tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-55405006545932144212024-03-18T19:57:58.668-07:00Title FightsTitle Fightshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03645721097886240394noreply@blogger.comBlogger56125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5540500654593214421.post-42831594374901912082011-12-05T04:14:00.000-08:002011-12-05T04:27:33.281-08:00The Death of Title Fights<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTO6x46vf1j8pzYrNo5-M51gi39LKFmvJ-aIK7c8wilKaYi-jxXcOOY_b-wmXxd_QAwFod55Vgxeq8q2cwQON0QEMwi5DBd5NB1-saaYnS6xn_48p-Yg8G8MukfNcX_EvkgYQsHCOGch8/s1600/SIDEBARLOGO.gif"><br /></a><br />So in case it wasn't obvious we haven't been answering the phones here at Title Fights HQ for a while. But just to make the obvious painfully obvious, Title Fights is dead.<br /><br />It's been a great ride, everyone.<br /><br />BUT, fear not, true believers. Like the true cycle of nature, this death has served as the fecund soil to foster a new life. That's why we, the editors of Title Fights, are proud to bring you<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTO6x46vf1j8pzYrNo5-M51gi39LKFmvJ-aIK7c8wilKaYi-jxXcOOY_b-wmXxd_QAwFod55Vgxeq8q2cwQON0QEMwi5DBd5NB1-saaYnS6xn_48p-Yg8G8MukfNcX_EvkgYQsHCOGch8/s1600/SIDEBARLOGO.gif"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 285px; height: 182px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTO6x46vf1j8pzYrNo5-M51gi39LKFmvJ-aIK7c8wilKaYi-jxXcOOY_b-wmXxd_QAwFod55Vgxeq8q2cwQON0QEMwi5DBd5NB1-saaYnS6xn_48p-Yg8G8MukfNcX_EvkgYQsHCOGch8/s400/SIDEBARLOGO.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5682618387443017634" border="0" /></a><a href="http://www.bellowsamerican.com/">THE BAR: Bellows American Review</a>.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: left;">Please refer there for all your future free electronic literature concerns. And who knows, if you keep an eye on it, you may someday see Title Fights sprout back up. Its hard to keep a fighter down.<br /><br />For everyone who supported us for the brief time of our life, we owe you an immeasurable gratitude. It's been a hell of a ride, but fear not. Like Winston Churchill once said, "This is not the end. This is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."<br /></div></div>Title Fightshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03645721097886240394noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5540500654593214421.post-616926745766253612011-05-16T14:42:00.000-07:002011-05-16T14:43:42.899-07:00Blue and Smells Like Red Paint by Case Q. Kerns<style>@font-face { font-family: "Calibri"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 10pt; line-height: 115%; font-size: 11pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoNoSpacing, li.MsoNoSpacing, div.MsoNoSpacing { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; </style> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">The flowers were all potted. They could be planted after. Her father always thought the idea of killing something for decoration was somewhat demented. Even at weddings, he felt that arrangements and bouquets of cut flowers seemed a celebration of death more than love.</span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span style=""> </span>Then, the body. Don’t bury me in the ground, he would say. He hated the idea of taking up so much earth. Tombstones were not morbid to him. They were assets. As if the deceased were saying, ‘I may be gone, but I still own something.’</span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">He wanted his ashes dispersed to five different locations, all within a couple hundred miles of each other. The three of them would make this journey together – Stacy, her mother, and her brother, Patrick. She would organize this later, after the funeral. </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">There would be no wake or church service. The whole event was going to take place at The Red-Tail. It had been the only restaurant that they could always agree on as a family – the prime rib with horseradish cream sauce and smashed red bliss potatoes was one of her father’s favorite meals. Stacy rented it out for the whole evening. The regular menu would be served, but no bottles of ketchup. He never liked it on the table.</span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">She had his Victrola brought in for the event so it would sound like their house. People would be encouraged to stand up and say a few words, if they wanted, but there would be no podium.</span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">There was an hour until the doors at The Red-Tail opened for the event and Stacy was on her way to pick up the final piece. </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: center; line-height: 200%;" align="center"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">***</span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">She had commissioned a painting of her father by a local artist named Fred Hall who specialized in photorealism. </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">After a night spent sifting through family albums, there were a few fallbacks, but nothing that captured what she was looking for. Then, she noticed it in a small frame on the side table at the far end of the couch, half hidden behind a lamp. It was the most recent photograph of him when his smile was still his own and not partly a stranger’s. </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">It had been taken four years earlier at his seventy-third birthday party. Stacy knew this because of the movie poster for Hitchcock’s ‘Vertigo’ on the living room mantle behind him. It was a joint family gift that year and he hung it up in his study the next morning. </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">When she had dropped off the photograph to Mr. Hall, she emphasized the importance of the piece </span><span style="font-family: Symbol;"><span style="">-</span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria;"> that it needed to be an exact recreation of the photograph. The artist assured her that this was his expertise. She stressed the point, again. He told her that he couldn’t walk on water, but he most certainly could paint a photograph.</span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">And she knew that he could. She had studied his portfolio, thoroughly. She just had to make it clear.</span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: center; line-height: 200%;" align="center"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">***</span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">The studio was a fifteen-minute drive from The Red-Tail. She would have to hang the painting and then make the rounds to see that everything was in place. It would be tight, but as long as she held it all together and stayed focused, there was no reason to fall victim to anxiety. </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Mr. Hall was cleaning his brushes in the sink, rubbing Murphy’s oil soap into the bristles. She asked him if it was finished and he said he just put on the final touches, but it was still wet in places and to be careful while transporting it to the restaurant.</span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">He handed her the photograph and asked if she would like to compare the two. She took it between her fingers and felt queasy. He went over to his easel and rotated it so she could see the painting. The canvas was eighteen inches by twenty-four inches. She had asked that it not be too large, but not so small that it couldn’t be seen across the room. </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Stacy glanced from image to image. They were the same. She narrowed in and examined smaller sections, but could find no differences and then looked at the painting alone.</span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">“Wait,” she said.</span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">“Is there something wrong?” Mr. Hall asked.</span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">“Yes.”</span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">He was confused and doubtful.</span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">“The eyes are red,” she said.</span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">“Just like the photograph,” he said.</span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">“My father’s eyes were blue.”</span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">“You asked for an exact recreation,” he said. “And his eyes are red in the photograph. It’s the effect of the flash. I thought that’s what you wanted.”</span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">She looked back to the photograph. She hadn’t scrutinized it enough. She had seen the look on her father’s face and didn’t realize that somewhere along the way she stopped looking and was just remembering at the photograph. And now she had a portrait with red eyes.</span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">“If it’s a problem, I can change them to blue,” he said. “It will only take about twenty minutes.”</span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">“There isn’t time,” she said.</span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Mr. Hall apologized for the misunderstanding and she told him it wasn’t his fault and that he really had done a remarkable job, it was perfect.</span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">She took the painting to her car and started driving towards The Red-Tail. She had forty-five minutes until the memorial started.</span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: center; line-height: 200%;" align="center"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">***</span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">She remembered her father’s seventieth birthday party. He had just retired three months earlier and was trying to learn how to spend his days relaxing and enjoying life. He was always looking for new hobbies, or ‘positive obsessions’ as he called them. The transition was hard on him. </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">The unveiling of Patrick’s gift had been the grand event. It was in the middle of the living room, obelisk-like and covered with a white sheet. The sheet was pulled off and it was their father’s Victrola, which hadn’t worked in years. It had been overhauled and refinished. There was even a set of unused needles. It sounded as if it had never been played before. </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">While Patrick selected the next record to play, Stacy and her father danced to a 78 of ‘Mood Indigo,’ performed by Duke Ellington and His Famous Orchestra. “Your brother understands the importance of details,” her father said to her, quietly.</span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">‘Patrick’ had been the last of their names that he started to forget.</span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: center; line-height: 200%;" align="center"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">***</span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">The painting sat in the backseat of the car behind Stacy, but she wouldn’t look at it, not even in the rear view mirror. </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">The eyes were still drying.</span></p>Title Fightshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03645721097886240394noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5540500654593214421.post-80919626305525224792011-04-12T22:42:00.000-07:002011-04-12T22:43:45.219-07:00A Jewish Man Calls His Mother by Holli Downs<style>@font-face { font-family: "Calibri"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 10pt; line-height: 115%; font-size: 11pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }</style> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">In 1986, outside the boundaries of the synagogue, Beth Shalom, it was strange to meet another Jew in Kansas City.<span style=""> </span>My father and I lived there in a two-bedroom, one-bathroom, pink townhouse squeezed next to several others, exactly the same.<span style=""> </span>He had owned the townhouse since 1973 when it was built and pastel colored plastic siding was groovier than it was feminine.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;"><span style=""> </span>He had bought it for my mother.<span style=""> </span>The place always felt a little off to me once I was old enough to notice things like that.<span style=""> </span>I never knew her to be a part of the house, but she was still there.<span style=""> </span>Her cross stitched “Home is Where the Heart Is” hung above the oven in the kitchen.<span style=""> </span>Her lava lamp was hidden in the back of the closet until I was sixteen and took it out for mood lighting.<span style=""> </span>Dad never talked about her sober, and I wasn’t the kind of kid who was brave enough to ask.<span style=""> </span>I knew March 30 was her birthday because Dad got drunk and cursed at photo albums after I went to bed.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;"><span style=""> </span>“God damn woman,” he said.<span style=""> </span>I was nine or so one of these times, and he was getting kind of loud.<span style=""> </span>It scared me.<span style=""> </span>He looked surprised I when appeared in the doorway, “Come here.”</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;"><span style=""> </span>This night, under belches of whiskey, I learned about my mother.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;"><span style=""> </span>I learned she wanted to be an artist.<span style=""> </span>My father told me about finding out I was on the way.<span style=""> </span>She had thrown a pregnancy test at his dorm wall.<span style=""> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;"><span style=""> </span>“You’ve never seen a woman so angry,” he laughed.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;"><span style=""> </span>I wanted to ask if she wanted me at all, if she missed me, if she remembered me.<span style=""> </span>I didn’t.<span style=""> </span>I was afraid it would break the spell.<span style=""> </span>I was afraid of the distance between me and my father when he talked about her.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;"><span style=""> </span>“So, I guess you were about six months old.” he had fallen into a kind of stupor and the room drew close on us, “I came home and her bags were packed up.<span style=""> </span>She said the strangest thing.<span style=""> </span>‘I can’t remember how old I am’ she said.<span style=""> </span>Isn’t that bizarre?<span style=""> </span>Nineteen, I told her, nineteen!<span style=""> </span>But she went to her mothers.”<span style=""> </span>My father started crying.<span style=""> </span>It was uncomfortable.<span style=""> </span>“She didn’t come back for us, Isaac,” he said</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;"><span style=""> </span>I don’t remember ever really hurting for anything.<span style=""> </span>My father was never a very good cook and we sat over ranch-style beans and dark toast for most of my childhood, but we could always pay the bills.<span style=""> </span>At least, if there ever was any trouble, I didn’t know about it. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;"><span style=""> </span>I did know that he wouldn’t give away a penny he could keep.<span style=""> </span>Even though the women at George’s, a second-hand clothing store downtown by the movies, made him uncomfortable he took me there when I needed new things for school.<span style=""> </span>My father has always been a very handsome man.<span style=""> </span>We had as much help as he could handle when we went out together.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">“Time to go, Isaac,” he would whisper at me from behind the racks of neon jump suits.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">“I don’t know, Dad.<span style=""> </span>Maybe a few more.” I would pretend I couldn’t make up my mind, try on another suit and stride out of the dressing room to a friendly audience.<span style=""> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">Ranch-style beans, and George’s was good enough for me until June 1986.<span style=""> </span>MTV started airing a new show, “120 minutes,” and Bar Mitzvah daydreams took on less of a Sonny and Cher’s “I Got You Babe” look and more the Cactus World News’s “Years Later”.<span style=""> </span>I wanted my leather jacket and my black square-framed glasses, and I wanted to be the first one to put them on.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">At first, Dad hemmed and hawed at the idea of paying $40 for something I would “just use the one time and never be seen in again” but a month before the party I found a Schott’s black leather jacket laying on my bed when I got home. <span style=""> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">It was the most amazing thing I had ever owned.<span style=""> </span>I wore it until someone stole it from a party on Avenue C during my first semester at NYU.<span style=""> </span>My wife, who I had been dating for a couple of months by then, swears she had nothing to do with it, but admits she was relieved when it disappeared from our lives.<span style=""> </span>“Our lives,” she says.<span style=""> </span>Like us together is the most natural and perpetual thing in the world.<span style=""> </span>We haven’t decided to have any children.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">My father worked most nights managing the twenty-four hour self-serve car wash place a few blocks down.<span style=""> </span>Sometimes, he would bring home the things he said people threw out of their backseats and into the trash.<span style=""> </span>Mostly it was just junk: pens, old travel mugs, maps, obsolete 8tracks.<span style=""> </span>Once that summer, though, he carried in a pair of jungle boots, <span style=""> </span>gripping each one by the sole, and held them against my feet.<span style=""> </span>“Looks like this should work,” he said.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">The boots were dirty enough to suspect they were authentic.<span style=""> </span>The leather had creased and cracked and been worked to a shine again so many times that when my foot slid in them they didn’t bend.<span style=""> </span>A few of the eyelets were missing, and one of the strings was so short it could only be fed to the third hole from the top.<span style=""> </span>There was one stain on the heel of the left boot- kind of a yellow smear, like new pollen on your fingers.<span style=""> </span>I told the guys at my Bar Mitzvah it was left over mustard gas.<span style=""> </span>They didn’t believe me so I challenged them to smell it and no one would.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">The girls were a foot taller and more interesting than interested when we were thirteen.<span style=""> </span>They all came to my party, though.<span style=""> </span>I told them the DJ knew Billy Crystal from his work on SNL.<span style=""> </span>Kids spent all night at his table asking him if he got to stay backstage with the cast.<span style=""> </span>The DJ told them he didn’t know what they were talking about and my classmates nodded conspiratorially.<span style=""> </span>Of course, he wouldn’t be able to say, I had told them, you know how it is with famous people.<span style=""> </span>They knew.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;"><span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span>I had just finished convincing Brittany Barnett to let me kiss her when my father walked up.<span style=""> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">“I would like to speak with you,” he said.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">“Dad, can it wait?”<span style=""> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">He looked from Brittany, blushing up to her roots, to my assumed of wary superiority and smirked, “Five minutes.<span style=""> </span>I will meet you in the lobby.”</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">My wife makes me tell this story at dinner parties now, but she never lets me get to the part that happened next, “and he missed!”<span style=""> </span>She howls with laughter.<span style=""> </span>I missed.<span style=""> </span>I went to kiss Brittany Barnett on the lips, but closed my eyes and fell against her neck.<span style=""> </span>I picked the wrong girl to kiss.<span style=""> </span>She told everyone how I had done.<span style=""> </span>Sometimes, I think that story is my wife’s favorite thing about me.<span style=""> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">When I got to the lobby my eyes were still red, but Dad didn’t say if he noticed.<span style=""> </span>He was standing by the check-in desk speaking in low tones with an attendant wearing a maroon bellboy hat and<span style=""> </span>a service smile.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">“Dad?” my voice broke.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;"><span style=""> </span>My father motioned to the man that he’d be right back and guided me to a bench on the wall.<span style=""> </span>The sun streaming through the windows was hot.<span style=""> </span>I took off my jacket and laid it in my lap.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;"><span style=""> </span>“You are a man now,” my father looked me in the eyes and I looked away.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;"><span style=""> </span>“Come on, it was just one kiss, I mean- I don’t need you to-“</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;"><span style=""> </span>“This is not birds and bees, Isaac.<span style=""> </span>Be quiet,” my father was rarely stern.<span style=""> </span>His tone surprised me.<span style=""> </span>The ache of distance between us solidified.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;"><span style=""> </span>“Dad?”</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;"><span style=""> </span>The sounds of my Bar Mitzvah leaked through the hall to where we were sitting.<span style=""> </span>The DJ was encouraging everyone to do the chicken dance.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;"><span style=""> </span>“This is your mother’s number,” he said, handing me a crumpled flyer from the car wash, “The man said you can use his phone for a minute.”</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;"><span style=""> </span>I stood up to scream at him.<span style=""> </span>I was going to tell him how he had tricked me, how he had betrayed me.<span style=""> </span>How he had known and never said.<span style=""> </span>But my father suddenly looked fat in his suit, his trimmed and combed hair out of place on his head.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;"><span style=""> </span>“Dial this number,” I said to the clerk and slid the paper over.<span style=""> </span>I looked up, daring him to question me.<span style=""> </span>If anyone was watching they were going to know I was certain.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;"><span style=""> </span>The first ring echoed in my ears and I leaned against the counter.<span style=""> </span>I was biting my tongue and forgetting my language.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;"><span style=""> </span>The pause seemed long.<span style=""> </span>“Hello?” I jumped when the second ring interrupted me.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;"><span style=""> </span>The line opened up.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">My mother said, “Hey Rhonda!<span style=""> </span>Sorry about that, I wiped the phone right off the counter. The baby was crying.<span style=""> </span>He’s been so fussy lately.”</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;"> </span></p>Title Fightshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03645721097886240394noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5540500654593214421.post-23473547167048525922011-04-12T21:45:00.000-07:002011-04-12T21:59:16.748-07:00A Priest and a Rabbi Walk Into a Bar by Brian S. Roe<p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica;"><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16px;">A Priest and a Rabbi Walk Into a Bar</span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">by Brian S. Roe</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">“Hi there, Michael.”</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">“Oh hi, Uncle Danny. I mean, Father Daniel.”</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">“Either’s good, nephew. How’s my sister?”</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">“Mom’s fine. Still working third shift at the hospital, but she says she wants to see more of you. Says she’s tired of taking mass at the hospital chapel.”</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">“We’ll have to do something about that then. Many things that we need to do something about lately.”</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">“A drink, Uncle Danny?”</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">“Yeah, bourbon and branch. You know my brand.”</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">“Is this barstool occupied?”</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">“Hi there, Jacob. I’ve been holding it for you.”</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">“Not much of a crowd tonight, I see.”</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">“Hi, Rabbi Lowen. Care for a drink?”</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">“Well Danny, do you have any tea?”</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">“Sure. Lemon and honey, right?”</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">“You’ve got a very good memory, son.”</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">“How’ve you been, Jacob.”</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">“I’ve been feeling very cold lately, Daniel. Very cold in my soul. And how have you been?”</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">“Burning up. Rage and anger. Hard to preach peaceful words when I’ve such anger.”</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">“Strange how we both feel such polar temperaments for the same base emotion.” </span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">“Yeah, it’s hard to control sometimes. When did things get this bad?”</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">“When Rosen took over the 12th Street Boys, I think. Such a grubber yung. He led them down ever more dark paths.”</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">“And Flynn had already had them headed down some pretty dark paths from the start.”</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">“Strange how these kinder that grew up blocks from each other used to fight each other so violently just because of their last names.”</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">“Flynn, O’Malley, and Cavan versus Rosen, Goldman, and Zimmerman.”</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">“Cohen, Abramson, and Horowitz versus O’Neill, Doyle, and Buckley.”</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">“I remember seeing them on the playground of the school going after each other with tire irons and chains. One sadistic bastard had a bullwhip. Who knows where he got it. He was none too pleased when I took it from him. He should be glad that I got to him before one of the nuns did.”</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">“I can imagine. But apparently the desire to do evil was strong enough to bring them together. What I still can’t understand is how they’ve grown in such power recently. It’s as if no policeman will come anywhere near the neighborhood. Our young nishtgutnicks seem to be running riot with no one to monitor them.”</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">“Before Flynn got cut out he made a deal with some friendly cousins within the Blue Brotherhood. Apparently those deals are still valid. You know how insular we Micks can be. ”</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">“Can you hear them in the back room? Like a pack of mongrel dogs.”</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">“Another drink please, nephew. How long have they been here?”</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">“Since this afternoon. They’ve been playing cards and talking about um, business.”</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">“They haven’t been out here harassing you?”</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">“Not so much. My boss has some connections that they might not want to test quite yet. Bigger dogs still scare the little dogs. They took Theresa with them as a waitress and a couple of cases of booze. Sent out for food about an hour ago. I heard some of them snoring earlier. But mostly they’ve just been loud. Drove out all of the other customers.”</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">“Not a bad thing at this point, Daniel.”</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">“It might be a good idea for you to close early tonight, nephew.”</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">“I see. It’ll take a few minutes to get my closing stuff done.”</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">“You might want to be about it then. Have you been to the hospital to see Miriam lately, Jacob?”</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">“...”</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">“Sorry to mention it.”</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">“I... it’s still so hard to see her like that. She was so lovely and alive, and now she just lays there, broken.”</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">“The doctors are good there.”</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">“Yes, but for her, it would take a miracle. And it seems miracles ceased to happen a few thousand years ago. And what of the little girl that was run over?”</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">“She died.”</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">“...”</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">“Her parents buried her two days ago. I’ve never seen such pure sadness in all my years. Only the good Lord gave me strength to finish the service. A couple of Rosen’s boys were at the funeral. They were laughing and chewing bubble gum. The girl’s father went after them and now he’s breathing through a tube and shitting into a bag. Sorry for the language.”</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">“Such things often require that kind of language.”</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">“At the girl’s funeral, I realized what had to happen. What I had to do.”</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">“Then it seems that we are both thinking similar thoughts. When I realized that no one was willing to identify the beasts who hurt Miriam, then I felt truly alone. But now I just feel very cold. Like the edge of a sharpened sword.”</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">“What? Oh my God. Theresa! Are you all right?”</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">“Poor shikse. She ran out without her coat and most of her blouse.”</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">“God damn it. As if we needed a more clear signal.”</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">“Michael, the bar should be closed now. And please pull the shades and lock the door behind you.”</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">“Good night, Uncle Danny, Rabbi Lowen. God bless you both.”</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">“Good night nephew. Kiss your mom for me.”</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">“It’s time, Daniel. Do you have what you need?”</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">“Here. My father’s old Thompson from right after the war. He kept it in the same box as his badge and uniform. Tested it out last night and it still sings.”</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">“A friend in Israel sent me this. Sinister looking, isn’t it? He calls it an “Uzi”.”</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">“It sounds like they’re getting into some kind of scuffle in there.”</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">“Then now is a good time.”</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">“This is all happening so damned quickly isn’t it?”</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">“Mentsch tracht, G-tt lacht”</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">“In all my years as a priest, I never thought I’d be damning myself to Hell like this.”</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">“Only G-d can forgive us. Perhaps he will be merciful.”</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px; font: 12px Helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">“Don’t worry. I’ll hear your confession.”</span></span></span></p> <span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></span>Title Fightshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03645721097886240394noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5540500654593214421.post-23374369412519439972011-04-05T21:49:00.000-07:002011-04-05T21:50:29.845-07:00Inside a Dog it’s Too Dark to Read by Amanda Hartzell<style>@font-face { font-family: "Calibri"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 10pt; line-height: 115%; font-size: 11pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }</style> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center; line-height: normal;" align="center"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;"></span><b style=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">I.</span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center; line-height: normal;" align="center"><b style=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;"> </span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">The night before he puts me in my car and tells me to drive for the mountains, I was crushing peanuts for Malcolm Lamp in his one-room apartment.<span style=""> </span>They’d come in a paper bag, the peanuts, and when I pressed my thumb between the pods they snapped with a dusty pop.<span style=""> </span>The brittle shells I set aside in the desk drawer and the nuts I scraped with my fingernail, removing the thin brown film of skin.<span style=""> </span>The testa, it was called, Malcolm said.<span style=""> </span>That skin.<span style=""> </span>I’d been at this for hours.<span style=""> </span>Malcolm liked things precise.<span style=""> </span>Sometimes, when I woke up in the middle of the night and listened, I’d catch him repeating words to himself, measuring the distance from his tongue to the back of his front teeth.<span style=""> </span><i style="">Testa</i> was a good word to say in rapid succession, I’d learned, because it made the tongue jump to the roof of the mouth, like something suspended on a string and lunging back to the source.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">His window was open and Albuquerque’s night humidity lugged itself through.<span style=""> </span>He’d promised me dry heat when I moved out here, something sandy and thin, but I hadn’t felt it yet.<span style=""> </span>There were too many bike paths and red mountains and apartments with aluminum siding.<span style=""> </span>From the back entrance of Malcolm’s building complex I could hear the round yip of coyotes, but out the window, facing the front, came only traffic.<span style=""> </span>Malcolm had told me all about the animals here, the wild dogs and roadrunners sprinting over stone fences, the turtles with mottled shells in the grass.<span style=""> </span>So far I hadn’t seen anything.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">I brought the citronella candles from my father’s house to keep away the bugs. They were lit now, green-yellow-green, a row of light throbbing on his desk by the window.<span style=""> </span>In Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, they kept the mosquitos and box elders from the porch.<span style=""> </span>I used to peer over the candles and watch a flickering hover of bugs a few feet away, in the yard.<span style=""> </span>I’d feel the wicks’ heat on the inside of my nasal passages.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">“Be careful,” said Malcolm, from the couch.<span style=""> </span>He lifted his chin at the peanuts between my fingers.<span style=""> </span>“You’re missing spots.”</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">If I broke them slowly enough, the shells flaked off in separate layers.<span style=""> </span>Malcolm Lamp had me memorize each part—the outer, pericarp hull, and the three thin layers beneath of exocarp, mesocarp, endocarp.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">“Right,” I said, “I’m watching.”</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">Malcolm rose <a name="_GoBack"></a>and crossed the room towards me.<span style=""> </span>It was a small space, and it only took him five steps to move from one wall to another.<span style=""> </span>I measured it once with my feet, too, when he’d asked me.<span style=""> </span>I put my left heel to right toe, right heel to left toe, and worked across the room painstakingly, with precision.<span style=""> </span>I was a tightrope act.<span style=""> </span>He’d said so.<span style=""> </span>I’d wanted to smile but saw the discipline of his face, and I couldn’t break that.<span style=""> </span>It took me fifteen steps to make it across the room, heel to toe.<span style=""> </span>I’d gone so slowly for Malcolm Lamp that it took me a half hour to do it.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">Now he crossed the room in seconds and was at my elbow, rummaging through the desk drawer and scattering peanut shells.<span style=""> </span>I tried to stay very still until he needed me.<span style=""> </span>He paged through my month-old hiking pamphlets from the welcome center, photos of rocks he’d overdeveloped to whiteness, ads and coupons we hadn’t cut up yet because they made him feel situated and routine.<span style=""> </span>It was precision Malcolm liked, not predictability.<span style=""> </span>Peanut pods slid into my palm.<span style=""> </span>I turned them over like pebbles.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">I said, “What are you looking for?” and he stalled, repeating my name end on end.<span style=""> </span>Katharine, Kat, Katharine.<span style=""> </span>I liked the sound of it, rare, out of his mouth.<span style=""> </span>It let me know I was more than just the tasks he wanted done, the curiosities to settle.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">“And the peanuts,” I said.<span style=""> </span>By then I had a whole pile, stretched at the base of the citronella candles.<span style=""> </span>“What do you want to do with these?”</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">“Are you tired yet?” he asked.<span style=""> </span>“Do you want to go to sleep?”</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">The citronella candles were burning low, almost smoking.<span style=""> </span>They were the same ones my father had had since I was a girl, and the wick was a stump above slick wax.<span style=""> </span>The inside walls of each jar were filthy.<span style=""> </span>Outside the window an insect hooked onto the screen.<span style=""> </span>Its body was segmented in two, like the peanuts, and it had thin black wings that came unsheathed from its back.<span style=""> </span>I didn’t recognize it.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">Malcolm’s hands skittered through the drawer.<span style=""> </span>He glanced at me.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">“It’s up to you,” he said.<span style=""> </span>He paused.<span style=""> </span>“Or I can decide for you, if that’s easier.”</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">I split a peanut between my fingers and popped one half into my mouth.<span style=""> </span>I didn’t bite down.<span style=""> </span>I hid it beneath my tongue until the salt was too much.<span style=""> </span>He didn’t react and I knew the tasks for today were done.<span style=""> </span>He was tired, too.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">The couch pulled out to a bed and I sat there cross-legged, leaning into him, until he relaxed and rested his head in my lap.<span style=""> </span>We’d only slept together once since I moved to Albuquerque.<span style=""> </span>He said I shouldn’t worry so I didn’t.<span style=""> </span>The humidity lacquered the room, reduced us to one sheet with patterned red hibiscus, and from the foot of the bed his metal fan swiveled its face back and forth on us.<span style=""> </span>To move at all was an effort.<span style=""> </span>The breeze lifted the damp, curling hair at the base of my neck.<span style=""> </span>I wanted Malcolm Lamp to prearrange my thoughts for me, to stack them up piece by piece so my mind would know where to go when I closed my eyes.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">But instead he started telling me about the reservations, about the Ute and Apache and Navajo, how he wanted me to see them.<span style=""> </span>How our bodies were stacked together, right now, like hillside pueblos.<span style=""> </span>My ears felt clogged and distant, picking up sounds from miles away.<span style=""> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">“Where are you?” Malcolm said then.<span style=""> </span>His mouth moved drowsy against the bone in my knee.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">I was not in a pueblo.<span style=""> </span>I was scattered far beneath the earth, my body closed in on itself like a seed.<span style=""> </span>That part of a peanut, the part to eat, was called the germ.<span style=""> </span>And my arms wrapped around my legs and my knees pulled beneath my chin, and I was sheathed by testa.<span style=""> </span>As I shifted the clay earth drew closer.<span style=""> </span>I could wait.<span style=""> </span>I could wait awhile.<span style=""> </span>Soon light would burrow its way through the earth towards me, find me, like ropes of light dropped down for me.<span style=""> </span>And through the clay the runoff of water would come, too, trickles at first, then grow into rivers that could move the earth and unplant me. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center; line-height: normal;" align="center"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center; line-height: normal;" align="center"><b style=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">II.</span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">The next morning when I woke Malcolm had already gone to work.<span style=""> </span>For an hour I walked around in his boxers only.<span style=""> </span>Sweat gathered in my shoulder blades.<span style=""> </span>I crouched down to eye-level with the desk, so the peanuts I’d unshelled looked detailed, almost moist.<span style=""> </span>I could see the scratches my nails left in them.<span style=""> </span>The window was open but we were so high up there was no one to watch, or watch me.<span style=""> </span>I changed into clothes with permanent creases, still in my luggage because Malcolm Lamp said he wanted me to move in slowly, to be a traveler for as long as he could drag it out.<span style=""> </span>I ate one peanut, flicking it around my mouth until it softened.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">At noon I left the apartment and walked through ribbons of heat to his office.<span style=""> </span>He worked for the water authority and sat behind a desk where he trained new hires.<span style=""> </span>None seemed to be in today.<span style=""> </span>His fingers punched data entry and plucked phones and sliced complaint letters.<span style=""> </span>I’d never actually been in the place before.<span style=""> </span>When I walked in the air conditioning broke across my skin and settled, heavy and sharp.<span style=""> </span>I felt dizzy.<span style=""> </span>The carpet was low and crushed.<span style=""> </span>Malcolm was in direct line of sight from the door.<span style=""> </span>He looked up, smiled once, and gestured for me to wait off to the side.<span style=""> </span>The phones did not ring and although he had a stack of papers in front of him, he only referenced them now and then.<span style=""> </span>He sat there and passed a few minutes buttoning and unbuttoning his shirt to his neck.<span style=""> </span>He did not look at me again.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">I stood beside the cooler, watching the occasional bubble belch and wobble to the surface.<span style=""> </span>The walls were covered with corkboard and tacked with signs explaining policy, billing, and customer satisfaction.<span style=""> </span>I read silently and took deep inhales of the air conditioning, as if I could store it somewhere in the cavity of my lungs or stomach for later use.<span style=""> </span>A few of his co-workers passed me, asked if I was being helped, and I nodded.<span style=""> </span>Malcolm said nothing.<span style=""> </span>I pushed a little.<span style=""> </span>I complimented a woman on shoes with jade decals that were too tight on her ankles.<span style=""> </span>I asked a man what time it was and pretended to adjust my watch.<span style=""> </span>When Malcolm Lamp didn’t object I knew it wasn’t a silence test, just a patience one.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">I slipped one foot out of my sandals and screwed it into the carpeting until I rubbed out a brush burn.<span style=""> </span>Then I asked out loud, but not to Malcolm directly, how much water there possibly was to manage in Albuquerque.<span style=""> </span>I hadn’t seen a single river since I crossed into the state.<span style=""> </span>On the four-day trip out to him, I drove over bridges that stretched above only more dipping, dry land.<span style=""> </span>These rivers had cracked soil, gray bushes, Indian names.<span style=""> </span>My hometown, Jim Thorpe, was named after an Indian, too.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">“There are reservoirs,” said Malcolm. <span style=""> </span>His voice was thin and light.<span style=""> </span>“Some places have private wells, but mostly water comes from the reservoirs.<span style=""> </span>It’s redirected from the Rio Grande.<span style=""> </span>And the Colorado River basin.”</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">“Sure,” I said.<span style=""> </span>I didn’t put my foot back in my shoe.<span style=""> </span>“But how does it get here?”</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">“How does it get here?” Malcolm lined up his paperwork.<span style=""> </span>“I don’t know.<span style=""> </span>A tunnel system, I think.<span style=""> </span>There’s a map of it somewhere.”</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">He was asking for a detail.<span style=""> </span>I looked around the corkboard for it.<span style=""> </span>I found it, too, a white map with blue lines.<span style=""> </span>The names for water and borders were in Spanish.<span style=""> </span>A thick black line linked the rivers together and transported water to several reservoirs denoted by black trapezoids.<span style=""> </span><i style="">26 Miles of Tunnels</i>, the black line read.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">Malcolm pushed out his chair.<span style=""> </span>“Okay,” he said, “are you tired of standing?”</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">I nodded.<span style=""> </span>My skin was still speckled with sweat from the walk to the office.<span style=""> </span>His looked fresh and dry.<span style=""> </span>Half-awake this morning, I’d heard him in the shower beneath all that transported water.<span style=""> </span>There was a communal bathroom at the end of the hallway.<span style=""> </span>The pipes in the walls announced when it was occupied, and sometimes there was a line.<span style=""> </span>Sometimes Malcolm Lamp told me to stand in it and, right when I got to the front, to circle back to the end.<span style=""> </span>I’d report to him with the minutes and hours people passed under the beat of the showerhead.<span style=""> </span>The data eased him, stabilized him.<span style=""> </span>I liked how tense he made me.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">“Okay,” he said again, standing up.<span style=""> </span>“Come take lunch with me.”</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">He talked about a restaurant but when he opened the front door and saw my face struck by heat, he redirected us back to the office break room.<span style=""> </span>The air conditioning was too good.<span style=""> </span>He took out a ten from his khakis and fed the snack machine, brought to the table air-filled bags of potato chips and sourdough pretzels, a box of raisins, something cheese-flavored and two bottles of soda.<span style=""> </span>He asked me what I ate for breakfast.<span style=""> </span>I told him.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">“That’s not what the peanuts are for,” he said sharply, then looked guilty and bought me fruit snacks.<span style=""> </span>He let me pick which soda I wanted, too.<span style=""> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">He told me the water authority was looking for paid interns.<span style=""> </span>He asked if I thought I had enough experience to apply.<span style=""> </span>He could put in a good word.<span style=""> </span>We could always use the extra money.<span style=""> </span>I thought of my brief stint in community college years ago but said I could work up a resume.<span style=""> </span>In Jim Thorpe I’d worked some reception in the tourist shops, done waitressing in an ice cream diner.<span style=""> </span>I’d volunteered at the visitor center, too, memorizing pamphlets for hiking and kayak adventure tours.<span style=""> </span>Malcolm had come in one day six weeks ago, tan and fresh from the Southwest and visiting friends.<span style=""> </span>It was raining in Jim Thorpe.<span style=""> </span>The climbing streets and anthracite mountains were slick, black, and the air mildewed.<span style=""> </span>We’d talked about Indians, how the athlete Jim Thorpe had to give back all his Olympic medals, as I walked Malcolm down to the river.<span style=""> </span>I’d decided to skip the rest of my shift and he asked if I was a very impulsive person.<span style=""> </span>We watched the kayaks slice through water pebbled by rain.<span style=""> </span>I asked how long he’d be visiting, and he asked me how long I could wait.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">We finished eating.<span style=""> </span>There were pieces of chips ground into my molars, and when I ran my tongue over them I tasted salt grains.<span style=""> </span>Malcolm kissed my cheek and arranged our chairs back under the table when we stood up.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">“I have to work until six, but you can stay outside for me, right?” he asked.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">It was two-thirty.<span style=""> </span>My skin was cool now, confident and bloated with the soda’s refrigerated carbonation.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">“Sure,” I said.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">“I think there’s a bench across from the parking lot,” Malcolm said.<span style=""> </span>“When it gets closer to four the sun hits just right and there’s shade then, too.”</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">“All right.”</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">“And the peanuts,” said Malcolm Lamp.<span style=""> </span>“Don’t worry, we’ll use them after work.”</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">I could tell he didn’t want me to press for more details.<span style=""> </span>Still, I almost opened my mouth.<span style=""> </span>He saw it on my face and tried to be serious, but I caught his lips quirking in one lapse of a smile.<span style=""> </span>I wished I hadn’t.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">“You’ll see,” he said.<span style=""> </span>He pushed an unopened bag of pretzels at me, asking me to eat all but exactly five before he finished work.<span style=""> </span>I nodded.<span style=""> </span>I thought of the pockets of air conditioning boxed inside my body.<span style=""> </span>I pictured myself tightening the lids, screwing the air in.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">As Malcolm sat down at his desk I stepped outside, and the heat unlatched my boxes and out flew the cold.<span style=""> </span>I blinked against the afternoon, found the green plastic bench, sat down.<span style=""> </span>The sun was huge and white above the water authority and kept shadows at the base of buildings and trees.<span style=""> </span>For a little I watched people pass in tank tops and shorts and crinkled cotton dresses, then I leaned back and let the heat suspend me.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">I dozed.<span style=""> </span>I thought.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">I saw of us both hunkered down inside a mattress.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">We were mattress spelunkers, explorers of the world of bedding and springs.<span style=""> </span>Malcolm had dug a hole right in the center of our pull-out sofa, through the covers and downward.<span style=""> </span>He was sitting on the edge of it, his legs dangling in.<span style=""> </span>He held out a rope made of bedsheets, the ones with the hibiscus print.<span style=""> </span>He hadn’t let me buy them until I could confirm they were anatomically correct.<span style=""> </span>It had taken me hours at the library, comparing encyclopedia diagrams of the petal and sepal to the ads in the paper.<span style=""> </span>Now he extended the rope to me.<span style=""> </span>I had to follow the tunnels.<span style=""> </span>I tied the rope around my waist as he told me how to make a bowline knot, square and overhand, a clove hitch.<span style=""> </span>I asked him how he knew so much and he said he didn’t.<span style=""> </span>He guessed at accuracy by watching my face, watching my skin redden under rope.<span style=""> </span>Tighter, he said, but he wouldn’t do it himself.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">My neck hurt from the angle on the bench and it pulled me out.<span style=""> </span>A shadow of bur oak stretched near my feet as the sun angled lower towards the red mountains.<span style=""> </span>I checked my watch just as Malcolm emerged from the office, his top button undone, looking easy and disinterested.<span style=""> </span>He walked a few blocks away before stopping and turning around to wave me towards him.<span style=""> </span>I got up and the bag of pretzels, forgotten, fell from my lap.<span style=""> </span>I ripped them open and dumped them all out on the ground, then picked up five and put them back in.<span style=""> </span>From this distance I didn’t think he would notice that I’d eaten none.<span style=""> </span>Still, it felt like cheating, and I almost wanted to get caught.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center; line-height: normal;" align="center"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center; line-height: normal;" align="center"><b style=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">III.</span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">We were back in the apartment, the fan buzzing.<span style=""> </span>It was getting dark and the room smelled like sweat and legumes.<span style=""> </span>They overpowered the citronella.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">On the walk home he hadn’t made me count the pretzels at all.<span style=""> </span>He’d taken the bag out of my hand and tossed it with almost an apology.<span style=""> </span>Maybe I’d misjudged him.<span style=""> </span>I thought he needed strictness, needed my submission for stability.<span style=""> </span>But without it now he was casual, making me nervous, like he thought the tests were just games.<span style=""> </span>It made it hard to stay empty.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">“What do you think?” he asked.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">I looked at him from the edge of the desk where I sat.<span style=""> </span>My sunburnt legs swung, taking turns, and the movement was making my head wobble.<span style=""> </span>I thought of the pretzels and chips, peanuts and soda.<span style=""> </span>All that sodium in me.<span style=""> </span>I felt dehydrated, like the salt of the earth.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">“About Albuquerque,” he said.<span style=""> </span>“I mean, I’m glad you’re here.”</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">And he said, “I’m glad you took the trip.”</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">And, “I just feel like it’s not what you expected.”</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">He was moving quickly around the room, excited.<span style=""> </span>He tossed a backpack onto the bed, added water bottles and refilled the brown paper bag with all the peanuts I’d cracked and cleaned for hours the evening before.<span style=""> </span>He swiped them in with two strokes of his hand.<span style=""> </span>He folded the top closed and zippered up his pack.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">I watched him from far away, through earth, from the bottom of a tunnel’s cavern.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">“Where are you going?” I asked.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">“We,” he said.<span style=""> </span>He opened the desk drawer and it bounced against the back of my calves.<span style=""> </span>He took out the hiking pamphlets and flashed them in my face with a grin.<span style=""> </span>“I told you about this place, but I want you to really see it.”</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">“I can see it,” I said. I didn’t know what we were talking about.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">He said no, that I hadn’t, that I’d only really ever heard it.<span style=""> </span>I’d heard him talk about it in Jim Thorpe, that day along the river.<span style=""> </span>I’d heard it in the names of the places in New Mexico, the roads and bridges named after tribes.<span style=""> </span>I’d heard it in the way the words sounded wispy and hollow like shells, in the coyotes from the back of the apartment complex.<span style=""> </span>But that wasn’t enough.<span style=""> </span>The heat was confusing things, keeping Albuquerque at a distance.<span style=""> </span>I’d come so far to be with him, he said, to be here.<span style=""> </span>It wasn’t fair, this heat.<span style=""> </span>Tonight he wanted to break through it.<span style=""> </span>For me.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">We took my car away from the city.<span style=""> </span>I hadn’t driven in a month, since I arrived.<span style=""> </span>The gas was low but Malcolm Lamp told me what streets to take, what lights to run, and we didn’t stop until the four lanes widened and the median ran out and the strip malls shrank back to clay earth and blue-gray grasses and pear cactus.<span style=""> </span>The mountains came barreling down on us.<span style=""> </span>The sky was dark, and huge.<span style=""> </span>My ears popped with the elevation change, and once we pulled free from the rich adobe homes nestled at the base of the cliffs Malcolm said to stop, pull over.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">In the dark I couldn’t make out the lift that ran from the welcome center at the bottom of the mountains to the peaks.<span style=""> </span>They weren’t like the eroded, quarry-gutted mountains in Jim Thorpe.<span style=""> </span>These were massive shapes that curled over top of my body as I approached.<span style=""> </span>I expected Malcolm to walk in front of me but instead he was at my elbow, step for step.<span style=""> </span>He smiled, but it was annoying, and disappointing, that he thought he could provide the details.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">And now this, this is where we are.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">In the periphery I see things move, dart.<span style=""> </span>I slow, put my heels to toe.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">Malcolm doesn’t rush me.<span style=""> </span>He swings his backpack off his shoulders.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">I want to look skyward but the heat has transferred from the air to beneath my sunburn.<span style=""> </span>In my thighs it rolls and shudders, and I have the urge to stretch out my legs and peel off in layers.<span style=""> </span>I want to be parsed apart by heat, have light focus enough to inspect each segmented part of me—the parts of want, when I keep myself just skin and air for the waiting.<span style=""> </span>And I will walk towards the mountains on land that isn’t mine, land I can’t pronounce, and Malcolm will only stare after me.<span style=""> </span>He’ll realize I am doing what he wants even before he has instructions ready, because it’s already mine premeditated.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">Now he’s ripping open the brown paper bag.<span style=""> </span>He’s scattering the peanuts at his feet.<span style=""> </span>I think at first he’s misconceived of seeds, how to properly transplant a growing creature.<span style=""> </span>But then he’s talking about attracting wild things, what he’s told me about—the roadrunners, the turtles, and the coyotes that follow other movements.<span style=""> </span>He keeps looking at me.<span style=""> </span>He looks at a loss, waiting for correction.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria;">Nighttime bugs nick off my cheeks.<span style=""> </span>The mountains still.<span style=""> </span>I sidestep the peanuts and wait for something in the distance to shift, then follow after it.<span style=""> </span>It’s strange, all this wanting.<span style=""> </span>Malcolm stays behind and does not repeat my name over the rustle of the paper bag.<span style=""> </span>But I know already I will turn around.<span style=""> </span>I know already the dry ground, and the heat that keeps it cracking.</span></p>Title Fightshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03645721097886240394noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5540500654593214421.post-66113108693672536612011-03-06T20:00:00.000-08:002011-03-06T20:18:18.028-08:00"Pat" by Eric Beetner<div><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">I felt the tips and the unclipped nails of a finger gun poking into my back before I heard, “Stick ‘em up,” in the voice I had known since middle school. My cousin, Pat. Again. God dammit.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /><br />I understand it, partly. I was the guy ten years older with all the friends, the cool car, the steady girlfriend and the healthy rumors that I’d slept with my friend Bobby’s Mom (no comment). As Pat grew up he idolized me. I’m not being conceited, he did. And I get it.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /><br />When I started doing jobs, getting a bit of a reputation as a hardass, I could always sense Pat in my shadow. If I was DeNiro he was my Harvey Keitel. See now, that sounds conceited again. I swear I’m not.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /><br />He was a gangly kid, socially awkward. I read some article on Asperger’s syndrome once and it sounded like they were describing Pat to a T. I felt bad for the kid and maybe that’s why I never shooed him away like a mosquito even when he buzzed in my ear.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /><br />Alway inserting himself into my business, Pat was. After I got my own apartment he’d show up unannounced just to, “Hang out.” We were cousins for fuck’s sake, not brothers or anything. I always had to chase him away by saying a girl was coming over, not that three guys with a half million in coke are coming by to divide it up on my glass top coffee table and hand me a bag full of hundred dollar bills for the pleasure. By the way, tell Aunt Joan hi for me. Not gonna happen.<br /></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br />I had nothing in common with the kid, nothing to say to him. He’d ask me all about the jobs I was working and I’d make up some bullshit that he and I both knew stunk up the room. Still, he was in friggin’ high school back then. Harmless, right?</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /><br />So he graduates, goes off to college and I don’t hear from him or about him for a couple of years. Felt like I dropped twenty pounds. His Mom and my Mom never got along and since my Mom died there was no reason to get updates about how he was doing at school or anything. Out of sight, out of mind.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /><br />Those were good years for me. I rose in the ranks. Got my own crew. I stayed out of trouble while making a hell of a lot of it. I remember the first time I realized I had the juice to get a guy killed. I said something in passing about a jerk off who hadn’t paid his bills and two days later he turns up dead, then little Jimmy Callaway comes into my office in the back of Fantasy Island (all nude, two drink minimum) and hands over the thirty-two grand the guy owed and says to me all cocky in that way of his, “It’s taken care of.”</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /><br />I’d ordered a hit and I didn’t even know it. I thought sure as shit I’d catch heat from above but they never even mentioned it except once about three months later at a big ten meeting when Alvy said, “Take Viggo here, he makes his own decisions. Doesn’t bother me with the petty shit. And he produces results <i>and</i> earnings.”</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /><br />Pretty decent endorsement, I’d say.<br /></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br />So I had autonomy, I inspired the right amount of fear in my crew due to years of proving myself capable of whatever it took which, by my count, added up to 127 broken fingers, four deaths, sixteen shattered kneecaps, two dead family pets, eight burned cars, two burned establishments, sixty-four broken noses (an estimate, actual numbers are hard to confirm) and workouts with a baseball bat, pistol butt, bowling pin, crowbar, tire iron, bricks and one high school soccer tournament trophy.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /><br />On my thirty-fifth birthday I treated myself to my first tattoo. It reads BADASS across the back of my neck just under where I grew my hair out.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /><br />While my hair was still growing is when Pat showed up in my life again.<br /></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br />He came out of the shadows like a recurring nightmare you think you’ve left behind once you stopped wetting the bed. He’d gotten tall and strong, but to talk to him was still an exercise in awkwardness. He still had that blank hero worship stare you get when you look at old pictures of Mark David Chapman.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /><br />And Pat wanted in.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /><br />I told him no, of course. But, same as high school, I didn’t tell him strong enough. He kept offering his services even though I said time and time again that we were full up and didn’t need the help and he should go get a decent job. I asked what he studied in college and he told me video game design. Perfect. Why not do that?</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /><br />The only job offer he’d been able to get wanted him to relocate to San Francisco and he’d never been out of the state so he turned it down. Idiot. Being locked in a cubicle with other nerds would be like a homecoming to him.<br /></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br />It started to get bad when he showed up at places other than my office or my apartment. An apartment, I should mention, that had changed three times since we last saw each other and I know for a fact that Aunt Joan doesn’t have the address. Persistent little fucker, Pat is.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /><br />People started asking questions. First they came from my crew wanting to know if this little pissant was going to start taking some of their action, accusing me of nepotism.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /><br />“Of course not,” I said. “He’s my cousin.”</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /><br />“Well, I think he’s fucking retarded,” said Jimmy.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /><br />One time I came back to my apartment and he was inside. I walked right in talking with Aldo Cruz about getting some new firepower for my boys. The stock they were currently carrying had passed its expiration date. I don’t know what Pat heard, but it didn’t make a good impression on Aldo when I appeared obviously shocked the kid was there and he started in to talking like he was my assistant or something.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /><br />After Aldo left Pat tried again to join up on my crew.<br /></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br />“You need guns, man? I can get you guns. Cheap too, cuz.” Fucking hated it when he called me “cuz” but he did it all the damn time.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /><br />When he said shit like that I knew he was poking around into more than just me. He knew his stuff. He knew names and faces of players like he was studying a baseball roster trying to pick a fantasy team. He was always trying to prove that he belonged in my little criminal empire. I told him it wasn’t up to me. I may seem big time to him but I was still tied to strings someone else was pulling.<br /><br /></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">He just didn’t get it. I’d say shit plain as could be right to his face and he’d keep on talking like I hadn’t said a word. Again, if he wasn’t my cousin I would have seriously fucked him up and thrown him out of a moving car fifty miles out of town.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /><br />But I didn’t. Idiot (me this time).<br /></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br />So here’s how he fucked it up so much that no one could ignore it any more: I went with two of my guys to pick up the delivery from Aldo. Twenty new pieces, clean and untraceable. Who shows up a second before the money drop? Pat. What does he have? Twenty new pieces, clean and untraceable. So he says anyway.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /><br />And what does he do? Starts offering me a discount. Says he’ll beat whatever price Aldo is, and I quote, “Raping you for.”</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /><br />To this day I don’t know how it didn’t erupt into a bloodbath right then. I think everyone involved was just so damn confused.<br /></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br />Aldo left, insulted, and took his merchandise with him. Pat stood there grinning like a fucking moron. You’d think I just told him he won our game of D&D, not that he fucked up a big money deal with an important person who could have me killed with one phone call.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /><br />I sent Pat away. I finally tore into him. By the time he walked out his face looked like I’d kicked his dog, fucked his prom date and pissed on all his Buffy The Vampire Slayer DVDs.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /><br />The next day I was summoned to see Alvy.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /><br />“You now we gotta do something here, right Vig?”</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /><br />“I know.”</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /><br />“You know you gotta be the guy to do it.”</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /><br />“I know that too.”</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /><br />“Aldo’s pissed. Took all I had to talk him down from doing it himself.”</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /><br />“Yeah, yeah.”</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /><br />“So you’ll take care of this?”</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /><br />“Yeah. I’ll take care of it.”</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /><br />“Good boy. And hey, before you do, find out where he gets the guns so cheap. Aldo and me go way back but business is business.”</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /><br />I nodded and left to go kill my cousin.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /><br />His apartment was as big a shithole as I figured it would be. It confirmed my theory that college is for suckers.<br /></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br />I figured the only way to do it would be to do it quick so I knocked on the door with my 9mm drawn.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /><br />“Who’s there?” he asked through the door. In this neighborhood, smart move.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /><br />“It’s me, Pat. Viggo.”</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /><br />I heard two deadbolts and the handle lock undo before the door swung open. In a tight t-shirt with faded jeans and without the usual slump in his shoulders Pat didn’t look as geeky as I remembered. Maybe being in his own space without that shitty perma-grin on his face trying to impress me with how much of a smart crook he could be served him well.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /><br />He stayed in the door, not inviting me in. “Hey, cuz. What’s up?”</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /><br />Hearing that word helped me pull the trigger. Two in the chest and I followed him inside as he fell.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /><br />I locked the door behind me and turned to him, lying on his back trying desperately to get a breath that would never come. I contemplated putting one in his brain to end the misery, but I swept my eyes over his apartment first. No other people – like I thought – just an orderly space devoid of much personality or character.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /><br />I’d started to let the doubt creep in. There was no evidence of the Pat I knew, or thought I did. No comic books, no movie posters on the wall. There was a TV across from the sofa but no gaming system hooked into it. Must all be in the bedroom, I thought. Or maybe he’s just dirt poor because I won’t let him join the crew and he doesn’t have a job as far as I know.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /><br />I realized I no longer heard his choking gasps. I looked down. He was still.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /><br />A floorboard creaked, made more obvious in the new silence. I spun to face the bedroom door just as a young man came out, a .38 leading the way. I fired twice. One caught his chest and one in the neck. He went down spraying blood in a wide streak on the wall.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /><br />The .38 skittered under an ottoman and I knew I wouldn’t have too much time after four shots to get the hell out of there. Even in this neighborhood a gun fight would draw at least one call to the cops.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /><br />My eye was drawn down to something shiny. On the belt of the man I’d just killed, some friend of Pat’s – maybe the guy who got him the guns? – was the worst thing I could have seen. A badge.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /><br />I moved at hyper speed. I gathered as much as I could from the apartment and the two dead bodies inside. My cousin Pat was a fed. Video game design my ass. He’d been at the academy. Sneaky fucker.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /><br />I found a file on me and similar files on my whole crew. He’d been at this for a while. Since the day he showed up in my life again with his little finger gun in my back, he’d been angling to take me down.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /><br />Jealousy? Bitterness that I never let him? I didn’t know what it was that motivated him, but I couldn’t help feel like it was personal. He’d gone down the route of law enforcement with one goal – to take me out.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /><br />He must have sold the brass on his “in” with me from the very start, otherwise he’d be pushing papers for years before he got a plum assignment like this. All the questions he asked made sense. Hell, all the answers he already had like who everyone was and what Aldo was selling. And why he never busted me outright, that all came down to what I’d told him about someone else pulling the strings.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /><br />God damn. The little geek.<br /></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br />A knock at the door. I’d wasted too much time.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /><br />No one called out “police.” No one ordered me to open up. That meant it wasn’t beat cops called in by a neighbor down the hall. Fuck if I was going to wait to find out what flavor badge he’d be flashing.<br /></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br />I aimed three shots at the door and heard a body fall as soon as the echoes from the shots faded away.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /><br />I hopped the fire escape, left my car where it was and made for a safe house and a new car for just this purpose. That was two weeks ago.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /><br />In the back of your head you always know you might have to leave it all behind in an instant like that. You never think you’ll have to actually do it though.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /><br />I’m headed west. Maybe San Francisco. At first I hated him even more, but now I’ve come around to some kind of respect. It turned out the dumbest fucker I ever knew was really the smartest. I guess college is worth something after all.<br /><br /><br />*<br /><br /><br />Eric Beetner ran out of paper when he was writing this. So he used the back of the constitution and the front of the Mona Lisa. We're glad he did.<br /></span> </div>Title Fightshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03645721097886240394noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5540500654593214421.post-32227791919538552222011-03-03T16:18:00.001-08:002011-03-03T16:27:59.101-08:00Pat by Aralis BloiseIt wasn’t the most exiting job in the world, but after a grueling semester of nursing school, Emily was happy to be doing some work that was not only easy, but also paying. Her mother had been completely against her getting a job in retail, she was afraid that Emily would become complacent in the job and forget all about college. And would that even be so bad really? Getting paid to hand people clothing was not such a bad future when compared to emptying bedpans and inoculating screaming toddlers. She needed to take a break from school and figure things out, and this was the perfect place to do it.<br /><br />Then she walked in. Pat Lynne was a middle aged woman wearing a gray suit and a sour expression. She came at Emily as if they were already in a fight.<br /><br />“Don’t you have any decent clothes in this place?”<br /><br />Emily wished the woman would have been more specific, and she tried to mention this as delicately as she could.<br /><br />“What exactly are you looking for?”<br /><br />“Something that doesn’t suck!” she waved her hand around the place in<br />disgust. “All you have out here is crap. Don’t you carry anything meant for people over the age of fifteen?”<br /><br />That was an odd thing to say, considering the store was famous for their conservative attire, but maybe jeans were just not this woman’s cup of tea. All she had to do was steer her toward the dress department or perhaps business casual and she was sure she could make a sale. “If you tell me what you are looking for, I’ll be glad to help you.”<br /><br />After a variety of new derogatory comments, Emily was able to find out that the woman needed to get a complete wardrobe since the airline had lost her luggage on her way to Miami, where she was starting a new job. Having gained an understanding for the bad mood, coupled with the almost certainty of a hefty commission, she set out to put some outfits together. However, no matter what she came up with, the response was some kind of sneer, that is, whenever she could be bothered to turn away from her phone to respond. This of course, would be an indication that Emily should leave Pat alone to shop at her leisure, but whenever she tried to walk away, she was accused of 'being lazy' and 'not wanting to do her job.'<br /><br />“You’re no salesperson!” she told Emily before going back to yelling at the<br />person on the phone.<br /><br />After nearly two hours, she finally settled on a pair of black pants and a couple of<br />tops. She threw a couple of credit cards on the counter like a John trying to humiliate a prostitute in a particularly bad made-for-TV movie and then demanded that Emily use the one with the lower balance. Emily, of course, had no way to know which one that was. A confusion which Pat took as insolence and yelled at her to do whatever she wanted.<br /><br />Emily just grabbed on card at random and rang her up as fast as was humanly possible. But even after Pat finally left the store, Emily could still feel that air of negativity. Suddenly the thought of having to deal with people like her on a daily basis seemed like a nightmare. Why should she be kissing someone’s ass for a few cents commission when she could be saving lives instead? She was back in school by the end of the week.<br /><br />What Emily never knew, was that it was no mere coincidence that Pat ended up at her store looking for new clothes. It was in fact orchestrated by a Mr. Steward Connelly, who managed to make her luggage “disappear” after a particularly exhausting flight from Boston to Miami. Not forever of course, just temporarily misplaced as passive aggressive payback for five miserable hours of insults, gay slurs and an entire plate of (allegedly undercooked) lasagna thrown at him. That, in addition of having to calm and console all the other passengers that fell victim to the wrath of 5-C.<br /><br />No passenger got it worse than poor 5-D, a miserable soul who’s only crime was<br />occupying space next to Pat. She was annoyed by his arm on the armrest, his overhead light, the noise he made when he turned pages on his book and the noise that escaped from his earbuds, a surprising fact since his iPod was turned off at the time. It got so bad, that he ended up forfeiting his business class seat for an empty one on the last row of coach when spent the rest of the flight commiserating with the steward about having to deal with that for a living.<br /><br />“Get a room.” Sneered Pat, as she passed them on her way to the lavatory.<br /><br />It seemed she has bypassed the first class bathroom for the one in the back just for the chance to embarrass the steward in front of her handsome and definitely straight former seat mate.<br /><br />As it turned out, that was the one thing Pat had got right. Just as Steward was sneaking away from the loading dock, where he had finished convincing a burly, closeted baggage handler with a fondness for flight attendants to hide Pat’s luggage for a couple of days, he ran into 5-D, who promptly asked if he could buy him a drink as thanks for making the flight bearable. It wasn’t long before they took another flight together, this time to Vermont, where they exchanged vows in a tasteful ceremony which would have horrified Pat - a staunch homophobe.<br /><br />This was all made possible, by the board of trustees at Amalgamated Global Bank. Pat’s place of employment, although grateful for all her contributions to the development of the company, could no longer stand the strain on morale that having her at the office caused. Pat’s record as investment banker was flawless. She had an eerie knack for predicting stock futures that made her an invaluable asset. Firing her was not something they could afford, but neither was loosing more personnel who refused to deal with her. The whole Miami branch was invented for the sole purpose of keeping her employed, but in another place entirely.<br /><br />Unknown to everyone involved, including Pat herself, was that she was blessed with the ability to predict the future, and steer people towards the right path. And so she went through the world, spreading misery and unexpectedly good fortune to everyone she encountered.<br /><br />***<br /><br />So next time you're on a flight with Courtney Love, remember, it's only fate operating in the most mysterious ways. Aralis Bloise is a first time fighter, throwing it down like a pro.Title Fightshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03645721097886240394noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5540500654593214421.post-71152972739603767532011-03-01T12:16:00.000-08:002011-03-01T13:01:45.999-08:00This Month in Title Fights: A Bit of a Bit You Know.<style>@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }a:link, span.MsoHyperlink { color: blue; text-decoration: underline; }a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed { color: purple; text-decoration: underline; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }</style> <p class="MsoNormal">A horse walks into a bar with a broken leg. The bartender says, “What’s going on with Title Fights this month?” </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Because the horse can’t get enough of us, he says, “They’re doing bits of old jokes.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span>The bartender says, “Like the ‘set’em up-knock’em down’ kind?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span>The horse says, “Yeah.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span>The bartender says, “That’s lame.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span>And the horse says, “Too far.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span>The bartender says, “Sorry. How can I get a title?”<span style=""> </span>The horse says, “Marry up,” and the house-band drummer does a rim-shot.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span>Then the horse says, “Send an email to <a href="mailto:titlefights@gmail.com">titlefights@gmail.com</a>, and they will give you your title.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span>The bartender says, “What’s the deadline?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span>The horse says, “March 31.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span>The bartender says, “This bit is going on a while, huh?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span>The horse says, “Yep.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span>The bartender says, “Do you think if I walk away, it will stop?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span>The horse says, “Give it a try,” and the bartender turns and</p>Title Fightshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03645721097886240394noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5540500654593214421.post-50150265112664258352011-03-01T07:01:00.000-08:002011-03-01T07:06:32.361-08:00Pat by Richard Jay Goldstein<span style="font-family:Century Schoolbook;font-size:100%;">Is me. Pat. Which is not my name. Not Patrick or Patricia or Patton or Patrice or Patience or Patroclus. But I call me that Pat, because I'm standing pat. Got my story down pat. Never mind my old name. I'm Pat.</span> <p><span style="font-family:Century Schoolbook;font-size:100%;">Pat. Patter. Pitter pat.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Century Schoolbook;font-size:100%;">Pat backwards is tap. A tap's a pat's a tap. Too much pat is a tap and that's why.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:Century Schoolbook;font-size:100%;">Some of us are backwards. Can't help it. But I'm not.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Century Schoolbook;font-size:100%;">Upside down is me. Weightless. Was. No, now I'm Pat. Pat. Not someone else. I'm standing pat like a pat of butter.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Century Schoolbook;font-size:100%;">Sometimes I see it. Eyes. Ten thousand million billion eyes. Diamond eyes. Glass sharp eyes. Looking. Looking at me. At you too. Who's who.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Century Schoolbook;font-size:100%;">Is me. Is me. Hold on. <i>Is me</i>. Otherwise they come. Sharp things. Not eyes, but needle things. Then there's dark, which is good, but sleep dreams, which is bad.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Century Schoolbook;font-size:100%;">I remember. You think I don't, but I do. </span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Century Schoolbook;font-size:100%;">There's the pole of fire. Not really a pole, I know that. But like a pole. But real fire. No sharp things. That's just what I used to call it. Pole of fire. Just a ship. Space ship. I know that. You think I don't, but I do. And us in that tiny little little tiny pod thing.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Century Schoolbook;font-size:100%;">Mars, where we were going. Pat to Mars. Stand pat on Mars. Me and them. All them. Russian, Japanese, Chinese, German. Global crew, they said. No no no. It's all red. It's the eyes. The star eyes. They told me.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Century Schoolbook;font-size:100%;">I'm asleep. No needles. See, I'm asleep.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Century Schoolbook;font-size:100%;">I'll whisper. I'm pat Pat.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Century Schoolbook;font-size:100%;">The moon fooled us. We went there, no problem. Bad moon. But we went further. We did. That was me, us. Past the moon.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Century Schoolbook;font-size:100%;">What was it we didn't know? Gravity something? Solar something? Something something?</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Century Schoolbook;font-size:100%;">Past the moon. On course, of course. Pitter pat of little pat rocket motors.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Century Schoolbook;font-size:100%;">Then the eyes. Star eyes. Billions. Billions of billions. Staring. At me. A pat down. But only I could see eyes. Only me. Why? I eye, captain. Or hear what they said, the eyes. Not said, like to hear, but see what they said. Letters. Pictures. In the stars. The eyes.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:Century Schoolbook;font-size:100%;">Or they had voices, the eyes. Vices of voices. Sharp glass voices. Or one voice, that big.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Century Schoolbook;font-size:100%;">I warned them all, the others. I warned them. <i>Look,</i> I said, <i> they say go back. It's not for us.</i> But they didn't listen. So I patted them. One by one. What else could I do? Just a pat for each one. From Pat the Patter. Then turned the ship, flew back. Like the eyes said. I'm a good pilot. Got it down pat.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Century Schoolbook;font-size:100%;">It was the eyes. The bright sharp eyes. They made me. So many. So sharp. We can't go there, they said, with their pictures, their glass voices. How could we? I had to come back, to tell them. They didn't like the patted ones, too red, too pat, but I had to tell them. They didn't see it, so big, so <i>watchful,</i> so many sharp eyes.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Century Schoolbook;font-size:100%;">Here they come, sharp needles and sleep dreams I don't like. Pat them too. Maybe.</span></p><p>*</p><p>Richard Jay Goldstein dropped his story off in the middle of the night. Woke me up. Had night vision goggles on. My dog was barking and oh my god it hurt our ears. That might be why he didn't stay long.<br /></p>Title Fightshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03645721097886240394noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5540500654593214421.post-2081060258164506032011-03-01T06:59:00.000-08:002011-03-01T07:00:59.321-08:00We did it!You thought about it, you heard about it:<br /><br />'If you give X number of writers the same titles, you'll get X number of different stories back! Ah ha! We did it!<br /><br />Enjoy as the stories roll out over the next forever!Title Fightshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03645721097886240394noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5540500654593214421.post-19108054011507707652011-02-12T12:54:00.000-08:002011-02-12T13:00:00.354-08:00Fall in Love With Fighting!Ahoy!<br /><br />Yeah, we have a theme for February, but we're not telling you what it is. You just send an e-mail on over to titlefights@gmail.com and we'll go ahead and send you a title. The deadline is going to be Feb. 28th. The stories will be posted early March.<br /><br />This is open to everyone, very open to absolutely everyone. Send us something you enjoyed writing, and something you can be proud of.<br /><br />Read you soon,<br /><br />- danTitle Fightshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03645721097886240394noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5540500654593214421.post-92159183895339635332011-01-02T08:37:00.000-08:002011-01-02T08:41:22.525-08:00Your New Year's Resolution: Submit for JanuaryHappy New Year Title Fighters! Celebrate a time of new beginnings and boundless hope and optimism by submitting stories for this month's theme: Famous Last Words. To get started just shoot an email over to <a href="mailto:titlefights@gmail.com">titlefights@gmail.com</a> and request a title, write a story, submit it, and start 2011 with a bang.<br /><br />It's a brand new decade, people. Kick it off right.Title Fightshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03645721097886240394noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5540500654593214421.post-5884723625645713892011-01-01T15:08:00.000-08:002011-01-01T15:09:23.423-08:00Parade of the Wooden Soldiers by Jimmy CallawayNeil Powack (director of media relations, Central Intelligence Agency): The very idea that the CIA would employ actors in the capacity being discussed here is ludicrous. And actors such as these men? Beyond ludicrous.<br /><br />Conner Tomlinson (adult film star): Well, they would say that, wouldn’t they? They said Chuck Barris was a liar, too. Hell, even I still think Barris was full of shit. But I know what I did, and what others have done. Whether anybody else knows or believes or cares doesn’t change that one bit.<br /><br />“Big” Jim McGarrity (talent scout/agent): It’s almost to the point where I don’t believe it, and I was there at the very beginning. I had a little office down on Chatworth, a little strip-mall type place that I repped out of: models, strippers, and actors. Mostly women, y’know, I didn’t get into this biz to look at dicks all day. But some of those dicks brought me in a nice ten-percent, so I always had a couple of the boys on the payroll.<br /><br />Anyways, one day, this little guy in a brown suit, glasses, real Wally Cox-type comes in and asks me if I want to help serve my country. I says to him, “I’d rather get paid, mister.” And he just smiles a little, and I’ll never forget this, he says, “Mr. McGarrity, that’s what I said.”<br /><br />Bob Tyron (adult film star): I was having a good time, man, a fuckin’ great time. I was getting paid tons of money to fuck the world’s most beautiful women. I had more money than I could spend, and more pussy than I knew what to do with. <br /><br />I spend a lotta time these days, man, thinking about why I gave up all of that, started not just a whole new life, but a life no-one woulda even dreamed I could have. I think about that a lot and, man, y’know? <br /><br />I just don’t know.<br /><br />Johnny Reardon (adult film star): Oh, I know exactly why I went to work for the CIA. The same exact reason I went into porn: girls and money.<br /><br />Those are the only reasons to do anything, really.<br /><br />Conner Tomlinson: I never had any real love for my government. Especially all that censorship stuff, they arrested Harry Reams, the whole Deep Throat trials. It was all a sham, and a fascist sham at that. But then this company man came along, giving me a bunch of patriotic talk and how freedom wasn’t free and all this. And I’ll admit it did kind of begin to stir up in me some love for my country.<br /><br />But not as much as the huge sums of money he offered me.<br /><br />Johnny Reardon: He never gave us a name, just said he was with the government. We didn’t even know he was CIA until after we’d had basic. Tomlinson always called him “the company man,” so that was a good enough name for the rest of us to call him.<br /><br />“Big” Jim McGarrity: All I told those boys was this man wanted to see them, to be all down at my office that Monday morning. The company man came in, and he gave them some shit about how true heroes didn’t need recognition, and how America needed some true heroes. I remember he mentioned that our government at the time depended on men like them to do the dirty work, men who were not afraid to get in there and do what must be done. Hell, I’ll be honest, by the time he was done, I was ready to join up for the cause.<br /><br />And all the boys pretty much signed up right then and there. I never saw a one of ‘em again.<br /><br />Conner Tomlinson: I guess besides the money, there was something else that appealed, though at the time, I wouldn’t have admitted it. Basically, I was bored. We all were. And what the company man was offering us, it didn’t sound boring at all.<br /><br />Bob Tyron: I remember looking around at the others, like, Can you fucking believe what we’re hearing? We’re porn stars, man, we’re not soliders or whatever. Definitely not patriots. I’ve never voted once in my life. I looked over at Johnny, and he was just like, y’know, whatever. Malcolm [Comstock] was all hyped up, his face all red, although that was probably all the coke he was doing at the time. Walt [Malice], you could never get a bead on, you could never tell what he was thinking. But I saw the look on Conner’s face, man, this look like, it was just like, y’know? Finally. Finally, we’re gonna do something.<br /><br />Conner Tomlinson: Bob’s a nice guy, but he was a fucking idiot. Still is, I’d imagine.<br /><br />Bob Tyron: See, I may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but here’s what I think I got figured out. None of us went into porn with our eyes closed. We knew the score, man, we were just pieces of meat. Nobody’s watching these films for us, for our acting abilities. They just wanna see the girls. And really, for the most part, that’s just fine.<br /><br />Still.<br /><br />A guy’s gotta have an identity of his own, y’know?<br /><br />A fuckin’ purpose.<br /><br />Johnny Reardon: No, I never understood why they picked us. I never thought to ask, frankly. Why wouldn’t anybody want me to do anything? I’m a fucking god. And I mean that literally.<br /><br />The fucking part, anyways. Not so much the god part.<br /><br />Conner Tomlinson: I asked the company man that once, why us. A buncha porn stars. It was after he’d given us his big pitch and we’d all signed our lives away. I said there’s gotta be thousands of guys out there who’d already had the training, who didn’t need to be persuaded with a ton of money. So why headhunt us, y’know, why bother?<br /><br />He just looked at me and said I’d answered my own question.<br /><br />I still don’t know what that’s supposed to mean. And I think I’d rather it stay that way.<br /><br />Johnny Reardon: Basic training sucked big ol’ balls. I fuckin’ hated it, but whatever. The shit I’d been through my whole life, I could handle six weeks of some loudmouth needle-dick screaming in my face.<br /><br />Conner Tomlinson: Basic was as bad as they tell you, but it definitely helped that there was only the five of us. To this day, I don’t even know where the base was that they trained us at. They flew us there in the dead of night, black bags over our heads and everything. I think we all still thought it was a gag or something, like McGarrity was just fucking with us.<br /><br />Bob Tyron: Aw, man, basic. The fuckin’ worst, man. This D.I., his name was Owens. At least that was what they said his name was. Just a real uptight prick, man.<br /><br />Conner Tomlinson: Owens ran us like dogs, but frankly, I think we all needed it. Nothing fazes Reardon, and Bob’s too dumb to really take anything too seriously. But Malcolm, that guy was a world-class fuck-up. And you could tell he really took to being bossed around like that, humiliated in the name of making himself a better soldier. I’m no psychologist, but anybody could tell you that guy had serious daddy issues.<br /><br />Johnny Reardon: I’d known Malcolm Comstock for a while, I worked with him on his first film, Permission to Come Aboard. Me and him teamed Christy Canyon. He was a nice enough guy, pretty funny guy. But his shoots would go on and on for hours sometimes.<br /><br />He couldn’t keep his dick hard to save his life.<br /><br />Conner Tomlinson: And Walt, well, shit. I never liked Walt, but nobody really did in our old lives either. And to do what we were doing, being likeable was not a requirement. But I remember once when we were out on the artillery range, I looked over at Walt as we were both reloading, and not to sound corny, but he had this look on his face, it was just...beatific. I can’t think of another word for it. And the thought occurred to me—and not for the first time—that we were finally home.<br /><br />Johnny Reardon: The guy was fucking crazy. End of story.<br /><br />Conner Tomlinson: I mean, obviously, I was wrong about Walt. But whatever happened later, I felt really good at that time. Really good, to where I can still remember how it felt. And you know, that’s enough for me. I don’t care what happened after that. There was a time when all was right with the world.<br /><br />And surprisingly enough to no one less than myself, I wasn’t having an orgasm at the time.<br /><br />Bob Tyron: But when the real black-ops training started, man, that was fuckin’ great! They teach you how to kill a guy in five thousand different ways, man! Just crazy shit. All those James Bond gadgets and everything. A pen that is also a hand grenade. Condoms made out of a solidified flesh-eating bacteria. Man, that’s some cold-blooded shit. A solid year of that, can you fuckin’ imagine?<br /><br />Conner Tomlinson: While we’re away at CIA death-dealing camp, they found body doubles for each of us to continue acting in our place. And to continue partying in our place too, I’d guess. I have no idea where they dug these guys up. But I’d be willing to guess they were mighty grateful for that assignment.<br /><br />Johnny Reardon: Black-ops training was hands down my favorite part of this whole thing. For a year, they trained us in just about every form of martial arts I’d ever heard of, and several more I didn’t even know existed. We learned counter-intelligence, counter-espionage, fuckin’ counter-everything. I’d never felt before like I was less of a man or anything. But after that year, I wondered how I had ever been able to look myself in the mirror, not knowing how to kill a man with his own kneecap.<br /><br />Conner Tomlinson: Personally, I found the book-work we did in that year far more interesting, far more useful. All that false flag stuff, how to work propaganda, basically all ways to get people to do your job for you. I’d always suspected that the human animal was, at its most basic, completely brainless. Now I was having it confirmed for me.<br /><br />Johnny Reardon: So those early years in Nicaragua were a blast, really. Those monkeys down there, they loved us. A lotta the guys working under us, the Contras, each squad had, like, whole libraries of porn videos. So they knew who we were, although obviously we weren’t officially even there at all. But they knew. <br /><br />If you want to fuck somebody, you call on old Uncle Sam.<br /><br />Conner Tomlinson: I can count on one hand the number of wet jobs I actually went on in Nicaragua. The company man felt my strength was in propaganda, y’know, in an advisory role a lot of the time. It helped that I spoke fluent Spanish. Hell, I was married to Victoria Del Chichonas for most of the late ‘70s. So I knew how to speak Spanish as well as how to fuck with people’s heads.<br /><br />Bob Tyron: I don’t wanna sound, y’know, like...I know killing is wrong and stuff. But y’know, they say the same thing about fucking, too, right? And yeah, maybe both things are wrong, y’know, morally speaking or whatever. But you know what else?<br /><br />I’m pretty good at both of ‘em.<br /><br />Johnny Reardon: Walt never did anything really weird that whole time, even though he definitely was no fun to hang around with. But he never had been, really. And he was a consummate professional. Once, we running an exfiltration on some chemical warheads the Sandinistas had gotten a hold of, and this fuckin’ Sandy dropped out of nowhere with a knife to my throat. I barely got out a squawk, and Walt dusted that motherfucker, bingo. Right between the eyes. One-Shot Malice, I called him after that.<br /><br />Bob Tyron: Yeah, Malcolm was an okay guy, and y’know, he was definitely on edge. I dunno if it was too many drugs or not enough or whatever. There was one time when he and I went in to take out this rabble-rouser, this workers’ organizer named Cisco Francesco. We watched him for a few days, learned he went and saw his mistress every Tuesday at around siesta time. So we set up shop across the street from her apartment. Malcolm was a good sniper, y’know, definitely the best out of all of us dudes. So he sets up his rifle, he gets a bead on the guy as he’s across the street, fucking away. And his goddamn rifle jams.<br /><br />It was no big deal, y’know, fuckin’ plan B, I just walked across the street and slit both their throats. But man, Malcolm was so pissed, screaming and carrying on, I thought the whole neighborhood was gonna come out and wonder what the fuck was going on. The guy had tears running down his face, he was so mad. Eventually, I got him calmed down and we got the fuck out of there. I never really gave it much of a second thought, y’know.<br /><br />I guess I should have.<br /><br />Johnny Reardon: Man, that was a great story. We all broke Malcolm’s balls for a week on that one. But yeah, looking back, fuckin’ Walt never laid off the guy.<br /><br />Bob Tyron: Walt was a mean guy. I mean, I’d been there when it looked like Malcolm was cracking, y’know, I’d seen it. But he was, y’know, he was one of us. A brother-in-arms, man. <br /><br />But Walt was always ragging on Malcolm, man. Little things, y’know, calling him Mrs. Comstock, or Ol’ Limpy. Shit like that. Really childish, man.<br /><br />Conner Tomlinson: I guess that’s where my leadership skills should be called into question. I won’t deny it. But I will say in my defense that we’d all had the same training, we’d all been doing the work for a good amount of time. If Walt or Malcolm were going to go section-eight, I don’t know what I could have done about it, even then.<br /><br />So Nicaragua went okay, despite the end results. By the time of the Ollie North trials, though, we were all already in El Salvador. And of course, that’s where it all pretty much ended.<br /><br />Johnny Reardon: If you ask me, I don’t think there ever was a biological weapon, any kinda super-virus. You ask me, they had run over our black budget, and the company man set us up to get taken out. Fuckin’ suicide mission. But nobody’s ever asked me, and really, who cares. I made it home alive.<br /><br />That’s all that matters.<br /><br />Bob Tyron: Yeah, El Salvador coulda gone a whole lot better, man. But then again, I guess it coulda been worse. Fuckin’ I dunno.<br /><br />Conner Tomlinson: The mission was fairly simple, not unlike any other operation, really. Word was the FMLN had this scientist set up in a secret lab deep in the jungle in some old monastery or something like that. His name was something like...Van Hessel? Van Husserel. Dr. Van Husserel. Some expatriated Nazi or something. It all sounds like the plot of a bad movie, I know. I’ve been in a few.<br /><br />Johnny Reardon: Supposedly, this Van Husserel was working on a virus that specifically targeted the genetic structure of Caucasians Put a little of it in the drinking fountain at the Pentagon, and next thing you know, every white person there was gonna have their intestines shooting out their assholes. Couldn’t have that, God knows.<br /><br />Bob Tyron: The company man told us, or told Conner anyways, that there wasn’t much security, y’know, the fuckin’ Femmies didn’t even believe this Van Husserel could deliver on his promise. And that was true, the five of us got in that night with very little resistance or whatever.<br /><br />But once inside, we almost got compromised by a couple guards, so we had to split up. That’s how Walt and Malcolm got to the lab before we did.<br /><br />Conner Tomlinson: It had been a while since I had actually been in the field, so I think I was more concentrating on getting back into the groove, y’know, I wasn’t paying much attention to much else. Completely my fault, and I am one lucky son of a bitch that I didn’t pay for that mistake with my life.<br /><br />By the time Johnny, Bob, and I got to the lab, Van Husserel was already bleeding out on the floor. There was a lot of blood, but that was nothing new. But I guess that’s why I didn’t notice that Walt was already bleeding like a stuck pig.<br /><br />Johnny Reardon: Walt said they’d taken another couple guards by surprise on their way down to the lab. He said Malcolm fucked up and his guy got away from him, and the guy managed to stick Walt before Walt slit his throat for him. Even at the time, under pressure, the clock ticking, it sounded like bullshit to me.<br /><br />Bob Tyron: Malcolm just sat there at the lab table, fuckin’ Bunsen burners and whatever all over the place, broken glass. He just sat there and hung his head.<br /><br />Conner Tomlinson: Walt said he’d beaten the truth out of the good doctor Van Husserel, that he held in his hand a syringe of the only perfected batch of the super-virus. He said we had saved America again, that he was the fucking Lizard King, I don’t remember his exact words. I was trying to get them to come on, we had to burn the place out. I had already called in the coordinates, and air support was on its way to fire-bomb the place back to the Mayans.<br /><br />Johnny Reardon: Walt looks at me and he says, “This is fucked.” I dunno why me, I didn’t like him or dislike him more than any of the others, but he says, “This is all fucked. We have been fucked.” And he’s bleeding out. I say something like, C’mon, Walt, let’s get home, we’ll patch you up. And for a second, he looked like he got his head back, and he took a step toward me.<br /><br />And then he just collapsed.<br /><br />Bob Tyron: Walt’s bleeding out, he can’t even stand. Malcolm’s just sitting there. I come over, I say, y’know, “Malcolm, c’mon, man.” And he looks up at me, and he was...he was just so pale. And I knew it before he even said it. <br /><br />“Walt infected me.”<br /><br />Conner Tomlinson: All I knew was we had to get the fuck out of there. We can conjecture all day if we want to, but even had I known then exactly what had happened between Walt and Malcolm, it wouldn’t have made any difference. If we’d hung around, Walt would have been right.<br /><br />We would have been fucked.<br /><br />Bob Tyron: I said, y’know, “What? What’re you talking about?” And Walt looks up at me, looks up at Johnny, he says, “I had to preserve a sample, man. You guys have got to take Malcolm back, let the lab boys get a sample from him.”<br /><br />And I was like, “Man, are you out of your fucking mind?”<br /><br />Johnny Reardon: I guess carrying the sample home in the syringe would have made too much sense. No, I’ll tell you exactly what happened: Malcolm fucked up and got Walt stabbed, so Walt infected him with a virus that would turn his digestive tract into fuckin’ molten lava. Walt was an asshole.<br /><br />Malcolm was a bigger asshole.<br /><br />Bob Tyron: So I grab Malcolm, I say, “Look, we’ll fuckin’ get this shit straightened out at home, let’s get the fuck outta here.” And Malcolm says, “Yeah, let’s get the fuck out of here.” And for a second, I was like, Sweet, he’s thinking clearly.<br /><br />Then he grabbed my .45 out of my belt.<br /><br />Conner Tomlinson: The official story in the Adult Video News was that Malcolm Comstock died quietly of pancreatic cancer at his home in Malibu, and a week later, Walt Malice died after he ran his Ferrari off the road in the Hollywood Hills. But I was there.<br /><br />Malcolm shot Walt in the face. And then Malcolm shot Malcolm in the face.<br /><br />Johnny Reardon: I’d suspected our run was about through before then. And after that, I knew for a fact it was over. But here I sit now with plenty of what? That’s right.<br /><br />Money and girls.<br /><br />Bob Tyron: This set-up we got now, y’know, it’s not bad. I can’t see my family or nothin’, but y’know. I never really cared much about that anyways. We can’t leave these grounds, but we’ve got plenty of money, and y’know, the fuckin’ Internet, it’s pretty much like having the outside world brought to your door.<br /><br />Plus the CIA flies in all kinds of girls for us to fuck.<br /><br />Conner Tomlinson: It’s pretty much just summer camp for the rest of our lives. Which, when you think about it, is not unlike the adult entertainment industry. My freedom, such as it was, is sorely missed sometimes. But I’m a big boy, I knew what I was doing when I signed up with the company. And I made it out alive.<br /><br />There’s one thing you learn right away when you show up at your first shoot, your first audition, or whatever. It’s a jungle out there, it really is. And there’s only one law in the jungle.<br /><br />Fuck or be fucked.<br /><br />Of course now, I’m hard-pressed sometimes to tell which is which.Title Fightshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03645721097886240394noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5540500654593214421.post-72846723563074925572010-12-29T17:14:00.000-08:002010-12-29T17:16:35.628-08:00Up on the Housetop by Brian S. RoeBlog Post “Mark’s Shining World” 12-18-2010:<br /><br />“Good to see my corporate masters are doing so well right before the holidays. Yes that’s right, Allied Intelligence Technologies is running deep in the red. Bonuses are going to be slight if nonexistent this year. It’s stupid that we come to rely on them but the last couple of years have been sweet. Now when we don’t get them, and need them. They pull them away like we’ve been bad puppies or something. I guess it’s like feeding birds or a stray cat. If they keep feeding us we’ll keep showing up.<br /><br />XMas is going to be a little barren for the family this year. I’ll still get them all something but I’ve got a ton of DVDs and games that need bought for little ol’ me. And since I can’t count on The Fam to get the right ones then the responsibility falls on my capable shoulders.”<br /><br /><br />Blog Post “Mark’s Shining World” 01-14-2011:<br /><br />“Well a big fucking Happy NEW Year to you A.I.T.!!! Lay me off?! Me? I’m not saying that I will but I could shut your whole little playhouse down. I’ve got the I.T. keys to your kingdom babies. And to walk me out on a Friday? In front of everybody else? Were you trying to piss me off? Were you trying to get me to shut you down? I can you know!”<br /><br /><br />Tweet from MFMark 01-15-2011:<br /><br />“drunK man drunk. fuck them all man. drunk”<br /><br /><br />Tweet from MFMark 01-16-2011:<br /><br />“puking should help my abs.”<br /><br /><br />Blog Post “Mark’s Shining World” 01-18-2011:<br /><br />“So I got some friendly emails reminding that I need to keep my mouth shut about certain things at the old corporate slave holders. I guess they actually take those contracts I signed serious.<br /><br />Fine bitches, fine. I can post what I want and you can’t stop me from speaking my mind.<br /><br />I got a pretty good severance deal and unemployment for at least six months.<br /><br />Time to hit Game Stop and Safeway, and stock up. MF Mark’s going into hardcore hibernation.”<br /><br /><br />Blog Post “Mark’s Shining World” 01-20-2011:<br /><br />“The rest of you suckers better be on my junk. i’m livin the fucking life. I got the fridge full of pizzas, burgers, pop, and other shit. I spent 1000 dollars flat on DVDs and games. I’m fucking unplugging for a while. No computer shit. No TV. Just me in my crib playing games and watching movies. I don’t want to see nobody. I don’t want to go nowhere. Y’all just gonna haf to git along without me. This is MuthaFuckin’ Mark OUT!”<br /><br />*<br /><br />What day was it? Mark rolled off of the futon and stood on unsteady, chubby legs. He stumbled into the kitchen and tore open a pack of Pop Tarts then opened the fridge and saw that his supplies were getting low. Fuck. Back out into the world soon.<br /><br />He stank, he’d been wearing the same clothes for a couple of weeks. His skin had gone bad from all the sugar and fat he’d been dumping into himself. He went to the bathroom to piss. The smell that came out of his sleeping pants disturbed him. Guess it was time to shower again.<br /><br />No clean towels, he used a pretty clean t-shirt instead. Whatever. Fresh clothes made him feel better. That and a couple of cans of soda. Ride that sugar rush man! Might as well get to the store while he gave a shit.<br /><br />He’d seen only one person in the two months of his self imposed exile from humanity. About a month back the mail lady had pounded on his door and dropped off a bag of letters, flyers, and other shit from his mailbox. She seemed a little shocked that he was still alive. Yeah mail lady, I’m still alive and kicking!<br /><br />As he tied his tennis shoes he looked over the wreck of his living room. So much trash, foam noodle bowls stacked feet high. Paper plates, soda cans, and cardboard rounds from so many frozen pizzas. He smiled at his junk fueled debauchery. He kicked through a stack of plastic wrappers as he walked to the patio door.<br /><br />The blaze of light hit his eyes like a punch to the face as he twisted the vertical blinds open. The courtyard of the apartment complex was green and sunny. It actually looked pretty nice outside. He looked over at the paused video game screen on his TV. One more level of Zombie Massacre and he’d have finished one of the most grueling video games he’d ever played. One more level and then he’d start Murder Corps: San Antonio. But first he needed to lay in more supplies.<br /><br />The light from the patio door was so bright that it took him a moment to tell what had actually happened. The TV screen blacked out. What the fuck? Not only the TV but all of the power in the apartment. The sound of the refrigerator stopping seemed oddly ominous to him.<br /><br />His phone had died weeks ago and in a fit of spite he hadn’t recharged it. Now he couldn’t call the power company to see what was up. Not that they ever had an answer. Maybe he’d call while he was at the store.<br /><br />There was a man walking across the courtyard. Drunk or crippled the man zig-zagged back and forth with no real sense of direction. Great, Mark thought. I have to walk right by that idiot to get to the car.<br /><br />As he was watching the man he noticed a woman who was standing down by one of the apple trees in the courtyard. She was swaying a bit and gnashing the air with her opened mouth. What was her deal?<br /><br />Mark opened the sliding door and walked out onto the cracked concrete of his patio. He pulled the screen closed behind him and yelled to the woman.<br /><br />“Hey! Are you okay? Do you need some help, or, something?” He didn’t really want to help but he wanted her to go away. Maybe if she knew somebody was watching her she’d get the clue and go trip somewhere else.<br /><br />The woman turned towards him and for a single beat of time seemed to be ignoring him. Then her pasty eyes lit up and she stumble-sprinted towards him, lurching up the grass incline that led from the apple tree. She breathed out like she was trying to scream. But her vocal chords didn’t make sound, only a long rasping exhalation.<br /><br />“Awesome!” Mark thought. They were doing a zombie walk! He’d been in one last Halloween with a bunch of his friends. Annie had done some amazing make-up that had actually made him a bit sick to his stomach when he first saw it. They’d had a great time walking down the street and grossing out the squares in the cafes along the avenue. Zombie walk! Hell yeah!<br /><br />And then a smell hit him. Puke rot worm dirt hell vomit kill dead maggot rat shit hole burn cry scar grave rip bile pus infection Oh God mommy make it stop! It was the smell of summertime bait shops and the bottom of damp stones, biology class fetal pigs and infected toenails.<br /><br />The smell woke him up and made him woozy. The woman was still coming for him but having trouble getting up the hill. The smell. It can’t be real.<br /><br />He saw the drunk man weaving towards him making the same empty and mostly silent roar, his black teeth opened like a bear trap heading straight for Mark.<br /><br /><br />The screen door was suddenly against Mark’s back as he scrambled backwards. He tried to push through the screen but it wouldn’t give. He didn’t want to turn his back but he couldn’t reach behind him at the same time. They were so close now.<br /><br />The smell coming from both of the stumbling figures was a noisome shock attack, it made him want to dig into the concrete to get away. Some part of his brain was firing that had never fired in his twenty-eight years. Lizard brain primal, full flight mode engaged. He finally tore through the screen and landed in a heap amongst the garbage in his apartment.<br /><br />He scrambled up out of the trash. They were on the porch. He rolled over the futon. They were at the patio door. He ran to the front door and undid the lock. They were in the room.<br /><br />The chain was still on the door. It opened and then bounced out of his grip. The man and woman were stumbling over the futon and garbage in the living room. Mark grabbed the door handle and pulled with a power fueled with desperation and total terror. The chain ripped out of the doorframe and Mark was out of the door before it hit the wall and bounced shut.<br /><br />Two story apartment building, four apartments on the bottom floor, four on the second. Front and rear doors that opened away from the building, mail boxes attached to one wall, a central stairwell.<br /><br />At the front of the building two teenagers pushed against the door and smeared their ragged lips against the tall glass windows beside the door. They didn’t seem capable of understanding how the door worked. The back door didn’t have windows beside it but Mark could hear bodies thumping against it. Up. He had to go up.<br /><br />He edged his way to the bottom of the stairs. The two teens began to furiously push against the glass. It will hold he thought, it will hold. He focused on the teens as he grabbed the railing at the bottom of the stairs. Then he heard a rasping hiss and looked up and behind him at the top of the stairs. An old woman, gray hair and frumpy dress, made her hands into claws and stepped off of the top step.<br /><br />Which she completely missed and hurtled down the stairs towards Mark. Her black-gummed mouth seemed focused on his neck as she flew down towards him. Gut reaction saved him. As she fell Mark twisted and flattened against the wall. The old woman face planted on the bottom stair with a sickening crunch. Her momentum flipped her body over so she was still looking at Mark. With her head snapped back against her shoulders. And then she started to crawl towards him.<br /><br />Mark flew up the steps as quickly as he could. He missed one and ripped his shin open. He quickly got to his feet again and topped the stairs. He felt nothing in his leg; shock had set in deeply.<br /><br />The woman was crawling slowly up the stairs, her head crunching on its broken vertebrae. She would reach him in a couple of minutes.<br /><br />Even as Mark had run back into his apartment there had been a small yet nagging doubt that this was an amazing and disturbing put on. The best zombie walk ever, super make up and acting, and a stink bomb designed to mind fuck anybody who smelled it. Although his body had reacted without him he would have been okay if someone had shouted “Surprise!” “You’ve been punked!” “Candid Camera!” God how he prayed that that was the case.<br /><br />But as he watched the broken old woman drag herself up towards him he realized exactly what she was and what had happened to the rest of the world. All of the movies, and books, and games, and Oh God it can’t be real! He knew it already. So much fiction had told him exactly what to expect, there was a survival guide for Christ’s sake! He had killed millions of zombies in video games. Last year he had acted like one in Annie’s disturbing makeup.<br /><br />Here it was. Crawling up the stairs towards him. Real. Horrible. And hungry.<br /><br />There was a laundry room on the top floor and Mark walked back to it. He couldn’t run anymore. Like prey that knew its time was up but still couldn’t lay down to die. A sense of utter calm caused by too many nerves and neurons firing. He looked at the ceiling and saw an access hatch to the roof with an attached folding ladder. He reached up, grabbed the cord, and pulled the ladder down. He climbed up the ladder. He opened the door to the roof and climbed out.<br /><br />*<br /><br />Journal Entry 1:<br /><br />“What day is this? April something? I’ve been living up here for a couple of weeks now, hidden in a space between two buildings where they can’t see me. As long as I stay hidden and don’t make noise they just mill around. But the second they spot me they rush against the building like a wave of walking corpses. No, not like. That’s what they are.”<br /><br /><br />Journal Entry 2:<br /><br />“I’m writing this in a Batman notebook that I found on one of my apartment scavenging missions. I found a way to swing down onto the second floor balconies that lets me have access to all of the second floor apartments. I get canned goods and dried food. I even found a pistol and box of bullets. I figured out a way of getting water from the hot water heaters. It tastes nasty but is clean and doesn’t make me sick.<br /><br />The little cubbyhole on the roof is getting pretty cozy. And thank God I found a box of earplugs. When the air gets moist their vocal chords start to work again. A couple of thousand rotten voice boxes moaning at you will surely keep you from falling asleep.”<br /><br /><br />Journal Entry 10:<br /><br />“I found a girl on the roof of one of the other apartments! Her name is Theresa. She was sick in her mom’s apartment when everything fell apart.<br /><br />We had to figure out a rope bridge to get her over to me. I was so afraid that she would fall. But I also knew I would dive down after her.”<br /><br /><br />Journal Entry 14:<br /><br />“It’s getting colder. They are getting sluggish, slower. Good to see that even though they’re against the laws of God they still have to obey thermodynamics.<br /><br />We’ve cleared out several apartments and started knocking holes into the walls of the other buildings. We’ve got enough food and vitamins to last for a while. We found another gun. It seems so worthless.”<br /><br /><br />Journal Entry 16:<br /><br />“Theresa’s asleep on the pallet, covered in sleeping bags. Her hair is getting long but she always keeps herself clean and beautiful. Her body smells sweaty, smoky, but so alive. I kissed her and she jerked awake reaching for the pistol. Then she saw it was me, smiled and went back to sleep.”<br /><br /><br />Journal Entry 20:<br /><br />It was a warm, moist day and it made them so loud. We have been trying to build up the roof shack and every time I moved the whole mass of them followed me and roared at me. I got pissed off and stood on the edge of the roof. “Hello Cleveland! Are you ready to rock?” I had the largest crowd ever assembled and the fuckers just wanted to eat me.<br /><br /><br />Journal Entry 28:<br /><br />“Really cold tonight. We’ve rigged up a small stove so we’re warm. I remember reading My Side of the Mountain so I made sure we had vents for air. We slept well.”<br /><br /><br />Journal Entry 29:<br /><br />“We woke up to a surprising sound tonight. The sound of the wind. We haven’t heard anything so subtle in months. We looked down and all of the bastards are frozen. But their eyes still glisten with frost as they look up towards us.”<br /><br /><br />Journal Entry 32:<br /><br />“We’ve decided that we have to leave while we can. We’ve exhausted the food here and don’t have what we need to grow it. I figure we have another solid month of freezing weather.<br /><br />Maybe with so many of them frozen around us there will be clear spaces somewhere to the north. And honestly we just need to move. We feel trapped on our little island, trapped and slowly sinking.<br /><br />This will be the last entry for a while.<br /><br />We leave tomorrow.”<br /><br /><br />Bio:<br /><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Brian S. Roe lives in this very same apartment, minus the food garbage and at least for now the zombies, and often ponders how screwed he would be if an actual zombie plague occurred. And while a part of him really has no problem with becoming one of the walking dead, he’s really never been much of a joiner. Living in Indianapolis is too much like being surrounded by zombies anyway.</span>Title Fightshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03645721097886240394noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5540500654593214421.post-6271215921862280232010-11-28T08:41:00.000-08:002010-11-28T08:42:32.930-08:00The Inescapable Sound of December (and November too Somehow)Tis the season to fight. The next round will rock the titles of classic Christmas music. If you are one to celebrate the day Jesus was born, you will probably know most of the songs we use this December. If you don’t celebrate Christmas, I’m sure your local malls, radio stations and TV specials have given you a festive—if a little aggressive—crash course. Either way, Title Fights wants you. Your level of interest in Holiday Cheer isn’t much of a factor. We want you to take a Christmas title and go another direction with it. This coming round embodies the unifying nature of Christmas or, if Christmas isn’t your thing, the unifying nature of yuletide marketing.<br /><br />If you want to fight this December, email us at titlefights@gmail.com, tell us you’re interested, and we’ll send you a title of your very own. The deadline to get a title is Christmas day. The deadline for submitting is New Year’s Eve. Good Luck.Title Fightshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03645721097886240394noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5540500654593214421.post-4553367554310299732010-11-28T08:40:00.000-08:002010-11-28T08:41:20.338-08:00That's the End of the King Arthur RoundWell, the title kind of said it all, didn't it?Title Fightshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03645721097886240394noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5540500654593214421.post-56656188262249934132010-11-28T08:22:00.000-08:002010-11-29T19:02:55.398-08:00Let the Boy Show You by Brian S. Roe<span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="color:#ffffff;"><span style="LETTER-SPACING: 0px">Screen door creak and slam. Tolliver’s arms full of brown paper grocery bags, frozen foods falling from the top. Pizza rolls, corn dogs, and crustless peanut butter and jelly sandwiches threatened to tumble from the moist rips at the lip of the bags. The supermarket had those white plastic bags but Tolliver didn’t like those. They felt like they came from another time. He liked the brown paper bags, they felt like childhood and home. He remembered his regular task of putting the canned goods away every week after the family grocery trip. They always ate sandwiches on those days so mom wouldn’t have to cook.</span> </span></span><p style="MIN-HEIGHT: 16px; MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 13px Adobe Garamond Pro; COLOR: rgb(42,42,42); font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="LETTER-SPACING: 0px"></span><br /></span></p><p style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 13px Adobe Garamond Pro; COLOR: rgb(42,42,42); font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><span style="LETTER-SPACING: 0px"><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;color:#ffffff;">Tolliver stamped his foot loudly. Shut up down there!</span></span></p><p style="MIN-HEIGHT: 16px; MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 13px Adobe Garamond Pro; COLOR: rgb(42,42,42); font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="color:#ffffff;"><span style="LETTER-SPACING: 0px"></span><br /></span></span></span></p><p style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 13px Adobe Garamond Pro; COLOR: rgb(42,42,42); font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><span style="LETTER-SPACING: 0px"><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;color:#ffffff;">He walked back out to the van and brought in two cases of soda. He still missed the tall, returnable glass bottles of his childhood. One of his earliest sexual memories came from the thought that his lips were touching the same bottle that hundreds of other lips had touched. The thought still made him shiver with secret delight.</span></span></p><p style="MIN-HEIGHT: 16px; MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 13px Adobe Garamond Pro; COLOR: rgb(42,42,42); font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="color:#ffffff;"><span style="LETTER-SPACING: 0px"></span><br /></span></span></span></p><p style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 13px Adobe Garamond Pro; COLOR: rgb(42,42,42); font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><span style="LETTER-SPACING: 0px"><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;color:#ffffff;">Another noise from the basement. Another muddy boot stamp on the linoleum.</span></span></p><p style="MIN-HEIGHT: 16px; MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 13px Adobe Garamond Pro; COLOR: rgb(42,42,42); font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="color:#ffffff;"><span style="LETTER-SPACING: 0px"></span><br /></span></span></span></p><p style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 13px Adobe Garamond Pro; COLOR: rgb(42,42,42); font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><span style="LETTER-SPACING: 0px"><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;color:#ffffff;">He turned on the gas oven and went into his bedroom.<br /><br />When he came out he had changed into a terry cloth bath robe and slippers. He still wore his white socks and threadbare white briefs. He was still too nervous to buy new underwear so he tried to make these last. The thought of the girl, it was always a girl, at Kresge’s looking at him as he bought underwear filled him with a falling elevator feeling. Maybe he could get them some other way. </span></span></p><p style="MIN-HEIGHT: 16px; MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 13px Adobe Garamond Pro; COLOR: rgb(42,42,42); font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="color:#ffffff;"><span style="LETTER-SPACING: 0px"></span><br /></span></span></span></p><p style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 13px Adobe Garamond Pro; COLOR: rgb(42,42,42); font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><span style="LETTER-SPACING: 0px"><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;color:#ffffff;">He took a grease blackened cookie sheet from the cabinet and laid out his dinner. French fries and soft pretzels from the freezer, corn dogs and pizza rolls from the new groceries. He never read the boxes for each item. He baked everything at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. That should always be enough.</span></span></p><p style="MIN-HEIGHT: 16px; MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 13px Adobe Garamond Pro; COLOR: rgb(42,42,42); font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="color:#ffffff;"><span style="LETTER-SPACING: 0px"></span><br /></span></span></span></p><p style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 13px Adobe Garamond Pro; COLOR: rgb(42,42,42); font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><span style="LETTER-SPACING: 0px"><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;color:#ffffff;">There was another sound from the basement, a grueling sob or the retch of vomiting. Tolliver went into the living room and turned the television up to drown out the sounds. You will not ruin my suppertime he thought determinedly.</span></span></p><p style="MIN-HEIGHT: 16px; MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 13px Adobe Garamond Pro; COLOR: rgb(42,42,42); font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="color:#ffffff;"><span style="LETTER-SPACING: 0px"></span><br /></span></span></span></p><p style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 13px Adobe Garamond Pro; COLOR: rgb(42,42,42); font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><span style="LETTER-SPACING: 0px"><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;color:#ffffff;">He watched a show about people doing something for awhile. All the shows were an hour or longer now. He missed half hour shows. They made cooking easier. After what must have been thirty minutes he went into the kitchen and took out the cookie sheet using an oven mitt that had been his mother’s. The mitt was gritty inside and had a scorch mark along one side from having been too close to a burner. He never washed the mitt. He knew his mother’s sweat had crystalized in the glove and he didn’t want it to ever go away. Whenever he took the oven mitt off he always licked his fingers. He poured the food onto a large melamine serving platter, shook salt over it and poured a large puddle of ketchup in the center. </span></span></p><p style="MIN-HEIGHT: 16px; MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 13px Adobe Garamond Pro; COLOR: rgb(42,42,42); font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="color:#ffffff;"><span style="LETTER-SPACING: 0px"></span><br /></span></span></span></p><p style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 13px Adobe Garamond Pro; COLOR: rgb(42,42,42); font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><span style="LETTER-SPACING: 0px"><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;color:#ffffff;">There was a television show on about something. He watched as he munched the food. some of it was cold in the center, some of it was burnt. He rammed each piece through the ketchup puddle and ate.</span></span></p><p style="MIN-HEIGHT: 16px; MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 13px Adobe Garamond Pro; COLOR: rgb(42,42,42); font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="color:#ffffff;"><span style="LETTER-SPACING: 0px"></span><br /></span></span></span></p><p style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 13px Adobe Garamond Pro; COLOR: rgb(42,42,42); font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><span style="LETTER-SPACING: 0px"><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;color:#ffffff;">He was turning channels when he saw a woman dancing. The camera must have been laying on the ground because she seemed to be taller than him as she shook her ass and tits. Occasionally a man would appear and scream at the camera but it would always cut back to this woman as she shook herself to the beat of the music. Tolliver felt himself getting hard. He opened the robe and touched himself as he watched the woman. After he was finished he turned off the TV and went to sleep.</span></span></p><p style="MIN-HEIGHT: 16px; MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 13px Adobe Garamond Pro; COLOR: rgb(42,42,42); font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="color:#ffffff;"><span style="LETTER-SPACING: 0px"></span><br /></span></span></span></p><p style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 13px Adobe Garamond Pro; COLOR: rgb(42,42,42); font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><span style="LETTER-SPACING: 0px"><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;color:#ffffff;">Sounds from the basement woke him from a dream about his dog.</span></span></p><p style="MIN-HEIGHT: 16px; MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 13px Adobe Garamond Pro; COLOR: rgb(42,42,42); font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="color:#ffffff;"><span style="LETTER-SPACING: 0px"></span><br /></span></span></span></p><p style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 13px Adobe Garamond Pro; COLOR: rgb(42,42,42); font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><span style="LETTER-SPACING: 0px"><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;color:#ffffff;">Tolliver had had enough. He walked into his bedroom and put on coveralls, gloves, heavy boots, and a welder’s mask. He felt like he was putting on armor, like a knight or a riot cop. Then he picked up his bat, a yellow plastic Wiffle Ball bat filled with quickset concrete and a single piece of rebar. The bat was so heavy that he rarely had to swing it with any force to subdue the monsters in the basement. A slight swing seemed to hit them with just enough power. And the plastic didn’t tear the skin as bad so they lasted longer.</span></span></p><p style="MIN-HEIGHT: 16px; MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 13px Adobe Garamond Pro; COLOR: rgb(42,42,42); font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="color:#ffffff;"><span style="LETTER-SPACING: 0px"></span><br /></span></span></span></p><p style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 13px Adobe Garamond Pro; COLOR: rgb(42,42,42); font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><span style="LETTER-SPACING: 0px"><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;color:#ffffff;">Hefting the bat he unlocked the basement door and turned on the lights. Six banks of fluorescent bar lights sizzled on as the monsters scrambled away from the brightness. The walls of the basement were smoothed concrete, as finished and water proof as a swimming pool. The join between the floor and wall was a quarter round fill and the basement floor sank smoothly to a large drain. Metal mesh covered the ceiling and the lights. The stairs had to be lowered from the upper floor and were pulled up every time that Tolliver left the basement. The concrete was stained from the liquids inside of the monsters.</span></span></p><p style="MIN-HEIGHT: 16px; MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 13px Adobe Garamond Pro; COLOR: rgb(42,42,42); font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="color:#ffffff;"><span style="LETTER-SPACING: 0px"></span><br /></span></span></span></p><p style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 13px Adobe Garamond Pro; COLOR: rgb(42,42,42); font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><span style="LETTER-SPACING: 0px"><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;color:#ffffff;">The stairs descended smoothly and chunked nicely onto the basement floor. As Tolliver slowly walked down the stairs the monsters scrambled away from him with more anxiety than they had from the lights. Tolliver grinned beneath the welder’s mask, happy to see the reaction. He loved to see the monsters try to get away from him.</span></span></p><p style="MIN-HEIGHT: 16px; MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 13px Adobe Garamond Pro; COLOR: rgb(42,42,42); font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="color:#ffffff;"><span style="LETTER-SPACING: 0px"></span><br /></span></span></span></p><p style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 13px Adobe Garamond Pro; COLOR: rgb(42,42,42); font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><span style="LETTER-SPACING: 0px"><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;color:#ffffff;">Wait. What’s this? One of the monsters was staring at him, sitting with his back against the wall his forearms propped atop his knees. Just staring at Tolliver with an expression of boredom. The other monsters tried to crawl into the concrete to hide but this one just sat and looked at him.</span></span></p><p style="MIN-HEIGHT: 16px; MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 13px Adobe Garamond Pro; COLOR: rgb(42,42,42); font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="color:#ffffff;"><span style="LETTER-SPACING: 0px"></span><br /></span></span></span></p><p style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 13px Adobe Garamond Pro; COLOR: rgb(42,42,42); font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><span style="LETTER-SPACING: 0px"><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;color:#ffffff;">This couldn’t happen could it? He was the monster’s master. He had collected them, from schoolyards and parks, he had thrown them in here and beaten them into submission. They had to be afraid of him! This wasn’t fair. This little monster wasn’t playing fair!</span></span></p><p style="MIN-HEIGHT: 16px; MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 13px Adobe Garamond Pro; COLOR: rgb(42,42,42); font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="color:#ffffff;"><span style="LETTER-SPACING: 0px"></span><br /></span></span></span></p><p style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 13px Adobe Garamond Pro; COLOR: rgb(42,42,42); font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><span style="LETTER-SPACING: 0px"><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;color:#ffffff;">Tolliver strode over to the sitting figure and rammed the bat into his shoulder. The monster rolled with the blow and grunted.</span></span></p><p style="MIN-HEIGHT: 16px; MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 13px Adobe Garamond Pro; COLOR: rgb(42,42,42); font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="color:#ffffff;"><span style="LETTER-SPACING: 0px"></span><br /></span></span></span></p><p style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 13px Adobe Garamond Pro; COLOR: rgb(42,42,42); font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><span style="LETTER-SPACING: 0px"><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;color:#ffffff;">“ You can go ahead and smash my head in you fucking cocksucker or you can shove that bat up your ass.” the monster said softly.<br /><br />“ What...wait, what?” Tolliver stammered. </span></span></p><p style="MIN-HEIGHT: 16px; MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 13px Adobe Garamond Pro; COLOR: rgb(42,42,42); font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="color:#ffffff;"><span style="LETTER-SPACING: 0px"></span><br /></span></span></span></p><p style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 13px Adobe Garamond Pro; COLOR: rgb(42,42,42); font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><span style="LETTER-SPACING: 0px"><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;color:#ffffff;">“ You heard me you stinking jack-off. Kill me or go fuck yourself. I’m tired of sitting down here.”</span></span></p><p style="MIN-HEIGHT: 16px; MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 13px Adobe Garamond Pro; COLOR: rgb(42,42,42); font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="color:#ffffff;"><span style="LETTER-SPACING: 0px"></span><br /></span></span></span></p><p style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 13px Adobe Garamond Pro; COLOR: rgb(42,42,42); font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><span style="LETTER-SPACING: 0px"><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;color:#ffffff;">Tolliver hit the kid in the mouth with the bat before he knew he’d done it. Yeah that was right, they were kids. Seven young boys, like he had been once, young boys who had been picked by Tolliver to pay for his own painful childhood. Bullied and alone he had sworn vengeance. But his vengeance had to be against the same type of boys who had teased him. Besides they were easier to beat up than adults.</span></span></p><p style="MIN-HEIGHT: 16px; MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 13px Adobe Garamond Pro; COLOR: rgb(42,42,42); font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="color:#ffffff;"><span style="LETTER-SPACING: 0px"></span><br /></span></span></span></p><p style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 13px Adobe Garamond Pro; COLOR: rgb(42,42,42); font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><span style="LETTER-SPACING: 0px"><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;color:#ffffff;">“ Y-y-ou be k-k-k-quiet.” Tolliver stammered.<br /><br />“ Y-y-y-you go f-f-f-FUCK yourself!” The kid mockingly stuttered out around a bloody mouth of smashed teeth. </span></span></p><p style="MIN-HEIGHT: 16px; MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 13px Adobe Garamond Pro; COLOR: rgb(42,42,42); font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="color:#ffffff;"><span style="LETTER-SPACING: 0px"></span><br /></span></span></span></p><p style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 13px Adobe Garamond Pro; COLOR: rgb(42,42,42); font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><span style="LETTER-SPACING: 0px"><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;color:#ffffff;">The cable ties around the kid’s arms were looped through ties on the other boys. They were all cable tied together in a mass. This mass now pulled away from Tolliver and pulled the defiant boy along with them. Tolliver took a step towards the boys and then stopped. He had to get out of here fast. He thumped quickly up the stairs and pulled them up behind him.</span></span></p><p style="MIN-HEIGHT: 16px; MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 13px Adobe Garamond Pro; COLOR: rgb(42,42,42); font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="color:#ffffff;"><span style="LETTER-SPACING: 0px"></span><br /></span></span></span></p><p style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 13px Adobe Garamond Pro; COLOR: rgb(42,42,42); font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><span style="LETTER-SPACING: 0px"><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;color:#ffffff;">He wheezed a little as he poured soda into a plastic glass. He threw back the soda like a drunk swallowing a shot of whiskey. How could this happen? All the months that he’d been keeping these kids to beat and abuse he had never had one stand up to him, never heard anything but sweet begging and pleading. Now he had one who would curse and spit at him. He would have to get rid of the new boy. Cut his ties and take him away somewhere. Tolliver knew the boy would have to die but he wasn’t sure where to dump him afterwards.</span></span></p><p style="MIN-HEIGHT: 16px; MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 13px Adobe Garamond Pro; COLOR: rgb(42,42,42); font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="color:#ffffff;"><span style="LETTER-SPACING: 0px"></span><br /></span></span></span></p><p style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 13px Adobe Garamond Pro; COLOR: rgb(42,42,42); font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><span style="LETTER-SPACING: 0px"><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;color:#ffffff;">He needed to sleep, to calm down. He’d understand things better after he’d slept. He went into the bathroom to run a bath and relax.</span></span></p><p style="MIN-HEIGHT: 16px; MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 13px Adobe Garamond Pro; COLOR: rgb(42,42,42); font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="color:#ffffff;"><span style="LETTER-SPACING: 0px"></span><br /></span></span></span></p><p style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 13px Adobe Garamond Pro; COLOR: rgb(42,42,42); font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><span style="LETTER-SPACING: 0px"><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;color:#ffffff;">The roar of the water into the tub drowned out his thoughts for a few moments. He eased himself into the water and laid against the back of the tub. He turned the water off and the silence made his thoughts come rushing back, broken only by the drip of the tap.</span></span></p><p style="MIN-HEIGHT: 16px; MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 13px Adobe Garamond Pro; COLOR: rgb(42,42,42); font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="color:#ffffff;"><span style="LETTER-SPACING: 0px"></span><br /></span></span></span></p><p style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 13px Adobe Garamond Pro; COLOR: rgb(42,42,42); font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><span style="LETTER-SPACING: 0px"><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;color:#ffffff;">How dare that little monster talk back to him? Tolliver was the big bad man now. Tolliver was tough and strong and not afraid. The little monsters had to be afraid of him, wasn’t that right? Tolliver sank down into the water to try to hide from something that he had not yet named.</span></span></p><p style="MIN-HEIGHT: 16px; MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 13px Adobe Garamond Pro; COLOR: rgb(42,42,42); font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="color:#ffffff;"><span style="LETTER-SPACING: 0px"></span><br /></span></span></span></p><p style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 13px Adobe Garamond Pro; COLOR: rgb(42,42,42); font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><span style="LETTER-SPACING: 0px"><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;color:#ffffff;">It was when he sat up again that he heard the voice from the basement. It came up muffled and quiet but still determined and strong. The little monster who’s teeth he’d smashed in. He was talking to the other boys, like he was giving a speech or something. The other kids moaned or whimpered but the kid kept talking. Tolliver reached over and punched the floor next to the tub. A scream that could only be “fuck you!” spat out of the basement. Tolliver stopped himself from punching the floor again. The moans and whimpers of the other boys stopped.</span></span></p><p style="MIN-HEIGHT: 16px; MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 13px Adobe Garamond Pro; COLOR: rgb(42,42,42); font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="color:#ffffff;"><span style="LETTER-SPACING: 0px"></span><br /></span></span></span></p><p style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 13px Adobe Garamond Pro; COLOR: rgb(42,42,42); font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><span style="LETTER-SPACING: 0px"><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;color:#ffffff;">That night Tolliver had trouble sleeping. There were voices from the basement all night long. He wasn’t sure what they said but they sounded secretive and scheming. But if they were trying to keep their talking secret why were they talking so loud? It was like they wanted him to know that they were plotting against him. He no longer heard the defiant monster’s voice as separate from the group. All of the voices whispered in the same low rumble of kids whispering loudly. Even when Tolliver fell asleep their angry whispering was in his dreams.</span></span></p><p style="MIN-HEIGHT: 16px; MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 13px Adobe Garamond Pro; COLOR: rgb(42,42,42); font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="color:#ffffff;"><span style="LETTER-SPACING: 0px"></span><br /></span></span></span></p><p style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 13px Adobe Garamond Pro; COLOR: rgb(42,42,42); font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><span style="LETTER-SPACING: 0px"><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;color:#ffffff;">Time to finish this for once and all. He couldn’t go through another might like last night. He got out of bed and put on his coveralls. There was no sound from the basement. They must all be asleep. Tolliver quickly drank a cup of soda to give him energy. He reached into a kitchen drawer and pulled out a heavy pair of kitchen shears. He’d cut the loudmouth out of the bundle and take him away to kill him. Tolliver would not give up the weeks of pleasant torture that he had planned for the other six. He was still the big man, still the toughest and strongest. The game would still be played by his rules and this time he would win.</span></span></p><p style="MIN-HEIGHT: 16px; MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 13px Adobe Garamond Pro; COLOR: rgb(42,42,42); font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="color:#ffffff;"><span style="LETTER-SPACING: 0px"></span><br /></span></span></span></p><p style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 13px Adobe Garamond Pro; COLOR: rgb(42,42,42); font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><span style="LETTER-SPACING: 0px"><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;color:#ffffff;">The basement door opened quietly, the lights blinked on quickly, the stairs descended smoothly. The concrete filled bat in his gloved hands felt hard and reassuring. He stepped slowly down the stairs into the basement.</span></span></p><p style="MIN-HEIGHT: 16px; MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 13px Adobe Garamond Pro; COLOR: rgb(42,42,42); font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="color:#ffffff;"><span style="LETTER-SPACING: 0px"></span><br /></span></span></span></p><p style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 13px Adobe Garamond Pro; COLOR: rgb(42,42,42); font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><span style="LETTER-SPACING: 0px"><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;color:#ffffff;">Tolliver had expected to see the seven boys asleep in a pile against one wall, the way that they normally would be before he woke them up. He blinked behind the welder’s mask to clear his eyes. None of the boys were asleep.<br /><br />Instead they all sat facing him, as much as the cable ties would allow, and glared at him with a feral anger. It was a more pure version of the anger he had felt as a bullied child but Tolliver had always had his anger dissipated by doting parents and junk food. None of the boys seemed to blink, they tracked his movements as a group, each set of eyes and each head slowly nodding as he walked down the stairs. The mass of boys was suddenly very solid and very dark., They seemed to breathe together, the mass of heads, bodies, and limbs rising and falling slowly with each breath, in the rhythmic way that a prowling lion breathes. Tolliver began to sweat behind the mask. </span></span></p><p style="MIN-HEIGHT: 16px; MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 13px Adobe Garamond Pro; COLOR: rgb(42,42,42); font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="color:#ffffff;"><span style="LETTER-SPACING: 0px"></span><br /></span></span></span></p><p style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 13px Adobe Garamond Pro; COLOR: rgb(42,42,42); font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><span style="LETTER-SPACING: 0px"><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;color:#ffffff;">*******<br /><br />When the patrolmen finally walked down into the basement of Tolliver’s house they found something that had once been a man. Although it still mewed and squirmed it could no longer be called a man or even a human. </span></span></p><p style="MIN-HEIGHT: 16px; MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 13px Adobe Garamond Pro; COLOR: rgb(42,42,42); font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="color:#ffffff;"><span style="LETTER-SPACING: 0px"></span><br /></span></span></span></p><p style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 13px Adobe Garamond Pro; COLOR: rgb(42,42,42); font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><span style="LETTER-SPACING: 0px"><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;color:#ffffff;">Small sets of hands had dragged Tolliver down as he reached for the troublemaking boy. The hands had long nails that crept under Tolliver’s defenses and scratched and tore at his skin. The boys moved in a mass, like an amoeba moves, and pulled him down to the concrete floor. </span></span></p><p style="MIN-HEIGHT: 16px; MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 13px Adobe Garamond Pro; COLOR: rgb(42,42,42); font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="color:#ffffff;"><span style="LETTER-SPACING: 0px"></span><br /></span></span></span></p><p style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 13px Adobe Garamond Pro; COLOR: rgb(42,42,42); font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><span style="LETTER-SPACING: 0px"><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;color:#ffffff;">Their childhoods had been stolen by Tolliver in an attempt to torture away his own feelings of weakness. But the seven little boys had taken it all back using a pair of kitchen shears and a concrete filled Wiffle Ball bat.</span></span></p><p style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 13px Adobe Garamond Pro; COLOR: rgb(42,42,42); font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><br /><span style="LETTER-SPACING: 0px"><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;color:#ffffff;"></span></span></p><p style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 13px Adobe Garamond Pro; COLOR: rgb(42,42,42); font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><span style="LETTER-SPACING: 0px"><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;color:#ffffff;">*</span></span></p><p style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 13px Adobe Garamond Pro; COLOR: rgb(42,42,42); font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><br /><span style="LETTER-SPACING: 0px"><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;color:#ffffff;"></span></span></p><p style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 13px Adobe Garamond Pro; COLOR: rgb(42,42,42); font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><span style="LETTER-SPACING: 0px"><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;color:#ffffff;">Brian S. Roe narrowly escaped a situation once, too. Most of the time, though, he was unable to escape and found himself very Stockholm'd. He has acclimated very well to the sunlight, though, the internet and prose. One day his diaries will outside the Bible, because only in the his diaries will there be more violence and redemption. I'll make sure of it.<br /></span></span></p><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span style="font-size:12;"><span style="LETTER-SPACING: 0px"></span></span></span>Title Fightshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03645721097886240394noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5540500654593214421.post-79141991916942958552010-11-24T06:47:00.000-08:002010-11-24T06:52:02.926-08:00Use Your Mighty Wisdom by Jimmy Callaway<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:view>Normal</w:View> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:snaptogridincell/> <w:wraptextwithpunct/> <w:useasianbreakrules/> </w:Compatibility> <w:browserlevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman";} </style> <![endif]--> <p class="MsoNormal">Two hours now after his arrest, Bronson knows there are thirty-four and a half acoustic tiles in the ceiling of this room.<span style=""> </span>The table is about ten and a half hand-lengths long by exactly seven wide.<span style=""> </span>He knows that his Batman and Robin t-shirt is pre-shrunk, 100% cotton, and should be machine-washed cold with like colors.<span style=""> </span>He knows that there are sixteen shoelace eyelets in each of his shoes, and that “Material Girl” has been stuck in his head since he woke up this morning.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">What he doesn’t know is what this asshole Detective Mazursky has been doing these past two hours.<span style=""> </span>And as the big, dark-skinned cop himself shoves back into the room, slamming the door behind him, Bronson doesn’t know that he’ll bother to ask.<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Do you know just how much shit you’re in, Goodale?” Mazursky says.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Man,” Bronson says, “I just wanna get outta here.<span style=""> </span>I don’t even know what this is about.”<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“So you’ve really got no idea, huh?”<span style=""> </span>Mazursky leans on the table knuckles first, and puts his face right in Bronson’s.<span style=""> </span>He smells like tea.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“No, I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about,” Bronson says.<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Goodale, I saw you running from the scene with my own eyes.<span style=""> </span>I chased you into that store myself!”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“I was running because I had to take a shit, and they know me in that store—”<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Mazursky slams his palm on the table, and Bronson bites off the end of his sentence.<span style=""> </span>“Don’t get fuckin’ smart with me!” Mazursky screams, and then lowers his voice.<span style=""> </span>Very husky, very Dirty Harry.<span style=""> </span>“Now, here’s how this is gonna happen. <span style=""> </span>I’m gonna ask for your supplier’s name.<span style=""> </span>You’re gonna give it to me.<span style=""> </span>Then we’re gonna go talk to the DA’s office, and you’ll be on your way.<span style=""> </span>Got that?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Look, sir, Detective,” Bronson says, “I really don’t know what you’re talking about, honest.<span style=""> </span>Wait, wait, before you yell at me again, I just wanna say, since I’m under arrest here for whatever it is you said I did, I just think I ought to be able to call my lawyer, that’s all.”<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Mazursky frowns at him, then laughs.<span style=""> </span>Laughs out loud, and a fleck of his spit lands on Bronson’s lip.<span style=""> </span>Bronson doesn’t wanna move to wipe it away, so he slowly moves his lip, trying to get it off his face, all without taking his eyes off the big detective in front of him.<span style=""> </span>It’s not easy.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Still laughing, Mazursky sits seven hand-lengths across the table from Bronson.<span style=""> </span>Bronson wipes his mouth quickly while his back is turned.<span style=""> </span>“So,” Mazursky says, “you’re completely innocent, yet you want a lawyer.<span style=""> </span>Why would you want a lawyer if you’re innocent?”<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Look, no offense?<span style=""> </span>But I don’t think I should answer any more questions.<span style=""> </span>I mean, you’re, y’know, obviously convinced I’ve done something wrong here, and since I don’t know what you’re, uh, talking about, it only seems, y’know, fair that I have a, uh—”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“‘A, uh, A, uh,’ listen to you, Goodale, you’re stammering and stuttering like a retard.”<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Bronson frowned at him.<span style=""> </span>“Hey, there’s no need—”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Your ass is mine, you fucking little weasel!<span style=""> </span>You’re under arrest, get that through your fucking skull!<span style=""> </span>All the lawyers in the world aren’t gonna change that.<span style=""> </span>The only people who can possibly change that are you and your scumbag running buddy.”<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Folding his arms, Bronson sat back in the chair.<span style=""> </span>He tried to put just a little bit of hurt on his face.<span style=""> </span>“If you’re just gonna yell, I don’t see—”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Shut up, shut up and listen.<span style=""> </span>Now, I’ll explain it so even you can understand: you and your buddy, you’re the lowest rung.<span style=""> </span>The dumb-ass street guys.<span style=""> </span>You’re caught, it’s over for you.<span style=""> </span>Now, it doesn’t matter to me if you take the fall for this shit all by yourself.<span style=""> </span>But my boss and his boss, they want the next rung up.<span style=""> </span>See?<span style=""> </span>You follow so far?”<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Not at all, no.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“You give me a statement, where you got the stuff, who you work for.<span style=""> </span>Then you walk, just like that.<span style=""> </span>I’ll even get you a cab.<span style=""> </span>But you’ve got to do it right now, because I’ll tell you what, my partner’s in the next room right now with this Lienhardt asshole of yours, offering him the very same deal.”<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Sir, look, I dunno why you dragged me and Mal in here, okay?<span style=""> </span>I don’t know anything about suppliers or higher rungs or anything like that.<span style=""> </span>All I know is that you said when you handcuffed me before that I got a right to an attorney, so I’d like to call him now, if that’s okay with you.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Oh, man, Mazursky really looks like he’s gonna blow his top now.<span style=""> </span>Lookit him, clenching his jaw like that, his skull is gonna pop out of his head.<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">A knock at the door.<span style=""> </span>Another cop comes in, a guy in uniform.<span style=""> </span>“Detective?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Mazursky tamps it back down, straightens his tie and goes over to speak with the other cop in low, buzzing voices.<span style=""> </span>They pepper glances back at Bronson.<span style=""> </span>Behind the befuddled look Bronson’s plastered to his face is: “‘Cause we are <i style="">liii-</i>ving in a material world, and I am a material girl!<span style=""> </span>You know that we are <i style="">liii</i>-ving…”<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The other cop goes out, gently closing the door behind him.<span style=""> </span>Mazursky ambles back over to his chair and sits down, all shit-eating grins.<span style=""> </span>“Well, that’s about it, Goodale,” he says.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“I can go?”<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Oh, no, no, no, no.<span style=""> </span>No, that’s about it for you,” Mazursky says, “Your buddy just gave you up.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Bronson rubs his chin.<span style=""> </span>“Let me see if I’ve got this straight.<span style=""> </span>You’re accusing Mal and I of possession of stolen goods or whatever, and now you’re telling me that Mal has shifted the blame all on me and this, uh, supposed supplier of ours, and now I’m gonna go to jail and Mal gets to go.<span style=""> </span>That’s what you’re telling me.”<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“That’s exactly what I’m telling you.<span style=""> </span>Now you’re getting it.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Uh-huh.”<span style=""> </span>Bronson sighs, rubs his face.<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“But here’s the good news.<span style=""> </span>Your record’s pretty much clean, a couple chicken-shit misdemeanors.<span style=""> </span>Lienhardt there, he’s got an actual record.<span style=""> </span>Assault, B & E, shit like that.<span style=""> </span>I’d much rather have a guy like him, a danger, off the streets, and let an idiot like you skate.<span style=""> </span>So I’ll offer you the deal one last time.<span style=""> </span>What do you say?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Bronson looks at him.<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“I don’t know what you’ve got to think about here!<span style=""> </span>You still tryin’ to protect your buddy?<span style=""> </span>The one who just now sold you out?<span style=""> </span>C’mon, man, don’t be a sap all your life!<span style=""> </span>What do you say?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Bronson smiles.<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center">#</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Let me get this straight,” Mal said.<span style=""> </span>The waitress came by, and he waited until she’d refilled his coffee cup and gone.<span style=""> </span>“Your girlfriend said I tried to get into her pants, and you believed her.”<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Bronson balled up his napkin, smoothed it out again.<span style=""> </span>“No, no, of course I don’t believe her.<span style=""> </span>I’m just telling you what she said.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Yeah, but why?<span style=""> </span>Why tell me this?”<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Bronson shrugged.<span style=""> </span>“I dunno, conversation?<span style=""> </span>Now you’re pissed off, I shouldnt’a said anything.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“No, I’m not pissed off.<span style=""> </span>I’m not.<span style=""> </span>I just…”<span style=""> </span>He let out a breath, wiped his glasses off on his tie.<span style=""> </span>“C’mon,” he said, taking a last sip of coffee and grabbing the check.<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“You’re not pissed?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“No, I told you.<span style=""> </span>But I got something at home I think you should see.”<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Mallory at the park with some dude.<span style=""> </span>Mallory at the zoo with some dude.<span style=""> </span>Mallory slow-dancing with some dude.<span style=""> </span>Mallory with her tongue down the throat of some dude.<span style=""> </span>All the shots were clearly taken from a distance, but all the shots were clearly of Mallory fucking around, in at least some capacity, on Bronson.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Jesus Christ,” Bronson said.<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Yeah,” Mal said.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Where’d you get these?”<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Mal said, “Stillwell had a few days off the other week.<span style=""> </span>I slipped him a few bucks, hoped my gut feeling was wrong.<span style=""> </span>But this broad’s trouble, man.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Man, you said you weren’t pissed off at me.<span style=""> </span>But now, what, you’re showing me these to get back at me for—for—”<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Okay, now I am getting pissed off,” Mal said, “Use your fuckin’ head, will ya?<span style=""> </span>This broad’s trying to make herself feel better about, y’know,” he gestured at the photos, “by trying to make you jealous or some shit, make you think I’m the problem or something.<span style=""> </span>Meanwhile, I’m the one watching your back.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Yeah,” Bronson said, “Okay.<span style=""> </span>It’s just—fuck, man, lookit this asshole!”<span style=""> </span>He held up a photo of Mallory at a sidewalk café with some dude.<span style=""> </span>“He’s got a pony tail, for chrissake!”<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Yeah, I know.<span style=""> </span>Look, man, here’s my point.<span style=""> </span>I’ve got no reason to try and fuck you over on anything.<span style=""> </span>None.<span style=""> </span>Okay?<span style=""> </span>We’ve known each other too long and been through too much shit.<span style=""> </span>Right?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Right.”<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“So next time some twat tries to make you think otherwise, you know what to say.<span style=""> </span>Right?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center">#<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“What do you say, Mr. Lienhardt?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Mal says the exact same thing he’s been saying for the past two hours: nothing.<span style=""> </span>Mal has only one thing to say to Detective Lapierre here, so he wants to make sure he times it just right, that he gets his cue right on the nose.<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">But not yet.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Lapierre sits there, all mustache and tolerance, and exhales knowingly.<span style=""> </span>“Mr. Lienhardt, I’m a patient man.<span style=""> </span>But even I have my limits.<span style=""> </span>I wholly respect your right to silence, if that’s what you want.<span style=""> </span>But allow me to once again go over the facts.”<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Mal sips at his coffee.<span style=""> </span>It’s not bad, really, for police station coffee.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Fact: Detective Mazursky and I arrested you and Mr. Goodale fleeing the scene of a crime.”<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Fact: these two dickheads happened to drive past the little shop of stolen textbooks that Mal and Bronson had set up in an old van, selling them to college kids over near State.<span style=""> </span>They got the van, which gives them nothing since Mal stole it the night before.<span style=""> </span>They got the books, which also gives them nothing as Mal and Bronson wore gloves the whole time they handled them.<span style=""> </span>If these cops had some sort of buy-in going, they might have caught Mal and Bronson red-handed, game over.<span style=""> </span>As it was, Mal was sure they’d just fallen ass-backwards into this extremely minor operation.<span style=""> </span>Every pig has his day, after all.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Fact: the stolen goods you had are not illicit.<span style=""> </span>So you’re in less trouble than if it were drugs or porn or something.<span style=""> </span>But the amount of books as well as the amount of cash found on your person will show to a judge that you and Mr. Goodale exhibited a level of criminal sophistication, which can in turn lead to a more severe punishment.”<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Fact: it’s not against the law to have a fat wad of cash on your person.<span style=""> </span>These cops must think Mal’s an idiot.<span style=""> </span>It is against the law to run from a peace officer after he’s identified himself as such, yes, but Mal and Bronson could have been running for any number of criminally unsophisticated reasons.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Fact: we are far more interested in your supplier here, Mr. Lienhardt.<span style=""> </span>No offense, but you and your buddy are fairly small potatoes.<span style=""> </span>But if you guys cooperate with us, give us a statement, agree to testify, then things will go so much easier for you.<span style=""> </span>And that is very much a fact.”<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Fact: Mr. Bob Romano could have both Mal and Bronson killed right here in the holding cells of this cop shop.<span style=""> </span>But really, more than that, let’s say they give Romano up and live to tell the tale, what are they gonna do for work then?<span style=""> </span>No one’s gonna let any kind of rat hang around, not even Romano’s competitors.<span style=""> </span>So what then, pull up stakes?<span style=""> </span>Get real jobs?<span style=""> </span>Mal will sooner blow this pudgy little detective here than even ask for an application down at the Subway.<span style=""> </span>And that’s a fact you can hang your hat on.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Now, this isn’t a fact so much as speculation, Mr. Lienhardt, but hear me out.<span style=""> </span>I’d say you’re made out of a little sterner stuff than Mr. Goodale.<span style=""> </span>And my partner, who is not a very patient man and can—strictly between you and me—be a real asshole when he wants, is in the next room giving your partner the same speech.<span style=""> </span>Only he’s not gonna be as nice about it as I am.<span style=""> </span>And I’ll tell you another thing, Mr. Lienhardt, between you and me, I don’t think Mr. Goodale is gonna be cut out for it.”<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Mal looks at him.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“I know, I know, you don’t wanna turn your back on a buddy.<span style=""> </span>I can respect that.<span style=""> </span>But think about it, Mr. Lienhardt.<span style=""> </span>You’ve been to jail, you can handle it.<span style=""> </span>Mr. Goodale, he’s got some priors, but I don’t think he’s looking to return to lock-up.<span style=""> </span>In fact, I think he’ll do about anything to stay out of jail, including throwing you and your supplier to the wolves, so to speak.<span style=""> </span>Now maybe I’m wrong.<span style=""> </span>But then again, why take that chance?<span style=""> </span>Why risk your own neck for a guy that wouldn’t stick his neck out like that for you?”<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Mal holds Lapierre’s gaze for a second, then looks up at the clock, at his coffee.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“So, given all that, Mr. Lienhardt, given all these facts before us.<span style=""> </span>What do you say?”<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Mal clears his throat.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center">#<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“The fact is,” Louis said, “the guy’s just gonna have to do a little bit of time.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“How little?”<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Louis shrugged.<span style=""> </span>“Two, three months, tops.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Fuck,” Mal said, “That’s the best you can do?”<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Hey,” Louis said, removing his smoked glasses, “I know he’s your friend and all, but watch your fuckin’ tone with me, kid.<span style=""> </span>I’m doing you a favor even taking this case.<span style=""> </span>You think I got nothing better to do?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“No, but—”<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Do you?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“No, Louis, look.<span style=""> </span>I’m sorry, it’s just—”<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Hey, c’mon,” Louis leaned forward on his desk and smiled.<span style=""> </span>“You’re worried about Bronson being locked up for the first time.<span style=""> </span>But you’ve been in county before, right?<span style=""> </span>It’s a picnic, even for a guy like him.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“I was driving,” Mal said.<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Uh-huh,” Louis said, “Wait, what?<span style=""> </span>When?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“That night. I drove into that lady’s yard, not Bronson.”<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Are you shitting me? Oh, man!” Louis sat back in his chair and held his sides as he laughed.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“C’mon, man, it’s not that funny.”<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“No, no, you’re right, it’s not.<span style=""> </span>It’s actually a lot funnier!”<span style=""> </span>And then he roared some more laughter, so Mal could see his fillings.<span style=""> </span>Mal sat there and fumed as Louis got himself back under control.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“All right, all right, all right,” Louis said, “Okay, tell me what happened.”<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“All right, what happened,” Mal said, “We were out at the bar, but Bronson was getting over a cold, so he didn’t feel like drinking.<span style=""> </span>I, on the other hand, very much did.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Why didn’t you just have him drive home?”<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Well, I fuckin’ know that know, man!<span style=""> </span>I was wasted, I wasn’t thinking clearly.<span style=""> </span>Y’know, it was only a few blocks—”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“All right, all right, go on.”<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“So I’m trying to change the tape, I take my eyes off the road for one second.<span style=""> </span>Next thing I know, we’re in this lady’s begonias.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Right, Mrs., lets’ see...” Louis shuffled some papers on his desk, “Mrs. Johanson.”<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Yeah, I guess so.<span style=""> </span>So Bronson shoves me out the driver’s side and tells me to run.<span style=""> </span>I say, what the fuck you doing?<span style=""> </span>He says with my record and all, it’ll be easier for him to wriggle outta this, especially since he was sober.<span style=""> </span>All he had hanging over him is that failure to appear, and what is that?<span style=""> </span>A fine?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Well, normally, yeah.<span style=""> </span>But Mrs. Johanson is married to an Officer Larry Johanson.<span style=""> </span>So, you know.<span style=""> </span>If Officer Larry whispers in the judge’s ear...”<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Yeah, I get that, but...fuck.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Look, kid, I did my best.<span style=""> </span>But with time served, he’ll be outta there before you know it.<span style=""> </span>So just go down there, visit, put a little something in his commissary.<span style=""> </span>Hell, bring him some of those comic books he likes so much.<span style=""> </span>It’ll make the time go quicker for both of you.”<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Yeah, I guess.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“C’mon, bubby, buck up!<span style=""> </span>Y’know, you’re a lucky guy to have a friend like this.”<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Mal looked up at him.<span style=""> </span>One corner of his mouth tugged itself up a bit.<span style=""> </span>“And that’s a fact, counselor,” he said.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center">#<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“What do I say to that?” Bronson says, “Well, that’s simple.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center">#<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“I say,” Mal says, “Give me my fucking phone call.”</p><p class="MsoNormal">*</p><p class="MsoNormal">Jimmy Callaway lives and works in San Diego, CA. Thanks to Josh Converse for line edits, and a very special thanks to Michael Berberich for technical advice. Please visit <a href="http://attentionchildren.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">attentionchildren.blogspot.com </a>for more.<br /> </p>Title Fightshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03645721097886240394noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5540500654593214421.post-35672925263838603752010-11-22T16:03:00.000-08:002010-11-29T19:04:43.185-08:00Your Life Belongs to Your People by Richard Jay Goldstein<p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">The Bear, the King, let fall the bear skin robe which was the emblem of his kingship. He was naked, as befitted the moment. Signs were drawn on his skin with the proper red paint, as also befitted the moment. Glyn had known the Bear before he became the Bear, could almost remember his old name. Hadn’t his name been Wirt? Strange it was so hard to recall, since it had only been one year. Wirt was only one year or two older than Glyn, but of course the Bear was immortal.</span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">The Bear stepped into the cave of hot water, stooping. Steam wavered around him and he disappeared into the dark of the cave, where it was otherwise forbidden to go. Gwenour, his Queen, stood nearby, holding a wooden cup in one hand, an iron knife in the other. Her name had been Brianna, before she became Gwenour a year ago. Her eyes were closed as she stood, waiting. Behind Gwenour stood the Blind Lady, called Isobail Isilis, the ruler of the priestesses of Great Danu, who was the Mother of All and the Protector of the Cauldron of Earth. Isobail Isilis was old, old and blind, and no one Glyn knew remembered her name before she became Isobail Isilis. </span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">The morning wore on. The young boy who acted as eyes for Isobail Isilis fidgeted restlessly. Everyone, the whole of the people, stood watching. No one spoke. Steam poured from the mouth of the cave of hot water.</span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">The Bear stepped out of the cave. His red paint signs ran and dripped, melted by the hot wet air of the cave. The Bear stood facing his people. His eyes were dilated, his face slack. A murmuring came from the gathered people.<br /></span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">Isobail Isilis heard the murmuring. She stepped forward, faced the Bear with her blind eyes, and spoke in a voice cracked with age. “Your life belongs to your people.” She turned to face the people, and said it again. “Your life belongs to your people.” Finally she faced the priestesses of Danu, and said it a third time. “Your life belongs to your people.”</span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">One of the priestesses gave Gwenour a shove. Gwenour opened her eyes and stumbled forward. She looked up at the Bear, who had been her king and husband for a year, and said in a small voice, “Your life belongs to your people.” Then she raised her iron knife and plunged it into the Bear’s throat. Bright blood sprayed out. Gwenour raised her wooden cup and caught some of the blood in it. The Bear did not cry out or flinch. As his blood geysered, he slowly turned and sank to the ground. </span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">The priestesses of Danu rushed forward, each pulling an iron knife from her robe. They descended on the body of the Bear like crows, and sliced off his flesh, which they threw to the people. The whole of the people surged up, holding their hands out for the flesh of the King. Glyn surged up with the rest. It was good fortune to swallow a bite of the King, the Bear, and bad fortune not to. </span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><i>Your life belongs to your people.</i> </span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">The people crowded, shoving, elbowing, crying out like birds. The priestesses of Danu cut and sliced the body of The Bear, threw the dripping pieces into grasping hands, until only bones and guts and brain remained. These would be burned in the dark of the midsummer moon, and the ash cast into the cleansing wind, and blown out over the Salt Sea.</span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">Glyn had his small piece of the King. He gulped it down, tasting the rust of the blood, like old iron.<br /></span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">The young woman who had been Brianna, before she became Gwenour, and the Queen to the King, now became only a priestess with no name, and joined the ranks of the priestesses of Danu.</span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">A drum began beating, filling the clearing among the tall dusty fir-trees, echoing off the cliff face which contained the cave of steam. The young women of the people slowly gathered into a ragged circle—women who were not yet married and had not borne children, but who had begun menstruating. They danced, stepping to the drum-beat. Outside the circle of young women the priestesses of Danu formed a larger, a looser circle, not dancing, holding their iron knives high so that they could be seen by the sky. Beyond that circle was a crowd of married women and married men, and old men and old women, and children. But within the circle of dancing young women were all the young men of the people, those who had begun to grow beards, but who were unmarried and had no children of their own. These young men milled about, stepping to the beat of the drum, Glyn among them.<br /></span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">The circle of priestesses of Danu opened on one side, and blind Isobail Isilis walked slowly through, her hand on the shoulder of the boy who was her eyes. She carried the bear skin which had been worn by the Bear, the King, and by the Kings before that one. Isobail Isilis walked slowly among the dancing women, turning her blind eyes this way and that, sniffing. She stopped before one young women who was tall, and pretty, although Glyn supposed Isobail Isilis could not know that. Glyn knew the young woman’s name to be Edana, and knew her to be a fiery person, easily angered. He knew this because he had once called on her, in her mother’s house, and been rebuffed.</span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">Now Edana would become Gwenour, the Queen, and then a priestess after the new King was consumed by his people, and she would not be an ordinary wife and mother. She had been chosen by blind Isobail Isilis.<br /></span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">Isobail Isilis placed the bear skin in Edana’s hands and walked slowly toward the center of the dancing circle, leaning on the boy who was her eyes. Edana followed, chosen, her head hanging, her feet dragging in the dirt. The ragged circle of dancing women parted and the blind Priestess walked slowly among the milling young men. The young men did not look at her. They milled and danced. Isobail Isilis sniffed the close air, full of steam from the cave, and sweat, and dust, and the dry breath of the overhanging fir trees. She turned her blind eyes back and forth. She sniffed and looked with her blind eyes, choosing. She put out her hand and caught the arm of a young man, and leaned up and kissed him on the cheek. She had chosen. It was Glyn. The new Gwenour draped the bear skin over his shoulders, and he was the Bear, the King. Like Edana, he had been chosen.</span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">Glyn thought his heart would stop. For a moment he could not breathe. It was a great thing to be chosen to be the Bear, to be the beloved of Danu, the Goddess, but it meant he would never do the many things he had thought he would do. It meant his life was no longer his own and would last only another year. But he held his chin up and tried to look proud. Edana who had once rebuffed him, fiery Edana, would be his Queen, his wife.<br /></span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">“Your life belongs to your people,” said Isobail Isilis.</span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">“Your life belongs to your people,” shouted the people.<br /></span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">“Your life belongs to your people,” shouted the young men and the young women, glad they had not been honored by being chosen.</span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">A year passed.<br /></span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">Glyn was no longer Glyn and was now the Bear, but in his heart he remained Glyn. He wondered if other Bears had found this to be true as well. He lived as King and Queen, man and wife, with Gwenour who had been Edana, and who still seemed to him to be Edana. They lived together as required, and they coupled as expected, under the watchful eyes of the priestesses and the blind regard of Isobail Isilis, because that was needed to make the land fertile and game plentiful. But they did not live in harmony. That was not required. They rarely spoke and their coupling was devoid of joy. Glyn had thought that possessing Edana as his Queen would be one pleasure of being the Bear, but he knew that she would have still rebuffed him if she had not been Gwenour.</span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">As the Bear, Glyn blessed the fields and the wooden plows of the tillers, blessed the fish in the river, blessed the stone and bronze weapons of the hunters before they set out. The best foods were given to him and to his Gwenour, the choicest meats, the ripest fruits. Young mothers brought their new-born babes to him for blessing. This brought tears to his eyes, and to Gwenour’s eyes, because they both knew they would never sire children or bear children themselves. The women who were Gwenour never conceived. Never. To become priestesses after their year as Gwenour they could not have children. Glyn suspected that something was given to them, an herb perhaps, in the secrecy of the women’s house, which prevented conception.<br /></span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">The seasons hurried past. Never had Glyn known a year to evaporate so quickly. Sometimes in the dark of midnight, lying sleepless, Glyn thought about fleeing his blessing, slipping out in the dark. But where would he go? The lands of the Bear extended far, valley to hill to valley, to the coast of the Salt Sea, all along the River, and to the north where the blue people lived who did not know Great Danu. But who would not know him? Every tiny farm, every hunting camp, every village, every gathering of priestesses, would know him as the renegade Bear, the Bear who withheld his life from his people, and risked bringing the anger of the Goddess down on the land. Even the other tribes who lived to the south and to the west, and across the Salt Water, would refuse to shelter him.</span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">Spring came. Snow melted and the ancient forest filled with green and with bird-song. Summer came, and midsummer, and the Day of Devotion, when the Bear gave his life to his people.<br /></span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">Glyn and Edana coupled one last time, as was required. Edana was taken away by the priestesses because she would now become one of them, and no longer be Edana or Gwenour. Glyn was washed by other priestesses, and his hair braided, and the special signs painted on his body with the red paint which only the priestesses knew the secret of making. He was wrapped in the bear skin of his office.</span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">As the sun climbed to zenith, the people gathered again, coming from every part of the land. When they were assembled, blind Isobail Isilis appeared with a new boy who was her eyes. The old boy had grown older and gone back to his village. The Bear was led forward to the mouth of the cave of steam. Gwenour stood nearby, holding her oak-wood cup and iron knife. Glyn did not look at her, or at the things she held.<br /></span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">Glyn dropped his bear skin and stood naked, so the people could see that he was without flaw. Then he ducked his head and stepped into the cave.</span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">Inside was dark and warm billowing steam. Glyn’s eyes adjusted to the dim light and he saw a rocky passage, its floor muddy and green with moss. At the end of the passage was a rocky bay with a spring of boiling water welling up. At the back of the bay was a shelf and on the shelf a bed of sodden straw. Thin light filtered through the steam from outside. An old man was seated by the spring on a bench of stone. His skin was as pale as mushroom, splotched with red, and hung loosely. His hair was lank and thin.<br /></span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">“Come in, Bear, and sit here with me,” said the old man. His voice was weak and moist. “My name is Aiden, which is strange since my name means <i>fire,</i> yet I spend my days here drenched in the dark.”</span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">Glyn sat on the bench near, but not too near, Aiden. “Who are you, Aiden?” he whispered.<br /></span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">“I am the brother of the blind chief of the priestesses, who is called Isobail Isilis,” said Aiden, “although when she was simply my sister her name was Morgane. When she became Isobail Isilis she banished me to this cave, because of something I had learned—which I may reveal to you, or I may not. I had the choice of immediate death or living here in the dark and doing a service for each Bear, and coincidently for the priestesses of Danu. The Priestesses bring me food and change my bedstraw. If I were to step outside, my life would be forfeit. I often think about doing so.”</span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">“Why don’t you?” asked Glyn.”This seems a miserable existence.”<br /></span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">“Because of two things, one known and one secret. One is, there is a fungus which grows here in the damp which brings on a stupor when eaten. I give this to each Bear, if he wishes it, to make what follows easier, which is the service I provide. Sometimes I eat a little myself. I do not know if the Bears did this before I came here, or who may have given it to them, but they do since I came, and I have been here many years and seen many Bears. But the second thing, the secret thing, is that I still hold a hope for a truly courageous Bear.”</span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">“It seems to me just being the Bear requires courage enough,” muttered Glyn.<br /></span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">“Yes, it does,” agreed Aiden. “But what I have in mind requires special courage, and a quick mind. So far, every Bear has listened to my proposal, then asked for the fungus, and gone out to be devoured by his people. I suppose many of these Bears were true believers, who believed in the power of Danu, and that being killed and eaten is what it means to say the King’s life belongs to his people. Now, what about you, Bear?”</span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">“My name is Glyn.”<br /></span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">“Very well, Glyn,” said Aiden with a small smile. “That is a good beginning. What about you, Glyn?”</span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">“What is it that you ask?”<br /></span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">“It is this,” said Aiden. “The power of the priestesses of Danu, like all things, has grown old and brittle. Perhaps there was a time when we needed to believe we required the blessing of the goddess to prosper, but no more. Now we know if we plant a seed, and if there is sufficient water and sunlight, the plant will grow. We know if a hunter is skillful, and if he seeks the proper game in the proper season, he will succeed. We have no need to placate any goddess.”</span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">“But is it not Danu who brings the sun and the rain, and regulates the seasons?” asked Glyn.<br /></span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">“Perhaps. Or perhaps the deity who does all this is male. Or perhaps the deity is neither. Or both. Or perhaps these things operate on their own. What we do know is that in the memory of humankind they have never failed. Not for us, who pray and sacrifice to Danu, nor for barbarians who do not. But look, we men are stronger than women. Women are slaves to the cycle of their bodies. They are incapacitated by child bearing. That is why the priestesses never consort with men. But that, if anything is, is unnatural.” Aiden leaned forward and put his pale, clammy hands on Glyn’s shoulders. “There is one thing they have which allows this perverted imbalance of power. Iron.” Aiden sat back.”But I have the secret of making iron, which I learned by secretly following and watching my sister. But I was caught, and that is why I am confined to this cave.”</span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">“I don’t understand this,” said Glyn. “What do you want of me?”<br /></span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">Aiden struggled to his feet. “I want you to become King,” he hissed. “I want you to live and be King, and grow old as King, and your sons after you. I want you to wrest power from the priestesses, and take it for your own. I want to humble them, and humble my sister, and make men the masters. I want to teach the secret of iron-making to the people, and use iron as it was meant to be used, for tools, and plows. And weapons. I want to come out of this cave to be your advisor and minister.”</span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">“But the King’s life...” began Glyn.<br /></span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">“Yes, the King’s life,” interrupted Aiden. “It belongs to his people. His <i>life,</i> Glyn<i>.</i> Not his <i>death.</i>”</span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">Glyn’s eyes widened. He felt as though the sun rose in his thoughts. His mind raced. He saw how all this could be. How he could live. What he would say. He jumped to his feet. “I will do it,” he shouted.<br /></span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">“Less loudly,” cautioned Aiden. “Sound echoes from here. And there is much to plan.”</span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">Aiden and Glyn sat together in the shadows and the steam, and talked, and planned, while the people and the priestesses waited outside in the sun. Glyn and Aiden talked and planned for hours. Then they rose and walked slowly toward the cave mouth.<br /></span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">“One last thing,” said Aiden. “I doubt anyone remembers that Isobail Isilis was once Morgane, or that she had a brother, or that his name was Aiden. We are old and those who knew us have mostly died. Perhaps Morgane herself has forgotten who she was before she was blinded by the priestesses to become their Blind Lady. And, after all, she <i>is</i> blind. How would she know me now? Nevertheless, I shall now become Merwyn, which means <i>friend from the water</i> in the Old Speech. The friend and counselor to the new King.”</span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">The sun rode the western sky when Glyn came out of the cave. Gwenour stepped forward. But Glyn held up his hand and Gwenour stepped back. The priestesses blinked, and Isobail Isilis raised her head. They had all expected a stupefied Bear to emerge from the cave, dulled and ready for sacrifice, because that was how it had always been.<br /></span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">Instead Glyn held his hand up, and stood firmly and tall, and spoke to the gathered people with his eyes bright. “The life of the King belongs to his people,” he shouted.</span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">“The life of the King belongs to his people,” repeated the people, puzzled.<br /></span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">“I have seen the Goddess,” called Glyn. “She appeared to me there in the Holy Cave.”</span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">The people gasped, breathed and swayed. Then they were silent.<br /></span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">“Danu was there,” continued Glyn. “She was there along with her consort, Gwydion, God of the sky. They spoke to me and told me of a new way which is upon us.”</span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">The Blind Lady, Isobail Isilis, now stepped forward, holding up her iron knife. “This is blasphemy, Bear,” she cried. “Your life belongs to your people.”<br /></span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">“Yes,” answered Glyn, The Bear. “My life. Not my death.”</span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">The people began to murmur. Isobail Isilis stopped, confused.<br /></span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">“They—Danu and Gwydion—told me I was to live,” called Glyn. “Live and rule as King, and that my life thereby belonged to my people. That the Sisterhood of Priestesses was still to be honored, but that the rule would be the King’s. That my Queen would be Gwenour, who was Edana, and our sons would be King after me.”</span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">Gwenour turned pale and dropped her iron knife and wooden cup. She stumbled back, but Glyn held out his hand. Slowly, she took his hand and he pulled her forward to stand beside him. She looked him in the eye, hesitated, then stood firmly, her hand held in his.<br /></span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">“As the King will rule the people, so each man shall rule his home. As token of this, Danu placed her hand under the foot of Gwydion.”</span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">The people sighed and swayed.<br /></span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">“And finally,” cried Glyn, “they—Danu and Gwydion—gave to me a wise counselor. He shall be called Merwyn—the friend—and he shall give the secret of iron to all the people, so they might make tools and plows and spears and knives and arrows from it, and prosper.”</span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">Merwyn, who had been Aiden, stepped out of the cave. “I am Merwyn,” he said. “I carry the secret of iron.”<br /></span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">The people cried out at this, because they had not thought anyone was in the cave. Only Isobail Isilis recognized his voice, and remembered Aiden. She threw her knife on the ground and began to shout. “More blasphemy,” she cried. “He is my brother. He is a criminal. A thief.”</span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">But the people shouted louder and drowned her out. “Iron,” they shouted. “We want iron.” Then, “The King. The King. His life belongs to the people. Long live the King.”<br /></span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">Glyn noted that many more men shouted than women. Few women, in fact, shouted. <i>The women must get used to it,</i> he thought. <i>It is the time of men now,</i> He held up Gwenour’s hand.</span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">“Long live the Queen,” shouted the men. “Long live the Bear.” Glyn smiled at Gwenour, and she smiled back.<br /></span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">Isobail Isilis picked up her knife angrily and marched through the people, who gave way and parted for her. She disappeared from the clearing. The priestesses of Danu followed her.</span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">“There will be trouble there,” whispered Merwyn.<br /></span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">“If it comes to battle,” said Glyn, “and if we have iron, we can defeat them easily. Let them keep the secret of the red paint.”</span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">“Iron you shall have,” said Merwyn. “And who can we not defeat, when we have it? Our tribe will be triumphant everywhere.”<br /></span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">“Yes,” said Glyn, the King, the Bear. “And I will be the King, and they will bow down to me.”</span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">The people shouted the title of the King, the Bear, in the Old Speech. “Artos. The Bear. Artos. The Bear.”</span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">*</span></p><p class="DefaultStyle"><span style="font-family:georgia;">Not the usual Title Fights one two, eh? I'm always stoked to see what kind of crazy stuff washes up on our shores - whether it's a dirty, nasty, shit-laden noir punch-up or an epic other-worldy coming of age deal. I watched Conan, of course, but I've never read stuff like this before - but it's interesting to think about how all these stories were prompted the same way, the same sort of catalyst gave birth to all of them. Different as all our stories are, they have that in common (wipes tear from eye).<br /></span></p>Title Fightshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03645721097886240394noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5540500654593214421.post-48998410750145690182010-11-20T08:27:00.000-08:002010-11-20T08:32:37.822-08:00Evil Will Always Hate Good Pt. 1 by Tom Sheehan<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:view>Normal</w:View> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:snaptogridincell/> <w:wraptextwithpunct/> <w:useasianbreakrules/> </w:Compatibility> <w:browserlevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman";} </style> <![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:view>Normal</w:View> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:snaptogridincell/> <w:wraptextwithpunct/> <w:useasianbreakrules/> </w:Compatibility> <w:browserlevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if !mso]><object classid="clsid:38481807-CA0E-42D2-BF39-B33AF135CC4D" id="ieooui"></object> <style> st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } </style> <![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman";} </style> <![endif]--> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style="">At the Last Good Find Saloon, in </i><i style="">Tremont</i><i style="">, </i><i style="">Texas</i><i style="">, where two old pards have come in off the trail.</i></p> <span style="font-style: italic;"></span>Josh: (<i style="">tall cowpoke, neat as a pin</i>) Hey, Max, who’s the gent in the girlie boots? <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><i style="">A third man, tall, rugged in the face and across the shoulders, early forties, enters the saloon and walks to the bar. He is wearing a wide sombrero, blue vest over a lighter blue shirt, dark pants and no boots or gun belt. On his feet are strange looking “slippers,” to use another term.</i></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Max: Reminds me of the lady works the post office in Laramie, Suzie something. ‘Member how she hid her feet all the time, the silly looking shoes she wore, like they’d fit a whole horse.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Josh (<i style="">to the stranger</i>): Hey, mister, how‘d you come by those things you got on your feet? Don’t you wear a real man’s boots like all us others do? Good cowboy boots for wearing working spurs, riding horse, herding cattle?</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Stranger (<i style="">nodding, breaking into a wide grin, looks down at his feet for the longest spell, which seems to unnerve Josh</i>): These things on my feet are my squeakers, as I call them. They make funny sounds when I walk while my real boots are getting fixed by the harness maker down the street. Other than that, my feet are all my own concern, son. And so is what I wear on my feet, on or off a horse.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Josh: You poking fun at me, Mister? I don’t think I like that. What if I was to whip those silly looking things off your feet, them squeakers?</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Stranger: Well, son, I expect you’d find one hand broken or one wrist, your tongue hanging out of your mouth more tired than it is right now, and me climbing all over you just for the hell of it.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Josh: Hell, mister, I don’t like your tone none and you ain’t even wearing a gun. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Stranger: That’s the whole point of it, son. I ain’t wearing a gun, so you can’t use yours on me if you had that faulty thought come to your mind, which I observe is busier than it ought to be instead of enjoying your whiskey like you ought, never knowing when you might get the taste of the next one. You’d find yourself in the jail for at least one night and maybe more if you were to pull the trigger on an unarmed man.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Max (<i style="">suddenly seeing what might be coming</i>): Josh, better let it go now. Now ain’t the time to get this man all riled up. He ain’t done nothin' to you.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Josh: I just don’t like his looks, how he talks, how he dresses. He don’t look like no cowboy to me.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Barkeep (<i style="">tapping the bar top</i>): Son, pay attention to your pard here, and to the gent you’re antagonizin’. It just ain’t in your best interest to rile him up and get my place messed up over a pair of funny looking feet critters. And he’s a whole lot of right by saying he’ll be all over you in good fashion before you can blow your nose or draw on that gun of yours.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Josh (<i style="">now looking real agitated</i>): You think I ain’t fast enough to draw and get a bead on him?</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><i style="">Before Josh can move, the stranger slams a fist in his face, pulls Josh’s gun from his holster and trains it on Max.</i></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Stranger: Pick him up real easy, son, and take him outside and dump him in the water trough. Tell him, when he’s fully awake, sober as he’ll ever be, he can get his gun down at the jail. I’m finishing off my drink now and going back to work. Before I get there, you better get your friend put in one of those cells and make sure the door is locked and the keys hung proper. He’s going to be madder than hell later tonight. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><i style="">The stranger walks out of the saloon, the squeakers on his feet making a distinctive noise as he leaves the room.</i></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Max (<i style="">as he’s trying to pick up his pal)</i>: Barkeep, who the hell is that guy? What’s his name? What’s he do?</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Barkeep: That’s Jed Hollander; he’s the head of the Texas Rangers. He’s one of the real good lawmen in the whole territory. Probably the damnedest best one of all. Tell your pard he don’t want him on the other side of anything. And if I was you I’d make sure I get that hothead in jail pronto lest he starts to agitatin’ the law. Won’t pay him to do so.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Max: That man that good? As good as you say?</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Barkeep: For ten, twelve years he’s been between whatever’s bad and whatever’s good in all this territory, all the way up as far as Plimpton, and you gotta cross the ferry there to get away from him.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Max (<i style="">hustling his friend erect, who’s shaking his head, wobbly, like he’s been hit by a mule’s kick</i>): Is he a married man, this Hollander gent, this Ranger?</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Barkeep (<i style="">waving his hands like a flagman on the railroad</i>): Whoa, there, son. Why do you ask such a question? You sure don’t want to go in that direction. Not if you’re life was to depend on it. That ain’t likely safe from any angle no matter how the hellos go ‘twixt who and whoever.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Max (<i style="">smiling sheepishly</i>): Not me, mister. I’m no lover boy, but Josh here thinks he’s the whole shebang to any woman he fancies, and don’t miss much that way either. It’s like his getting-even weapon, if you know what I mean. Seems as though he’s been raisin’ that kind of hell since he was halfway to the saddle, maybe even ‘afore he saw all the sights the barn was holdin’ on to. And in the time I been around, that’s all the way to Houston and half the ranches in between. Second thought, probably three quarters of ‘em. He’s like fire and ice, that boy, the miracle worker’s what he is. Heats ‘em up and leaves ‘em cold and him on the trail again. I wouldn’t want to count how many times he’s been chased down the trail and the guns goin’ off behind him and him laughing like a damned fool, but smilin’ like the ears on his head was really red and black and pointin’ the way to hell itself. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Barkeep: He leave any kids on the way? </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Max (<i style="">still holding Josh erect</i>) : I’d guess half the kids in this part of Texas have that same long clean nose and those deep blue eyes like the whole ocean was here sayin’ hello to one girl at a time. He just gets meaner’n hell if I tell him about them husbands lookin’ half the world over for him. (He laughs loudly) And their women, too.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Barkeep: Why’s he like that? He’s a decent lookin’ boy.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Max: My guess he hates what he can’t be. He knows he ain’t ever goin’ to be a good husband or father or plain law- abidin’ son of the west. It just ain’t in him for such goodness.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Barkeep: And you? Why are you like this?</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Max: I can’t be what I want to be either. Simple as that. And that Ranger scares me to Kingdom Come as I should know better.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Barkeep: I’m bettin’ he ain’t done his bit yet, son. He don’t like bad guys, and ‘specially those that play women for trinkets and husbands for fools. The law and most men say women this side of the saloon ain’t fair game for any drover comes off the trail like he’s the angel itself but ain’t.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span><i style="">Josh is taken by Max from the saloon.</i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.5in;"><i style="">The scene shifts to the jail where Josh is in a cell. A woman, young, attractive, the Ranger’s wife, Alma Hollander, enters at noontime carrying a tray of food.</i></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Alma: I have your lunch here. Please step back and I will place it on the floor. I’m Mrs. Hollander.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Josh: I know who you are, sweet one. You’re the girl who escaped from that bright moon I was studying all last night after I got locked up in here, the one the moon didn’t want to let go of, afraid you’d get scooped up by some lovesick cowboy like me who thinks Texas women are the most beautiful women in the whole world, especially the married ones. Your husband is a real nice fellow, if he is what he seems to be with someone like you at hand. He does have a great eye for beautiful ladies. How I wish I was not in here, lost to the world, lost to the fairest ladies in the world.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Alma (<i style="">turning to exit after placing the tray on the floor</i>): Just eat your meal, Josh. That’s all you have to do. You’ll have your chance someday at true love.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Josh: I just wish it could be you, Ma’am. No moss growing all over me. When I move on there’ll be some live wishing going on here. You’ll just be in the mix then, like a dream that never happened, a beautiful woman locked into a lonely town where the moon can die every night, like death comes on every breath of time if you let it.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Alma: You are a smooth one, Josh.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Josh: Knowing my name for starters is all it takes. Now let me dream how it might be. I’ll let you know how it goes some other time when I’m shuck of here.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1in;"><i style="">Alma is about to leave and Josh snakes his hand through the bars and grabs her by the hair. Immediately he covers her mouth with his other hand and pulls her against the bars of the cell. </i></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Josh: That prairie rat of a husband of yours shouldn’t let high and mighty you work like a slave. You got some comeuppance coming to you, you and that man of yours thinks he’s the world to you. Well, soft lady, you got some news coming your way.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1in;"><i style="">Josh shifts his position to get a better grab on her, and Hollander steps into the cell room.</i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 4.5pt; text-indent: -4.5pt;">Hollander: You keep your hands on her and you’re dead before you hit the floor.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 4.5pt; text-indent: -4.5pt;">Josh: I got the knife here, high and mighty one, and I’ll cut her pretty face so you won’t want to look at it come morning any more. I’ll mark her fearsome, Ranger boy, real fearsome.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 4.5pt; text-indent: -4.5pt;">Hollander: She’ll probably do what Chico does when she yells at him.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1in;"><i style="">Alma, a quizzical look on her face, thinks, sees her pet dog being corrected, smiles, and then ducks, as Hollander fires one round high onto Josh’s shoulder. It knocks him across the cell. Alma falls free of his grip, the dull knife from the food tray falls to the floor harmlessly.</i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: -4.5pt;">Hollander: You’re going down into the third level at the penitentiary. You won’t see the sun for a few years if you can stand it. I’m willing to wager you’ll be nearer to Hell than you are right now.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: -4.5pt;">*</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: -4.5pt;">Tom Sheehan has hair like fire and fists like pistons. So it's difficult for him to grip a pen, but when he does those letters are getting pummeled out, not swirled or sketched.<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: -4.5pt;"></p>Title Fightshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03645721097886240394noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5540500654593214421.post-5890488787795964752010-11-03T19:44:00.000-07:002010-11-03T20:00:50.665-07:00The Large Majority of Normal Women by Jimmy CallawayI met Jan on New Year’s Eve at a friend’s party. It was really nice, y’know, we talked about simply everything, from new beginnings to the Super Bowl. Then we shared a sweet little kiss at midnight. No tongue or anything. Very chaste, very nice. We started getting pretty involved over the next few weeks, and one night, when we were making love, she asked me if I wanted to get a little crazy. So I said yeah, and she said Like how? So I asked her put me in a diaper and give me a good spanking. She did it, but she never called again.<br /><br />Purity was short and sweet: only four-foot-eleven, and she worked at an animal rescue shelter and a daycare for retards. Things were going swell, and I thought for Valentine’s Day, it’d be fun and non-cliché to go out to an archery range. That didn’t work out so well, though. Let’s just say that, as little as she was, she was hard to miss. I understand she’d be upset for a few days, but you’d think after all those flowers I sent to her hospital room, she could at least return a phone call.<br /><br />Marcy was fun, a lot of fun. A very outdoors-y woman, too, which was something I wasn’t used to at all, y’know. Very much a city boy, me. But she would take me on nature walks and stuff, and it was very educational. So trying to return the favor, I bought her some snakes, y’know, as pets. I really wanted to impress her too, so I bought the whole lot from down at the pet store, something like fifty or sixty of them. Then, I thought it’d be really romantic to leave them all in her house, y’know, a surprise when she walked in the door. Her attorneys were very intent on getting in touch with me; her, not so much.<br /><br />April had a voice like an angel. I was at a karaoke bar with some of the guys, and when I heard her sing “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” I won’t lie to you, I was moved to tears. I caught up with her as she came offstage and told her she should really be a professional. I think she really was impressed that someone appreciated her for her talents moreso than her body, which was considerably attractive. Over the next few weeks, I really began to think she had a shot at a singing career under my management. I started making her this concoction that my great-grandmother claimed would keep one’s voice in pitch-perfect condition. Thing is, I couldn’t remember the recipe too well, and had to improvise. In hindsight, perhaps substituting Tabasco for one of the ingredients wasn’t such a great idea. I hope she makes it one day, though, I really do.<br /><br />After only a few dates, May and I really started talking seriously about children. We’re both getting up there, she reasoned, so perhaps it would be best if we didn’t muck about with these courting rituals and just got right to the procreation. This may be surprising, but I was all for it, y’know, her argument made a lot of sense. I had seen this special on animal husbandry on TV a few years ago, so one night, I tried to do what I had seen the farmers do. Suffice it to say, as important as the rectum may be during artificial insemination, you really shouldn’t try sticking your whole arm into your partner’s anus. Perhaps I should have said something first, sure, but I still think she could have returned my calls.<br /><br />Around this time, a lot of my friends started getting married and having weddings, which was a little depressing, I won’t lie to you. But the upshot was that I met June. It seems a lot of my friends were marrying a lot of her friends. I met her at one wedding, made out with her at a second, and then we made sweet, sweet love in the cloakroom during the reception of a third. But I don’t know, things seemed to fall apart outside of a wedding environment, as though our relationship only worked if nuptials were in the air. Perhaps when I took her out to dinner and she ordered the most expensive thing on the menu, I shouldn’t have called her a cunt. But I mostly think it was the absence of that special brand of romance that you only find at weddings that led her to never call me again.<br /><br />I took Julie to an Independence Day party. That one was totally on me. I should have realized she was wearing a lot of hairspray, and regardless, I shouldn’t have lit off those Black Cats so close to her head. Completely my fault, but I was genuinely sorry. Alas, she never even called to thank me for the card and coupon for Uncle Joe’s Fireworks Shack that I sent her.<br /><br />Gussie may have had an old lady’s name, but she made love like a sixteen-year-old cheerleader. Which was appropriate, I suppose, since she was about to go into the 12th grade. Now, I am all for a woman trying to better herself through higher education, but I really don’t think that was what she had in mind when she told me that her senior year would be too hectic for her to maintain a relationship. Frankly, I think her gym coach came between us, but I still was only calling her to see if she wanted to get coffee sometime, or rather a nice glass of milk. But no, no response from her at all.<br /><br />Siete was a nice girl of Mexican heritage, the seventh child in a large family. Her parents were very traditional, very Catholic, but they approved of me whole-heartedly, a nice boy with a good job and cultured manners. They welcomed me with open arms into their home, very kindly, and oh, the food. What a spread! To show my gratitude not only for their hospitality, but their general warmth, I decided to dress some store mannequins as Spanish conquistadors and burn them in effigy on their lawn. Well, the police and fire department were rather upset, and that I could appreciate. But after I explained the gesture to them, they seemed to mostly understand. Siete and her family insisted on failing to see it my way, however, and the restraining order they took out on me only proved that to me all the more.<br /><br />Autumn was really into the occult. I don’t really want to go into details, but turns out a Ouija board is not a toy after all.<br /><br />Nova was a real handful, but still a sheer delight to be around. Very impulsive, very much a woman who lives in the moment. One brisk day as we were talking a walk, I made an attempt at her own brand of spontaneity and suggested that we go jump in the piles of leaves scattered about the park across the street. For the record, she had no more idea than I did that that “park” was actually a cemetery. So really, I don’t see why I ended up shouldering the blame for that one. The party whose mourning we interrupted was rather upset, but I could forgive them that, being bereaved and all. But I wasn’t expecting them to return any of my phone calls, now was I?<br /><br />Christina was extremely devout, and she would have absolutely no hanky-panky before marriage. I was agreeable to this, however, for I felt that she really may have been the one, that special someone I’d been looking for my whole life. She was kind, considerate, intelligent, well-read, and had the nicest rack I’d ever laid eyes on. As the yuletide season drew near, I really wanted to wow her with my gift, y’know, something that would really show her how I felt about her. But nothing in the many stores and shopping malls I visited met that very high expectation. So I murdered her Jewish landlord. Okay, perhaps I am not as up on my religious teachings as I could be, but I still think it was the thought that counted.<br /><br />This is my story, my many pitfalls on the path to true love. Reflecting back, I must ask, what is it? What is the one thing these women, these failed attempts at amour, all have in common?<br /><br />No, seriously, I really want to know.<br /><br /><br /><em>Jimmy Callaway wants you to know that more of his writing is at <a href="http://attentionchildren.blogspot.com/">attentionchildren.blogspot.com</a>, and also that it took him a little while before he realized Tim O’Brien’s novel Tomcat in Love was mostly ironic.</em>Title Fightshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03645721097886240394noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5540500654593214421.post-46915470170827840362010-11-02T19:14:00.000-07:002010-11-03T20:02:50.172-07:00Difficult to Please by Aralis Bloise“He called me difficult to please, can you believe that?” Nina keeps shouting through the phone. “All I want is for him to be responsible for his sons. Does that sound difficult to you? It’s not like he has to be at work at a particular time. He works from home for God’s sake!”<br /><br />Nina is in rare form tonight. She has been talking non stop for over an hour. She just got into a big fight with her soon to be ex about who is going to pick up their twins from daycare now that she’s going to start working full time.<br /><br />I’m just letting her talk. It’s not like she really wants my opinion anyway; “Stop talking and just let me vent” is what she always says, and today is no exception. Nina loves to call me to vent. She says I am a good listener. And I am. I’m also not above playing a video game with the volume turned off while she vents; these zombies aren’t going to shoot themselves. The secret is to at least know the gist of what the problem is and remember to sound outraged at the appropriate times.<br /><br />“What an asshole!” I say as I fire my cannon at zombie nurses, mowing them down like particularly busty bowling pins.<br /><br />“He’s a bastard.” And so is this undead mailman who just won’t die. Never mind, he’s dead now.<br /><br />“He’s an idiot” and a grenade explodes down the corridor, opening up an exit for me to escape. Now I’m in the cellar and it looks like I have a puzzle to solve. It takes me a few minutes and I have no idea what she is talking about now. The puzzle part of the games always forces me to make a decision about who gets my full attention. The game always wins. No problem, I have it under control. “What are you going to do?” that one is always a good one to throw out when you have completely lost the thread of what’s going on. I don’t know if she doesn’t notice or just doesn’t care, but there she goes launching on another monologue.<br /><br />Oh, I get it now. She’s mad because she wants him to drop off the kids when she gets home from work, but she doesn’t want him to come into the house so they’re exchanging the children at the McDonalds parking lot like some sort of hostage negotiation. That’s really stupid. I’ve always thought Rob was an idiot, but I’m going to have to give this one to him. So I tell her. I tell her that’s a stupid idea. It’s inconvenient to everybody and that she shouldn’t be so openly hostile to her kid’s father right in front of them anyway. Excuse me, did she just yell at me? She is! She’s yelling at me. What the hell? I have to listen to her rant and rave for months and I’m not allowed to give her my opinion?<br /><br />“Wait a minute,” I tell her. “I’m only telling you this because I’m your friend and I don’t think it’s healthy for the kids to be caught in the middle of a feud.” Silence. Did she just hang up on me? One of the things that suck about cell phones is that you can’t slam them, so I have no idea at which point she hung up on me. I think I’m offended. Here I was paying attention to her for once and now I’m the bad guy? It’s kind of ironic.<br /><br />I’m not calling her back. I’ll sure she’ll call me back eventually. In a few days she will call me to complain about him some more. Or maybe she won’t. Maybe in a few days I’ll care. But for right now I’m going to kill some zombies with the volume turned up. Way up.<br /><br /><br /><em>Aralis Bloise hails from Miami, Florida where she avoids the sun at all costs by staying at home writing short stories and screenplays.</em>Title Fightshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03645721097886240394noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5540500654593214421.post-32886048853203141972010-11-01T19:41:00.000-07:002010-11-01T20:37:45.952-07:00Diseases Induced by Dancing Early in Life by Mary LongThe support group was a front, of course. Chip loved cookies but was terrified of turning on the oven. He liked other men, but was afraid of leaving the house. By putting out the support group ad, both came to him, each week, free of charge. It was a credit to his internet friend Sal for thinking it up. Sal abused many legitimate support groups. The one he attended most often was Cutters Anonymous, because he really dug seeing other peoples’ scars. The ones he had he’d gotten from his step dad, or so he told Chip, but people believed him when he told them they were self-inflicted. Sal’s favorite anonymous cutter was a girl whose problem had led her to cover almost every inch of her body with tiny, razor fine lines (“Even her mutherficking eyelidz, man,” Sal had typed). Chip shuddered at the thought. No one who came to his group had anything quite so obvious.<br /><br />When he’d first put the ad into the Community/Groups section on Craigslist, he didn’t expect anything to happen: nothing did when he made up Missed Connections stories. However, within the first day, he’d received three responses:<br /><blockquote>>>Dear Chip,<br />I believe I fit the requeerment, ha ha for your group. I cant believe there is such a thing but it makes so much sense to me now that i have a name for it. Could you plz let me know when your next meeting time is thanks,<br />-Sid</blockquote>Sid brought snickerdoodle cookies that he made from his mother’s own recipe. He usually baked them for too long or forgot to take them off the baking sheet soon enough, so that they turned out crispy instead of soft, but with coffee, they were all right. Sid wasn’t exactly a looker, but he smelled like Dial soap and his nails were clean, so Chip felt pretty confident about eating his cookies. Sid was sure it was doing the funky chicken with his dad to “Doo Wa Ditty” that had done him in. He’d demonstrated the dance once and the group agreed that it couldn’t have helped.<br /><blockquote>>>Chip:<br />I think maybe you are crazy, but I’d like to learn more. Please call me.<br />-Dan</blockquote><br />Dan made different kinds of cookies, but they always had silver dragées on them. Chip worried about the metal content of the decorations, but he ate the cookies anyway. The dragées were to Dan what the nicotine patch was for a smoker who was trying to quit but still snuck cigarettes in between patches. Dan had Pica, and had a particular fondness for BBs and 16 gauge body jewelry ball fasteners. Dan’s single cop mother had worked late and worked often, so he’d spent the majority of his childhood with his babysitter Grace rockin’ out to The Bangles and Cyndi Lauper. Every other week or so his mom would take him to the shooting range with her, and he’d wish to be home with Grace. He and his mom stopped going to the shooting range after he ate a box of bullets in one sitting.<br /><br /><blockquote>>>Chip-<br />I used to dance with my uncle on his feet, you know how kids do? Anyway, that made me really think my uncle was a fun guy and trust him and think he was great but then it turned out he wasn’t so great, you know? Anyway, I’d like to come to your group please let me know ASap because my therapist is really expensive and I think groups are always better, plus I live in your neighborhood already and my therapist is all the way across town.<br />-Kirk</blockquote>Chip made sure to order in extra napkins for the week that Kirk was bringing the goods. Kirk was like his baked goods: gooey and a little sticky. He usually brought brownies or blondies or lemon bars. Even though Kirk was kind of, well, profuse about things, he was still a great dancer, and Chip dug the way he shook his hips to Scissor Sisters, among other things. Sometimes Kirk would stick around after the others left and let Chip lick his fingers clean. Kirk was really happy to not have to pay for therapy anymore.<br /><br />Others joined the group, and some left, but the first three were its foundation. They were the believers. When the group dwindled back down to the four of them, Chip reposted the original ad and hoped for new faces, new tastes.<br /><blockquote><p>Support Group for those who suffer from diseases induced by dancing early in life</p><p>>>Potential friends:<br />My name is Chip. As a child, my mother put me into ballet classes. For years, I did not connect this with my current afflictions. I have agoraphobia, among other often debilitating personal issues. I recently made the connection between my experiences with dance and the problems that plague me today. I could be wrong, but I think there may be others like me. If you agree, or are curious, please email me. I would like to host meetings in my Normal Flats home (agoraphobic), and can provide alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages (I work from home as a consultant to a beverage distributer). It would be wonderful if new group members brought baked goods, as I am fond of them but am quite scared of using my oven. I think together we can discover how our current problems can connect back to the youthful twinkling of our toes.</p></blockquote><br />Usually, thankfully, it was only men that answered. When women did come, they generally left the group fairly quickly. Sometimes Chip referred them to the support group that Sal attended that most closely seemed to match their particular affliction.<br /><br /><br /><em>At a Halloween party at age 6, Mary Long did the Running Man in a homemade skeleton costume for most of the night. If she doesn't finish something on time, or tries to make out with your sister, just blame it on MC Hammer.</em>Title Fightshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03645721097886240394noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5540500654593214421.post-27830747860046423842010-10-31T14:14:00.000-07:002010-11-01T19:34:36.359-07:00Dope Fiend by Richard Jay GoldsteinNow Dorothy looks back and what she sees is her husband Charles packing and leaving her. How she comes in the front door after work and there is Charles coming down the stairs with a suitcase in one hand and an envelope in the other.<br /><br />“What’s up?” she asks. “Are you going somewhere?”<br /><br />“I was leaving a note,” he says, holding up the envelope.<br /><br />“A note,” she repeats.<br /><br />“A note,” he repeats.<br /><br />“Where are you going?” she asks again.<br /><br />“I’m leaving,” he says. “It’s all in the note.”<br /><br />And she sees him hand her the envelope and jerk out the door like a cartoon on fast-forward, and she sees twenty-two years of marriage fly from him like dust.<br /><br />“Who is it?” she asks, loudly, at the door. She drops the envelope on the floor.<br /><br />He stops and turns and frowns and glances sideways to see if any neighbors are listening, but there is nobody out on the street because it is not a weekend. “It’s nobody. It just isn’t working anymore. It’s not worth the fighting and all. It’s all in the note.”<br /><br />Now she knows it was somebody, and she knows in six weeks Charles is living with a woman who is many years younger than she, Dorothy. She throws the note away before Charles has even driven down the driveway, and so has never read it and doesn’t know what it did or did not say.<br /><br /><br />* * *<br /><br />Now, remembering, she is forty-five years old, and in sole possession of a house in Torrance, in LA, with the green Pacific on one side and the humming Harbor Freeway on the other, although she does not notice these things often anymore. She also has a job she hates as office manager in a busy cosmetic surgery practice with six busy cosmetic surgeons.<br /><br />Now she knows she saved her life by taking two weeks of the many weeks of vacation she has never used. She packs up some clothes carelessly and drives north in her newish Toyota Rav4. It is already evening, and she has always left on trips early in the morning. She has a vague idea of visiting Justin, her twenty-one year old son. It’s been a few months since Charles cartooned out the door and she has not told Justin. She has no idea if Charles spilled the beans. Perhaps he left a note somewhere.<br /><br />Justin lives in a cabin in Palo Colorado Canyon on the Big Sur coast, with his girlfriend, whose name is Willow. He works collecting trash and cleaning up campsites and restrooms at Andrew Molera State Park. As part of his job he gets to use a state pick-up truck.<br /><br />Dorothy calls Justin’s cell phone from a motel in San Louis Obispo to tell them she is coming. They are surprised.<br /><br />“Is everything okay, Mom?” Justin asks.<br /><br />“Everything is perfect,” she tells him. “I’ll see you tomorrow. I’ll leave here early.”<br /><br />But of course everything is not perfect. She is frightened and lonely. There is an empty ache in a place always filled with family. She is afraid she does not really know Justin, not the grown-up Justin. There has been a distance between her and Justin in the past year, because Charles did not approve of how Justin was conducting his life. She does not understand what it means to be the parent of an adult. She has never even met Willow.<br /><br />She heads out on Highway 1. She passes San Simeon and soon the land falls away on her left, giving way to vistas of the Pacific. She feels like she is clinging to the cliffs that rise from the gray ocean. Grassy brown hills surround her, stands of dark Monterey pine and tall eucalyptus. Curtains of fog and mist rise and fall behind, patches of blue sky and wide shafts of sunlight. Wide beaches suddenly appear below, strewn with boulders. The sea hammers and foams at them. But she feels numb. She knows there is beauty and grandeur, but it passes over her like the fog, like the mist.<br /><br />The coast unreels. Her arms are stiff from steering around the curves and switchbacks. The sun heads toward the western horizon. She just wants the drive to be over.<br /><br />She crosses the Bixby Bridge, set like a kid’s toy across its rocky gorge, and then there is Palo Colorado Road. She takes out the map she drew on the back of an old receipt when she talked to Justin.<br /><br /><br />* * *<br /><br />Justin and Willow’s cabin is at the end of a steep dirt road, nestled in a grove of coast redwood and bay laurel. Ferns dot the hillside behind the cabin like green eyes. The cabin is built of stout planking with a mossy shake roof. Justin’s state pick-up is parked outside. Dorothy pulls up beside it, her car in four-wheel drive for the first time since she bought it. Shadows pool under the thick trees, flow toward her as the sun sets.<br /><br />The cabin door opens and there is Justin, tall, bearded, his hair trimmed short, dressed in jeans and boots and a red flannel work shirt. Behind him is a young woman, and she is actually willowy. She has long dark hair, and is dressed in a long skirt and a green turtle-neck. Tears spring into Dorothy’s eyes when she sees them. Who are these bright young people?<br /><br />Inside, the cabin is warm and close. A fire pops and wavers in a big stone fireplace. Justin stands proudly, a big grin on his face. “Mom, welcome to my home,” he says.<br /><br />“Yes, welcome, Mrs. Pardue,” says Willow, and hands her a stoneware mug of wine, and gives her a peck on the cheek.<br /><br />“Willow, thank you.” Dorothy takes a sip of the wine. It’s a cheap red, astringent, but it doesn’t matter. “Willow, please call me Dorothy,” she says. Then she thinks of something, realizes something. “I’m going back to my maiden name,” she tells them. “I’m Dorothy Kramer now. Again.” She turns to Justin. “I hope that’s okay.”<br /><br />Justin shrugs. “Dad told me what’s up,” he says. “It is what it is.”<br /><br /><br />* * *<br /><br />Dorothy, Justin and Willow sit at the table, a heavy trestle made of redwood planks, which Justin built. They sip more wine. They have just finished eating, brown rice, stir-fried veggies. Justin and Willow are vegetarians.<br /><br />Justin starts to get up, hesitates, sits back down, then gets up again. He takes a wooden box from a bookshelf, returns to the table.<br /><br />“Justin,” says Willow.<br /><br />“It’s our house,” says Justin. He opens the box, takes out a little pipe and a tin box full of dried leaves and tiny buds. He fills the pipe, lights it, takes a deep drag, holds it out to Dorothy.<br /><br />“Justin,” says Dorothy, “is that what I think it is?”<br /><br />Justin nods and grins.<br /><br />“I didn’t know you smoked marijuana,” says Dorothy.<br /><br />“Of course not,” croaks Justin around a mouthful of smoke. “You’re my mom.” He and Willow break into giggles.<br /><br />Dorothy takes the pipe, inhales cautiously. The taste seems familiar somehow, sweet, campfire, spice. She hands the pipe to Willow, waits for something, something new, something changing or challenging. And waits.<br /><br />The pipe goes around and around. They talk. They laugh and laugh. And laugh. Dorothy leans back in her chair, holding her stomach. “Stop, no more,” she protests. “I can’t laugh anymore. My stomach hurts.”<br /><br />Silence descends.<br /><br />After a moment Dorothy looks around. “I don’t know what the big deal is about pot,” she says. “It doesn’t do anything. I mean, when’s it take effect?”<br /><br />Justin and Willow look at each other, splutter with more laughter.<br /><br />“What?” says Dorothy.<br /><br />“We’ve been laughing for an hour,” says Willow.<br /><br />“Really?” Dorothy looks around as if she is seeing the room, Justin, Willow, herself, for the first time. “Do you have anything for desert?”<br /><br />“I have some chocolate,” says Willow.<br /><br />Later, the walls lean in, coals tick in the ashes of the fire. Dorothy lies on a pad in front of the fireplace, in a sleeping bag. She smiles, drifts into dream.<br /><br /><br />* * *<br /><br />The next morning Justin and Dorothy have climbed the ridge behind the cabin. It is Justin’s day off.<br /><br />Hills thick with trees surround them, a distant glimpse of the Pacific.<br /><br />“It was fun,” Dorothy says. “I’d do it again. But I don’t know if anything changed. I’ve been married so long. It’s hard to think of what comes next.” She tosses a rock down the hillside. “But I shouldn’t be talking about this with you.”<br /><br />“I’m a grown-up now,” says Justin. “And so are you. People get together, people split up. It happens.”<br /><br />“But we were married twenty-two years,” says Dorothy. “That’s not just getting together.”<br /><br />“I know something that could change things,” says Justin.<br /><br />“What?”<br /><br />“Taking acid.”<br /><br /><br />* * *<br /><br />Now Dorothy knows she is crazy, around the bend, driven mad by regrets. She has agreed to take LSD with Justin and Willow. She calls in to work, to tell them she is taking another week off.<br /><br />“Well, we’re covering the week you asked for,” says Dr. Berman, the senior partner in the group, Dorothy’s boss. “But another week? I can’t promise anything.”<br /><br />“I have several weeks of vacation coming,” replies Dorothy. “I’m with my son and I intend to stay another week.”<br /><br />“I can’t promise anything,” repeats Dr. Berman. “We may have to replace you.”<br /><br />“I’ll contact you when I’m back in LA,” says Dorothy, and that is that. Now she’s an official doper. She’s smoking pot, she’s about to take LSD, she’s blowing off her job, she’s crashing with her son. What’s left?<br /><br />She spends the next couple of days getting ready. She takes long walks. She drives down to the coast, to Rocky Point, sits on rocks watching the pounding of the sea. While Justin is at work she helps Willow clean the house.<br /><br />Then it is the day. Justin and Willow make a ritual of it, bringing the LSD capsules out on a tray, with glasses of water. Dorothy feels her heart pounding, but she swallows hers.<br /><br />Willow puts on some music, classical Indian, Ravi Shankar. The three of them sit in the sunny clean cabin.<br /><br />Dorothy does not ask this time when it will take effect. She waits.<br /><br />In time, her body begins to feel heavy. In time the walls appear to be breathing.<br /><br /><br />* * *<br /><br />Now Dorothy looks back, and what she sees is her mad self turning and turning beneath towering sequoias like a bird, and she sees herself hearing the liquid voices of the trees, and the dry voices of the ground, and the airy voices of the sky, and the dark voices of the hidden sea, and all these voices make an endless song, of which her voice is part. Looking back, it seems to her that this song is something she once knew but had forgotten.<br /><br /><em>Dorothy the Dope Fiend</em>, sings Dorothy, dancing alone.<br /><br /><br /><em>Richard Jay Goldstein lives in Santa Fe, where it’s nice and quiet, thanks. He’s a retired ER doc, has been writing for about 20 years, and has published 40-some stories, essays and poetry in the literary and sci-fi/fantasy/horror press, including a few anthologies. His wife is percussionist Polly Tapia Ferber.</em>Title Fightshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03645721097886240394noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5540500654593214421.post-13205690883753190802010-10-27T20:49:00.000-07:002010-10-27T20:55:22.093-07:00For November!I'm chiming in a bit late here, I know.<br /><br />November's titles will be captions from the Great Illustrated Classic's King Arthur. Like always, e-mail titlefights@gmail.com at your earliest convenience for a title.<br /><br />Stories will be due November 20th. That's right, less time. But you're a crack squad of word thowin', sentence swingin', punctuation pushin' die hards, right? Right.<br /><br />Best,<br />- danTitle Fightshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03645721097886240394noreply@blogger.com0