then there were the negative hands. I hadn’t expected to be so taken by those ancient prints on the cave walls that had been there for thousands and thousands of years. There were so many hands in so many different sizes. There were large handprints stamped steadfastly at the entrance of the cave as if to say either ‘welcome’ or ‘stop.’ (The handprint was as unreadable as my unconscious.) Then there were somewhat smaller hands going along the side walls. Were they placed in celebration? In bondage? Did it matter?

What stayed with me the most were the tiny handprints on the ceiling of the cave. Clearly, an adult had hoisted a small child high up onto his or her shoulders, then slowly spit a warm mixture of water and pigment over the little hands to create those images. Many of my colleagues were atwitter by the notion that there is probably DNA in that ancient spit that begs analysis. I, on the other hand, was curious about how the child might have felt about that ancient spray paint spit on his or her hand. And would he or she have any notion that these prints would last well into antiquity? (The answer is: of course not.)

I sit up in my cot rather swiftly and three magpies picking at something outside my tent take immediate flight. I think of my mother and her love for magpies. She adored how they are drawn to shiny and sparkly things. My mother in her beautiful cashmere dresses; rhinestone-rimmed sunglasses embedded in her auburn hair. My mother who encouraged me to go into something – anything – more glamorous than science. Fashion perhaps. Even interior design would have sufficed. 

Glancing at the sky, I see the sun is on the horizon. It’s a brand new day. A chance to start over. In theory, at least. And there will be no A-line dresses or recessed lighting plans for me to consider. I’ll probably have mud on my shoes by 9am. Hell, I’ll probably have mud IN my shoes by 9am. And I wonder how feasible it is to strive for a blank slate each day. To start from zero. Tabula rasa. Because, yeah. Yearning for a blank slate crosses the ideological spectrum. But the truth is, sooner or later, even the newest places will face the same old problems. 

I stretch and yawn as I roll off my cot. 

Time to start making the coffee. 

*(modified excerpts from The Atlantic)