Flash Fiction: SOULMATES

[There are times when you are aware you are happy and pause to think what unhappy people are missing. Often it is a matter of choice, but more times than not, the choice is really out of your hands.]

SOULMATES

            After three years of virtual monkhood, Thomas felt it was time to “get out there,” to test the dating waters again. His last breakup had been bitter, agonizingly so, as Erleen had gone from loving partner to vicious bitch, to the point where even her closest friends were taking Thomas’ side. Jumping at the chance to leave Erleen’s savagery behind, Thomas took a new position in San Diego, putting two thousand miles between him and his painful past. But the past travels well, so Thomas let time do its thing. Three years led up to a late Friday night, Thomas nursing a beer he didn’t want. With a few clicks, he pointed his browser to one of those “compatibility sites,” rated “the absolute best” and before he thought about it too much, filled out the questionnaire, chuckling at the absurdity of the whole thing.

            The next day, his Inbox had a cheery Subject line: “Your matches have arrived!” Smirking, Thomas opened the message and scanned the text. Hyperlinked numbers introduced four descriptions of women (Thomas hoped they were women) who, the message proclaimed, matched Thomas’ profile to “a 98+% degree!” Thomas had no idea what “98+%” could even mean, but he reread the descriptions and finally clicked on the third one, described as “Adventurous within reason, lover of solitude and embracer of honesty.” What the hell, he thought, It’s only a blind date.

            His overture got a prompt response (Desperate?) and an invitation for lunch on Sunday at Il Pesto, a trendy new bistro that was neither ostentatious nor chintzy. Good choice. She—Lorraine—said she’d be wearing an emerald-green dress and would arrive promptly at 11:45.

            As Sunday rolled towards noon, Thomas felt himself getting nervous. Nervous, hell, he was beginning to get scared. What the hell was I thinking? A website test to meet women? Thomas shook his head and slapped the steering wheel, driving up the quiet boulevard to Il Pesto.

            He was early and let the hostess at the bistro know he was expecting someone. The tiny bar had comfortable stools and when the door opened at 11:45, he knew who it was. Lorraine was wearing the promised emerald-green dress and Thomas let out a sigh he never expected to be so deep. I was afraid it would be Erleen. He rose and introduced himself, enjoying the pleasant handshake and dazzling smile. Even so, he mentally kicked himself for checking out her throat to make sure it didn’t have a visible Adam’s apple. You never know, dammit.

            Lunch went past two and became a short drive to a museum, where Impressionists led to an early supper of Hungarian stew and rye bread in a cubbyhole café by the pier. Over that time they discovered they’d both grown up in the Midwest, been in Scouting, loved math, hated English, enjoyed picnics and family gatherings, swam well, couldn’t get enough of Disney movies, “24”, chocolate and pistachio ice cream. They’d loved Europe, yearned for Japan and would not spend a dime of lottery winnings until they’d let at least five years go by, just to get used to the idea of having all that cash. Over coffee, with topics buzzing and cavorting between them, Thomas sat back and smiled, his heart filled with a joy he thought he’d never feel. Lorraine saw his expression and smiled, her deep blue eyes alive with pleasure. Lifting her purse onto the table, she pulled out a slim cardcase and slid it across the table to Thomas.

“What’s this?” he said, picking it up.

“Your membership to SoulMates,” she said. “You’re in!”

Thomas was stunned. “Membership? What—what do you mean?” He stared at the contents of the cardcase, not seeing any of it.

Lorraine smiled. “We’ve even given you a discount.” She patted his hand. “My treat!”

Thomas noticed the hand patting his: It had a wedding ring. Thomas felt his heart thud in his chest. He felt like kicking himself.

            Lorraine sipped her coffee. “Every prospective member is interviewed by a staff evaluator to ensure we get the finest possible candidates in SoulMates. That’s why we have such a high success rate.” She frowned prettily. “You didn’t think we relied only on a website test, did you?”

            Thomas shook his head and tasted a sad bitterness he’d thought he’d forgotten.

Essay: THGttG

[The initials are enough to make you smile, aren't they? After all these years, I can say that reading Hitchhiker's was the most enjoyable reading experience of my life. The second? A Confederacy of Dunces.]

THGttG 

The cover had the friendly words “Don’t Panic!” It made me smirk. Over a series of weeks, I’d walk into the Campus Bookstore, peruse the titles and I’d never fail to smirk. The buzz about the book was slight, and if just knowing about the buzz places me in the nerd category, so be it. Finally, I plunked down my money for Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and read it that same night.

And I laughed my butt off.

Science fiction, up to that time, had had its dilettantes of humor, such as Lester del Rey, William Tenn and Isaac Asimov. But humor and science fiction don’t mesh well, as science fiction requires creating an artificial world and humor has its strongest basis in reality. We don’t care for contrived humor. And I personally believe that most fans of science fiction—writers and readers alike—are angry people, angry at the rejection they feel for being different and thus have very little sense of humor, unless it’s the cruel kind that belittles those they would consider inferior.

But Adams was just plain funny. His humor, based on some deranged Apocalyptic scenario that destroys Earth to make way for an intergalactic highway, has science fiction as its background, but human foibles and eccentricities as its forefront.

Take Marvin the Robot, seriously, seriously depressed for being incredibly superior to those around him but being seen and treated as nothing more than a glorified lump of metal. Yet all he does is act like a lump of metal. (Science fiction fans were both target and audience here.)

Or how about Zaphod Beeblebrox, a two-headed, three-armed egotistical mush-for-brains con man who somehow always gets his way? In an exaggerated way, we know people like that, who seem to live a charmed life despite obvious disadvantages in acumen. How pathetically funny is someone who utters and believes “I’m so hip I have trouble seeing over my pelvis”?

The Girl in The Story, as SF fans objectify the species, was Trillian, Zaphod’s girlfriend and all-around wishing-to-be-free spirit. She is disconcerting if not downright unfathomable, not only for the odd things she says, but for her choice of Zaphod (the creep) over Arthur (the nice guy.) Trillian is the only character with a level head, except that it works on some jarringly-parallel level.

It is in Arthur Dent, Earthman extraordinaire (poor slob) that Adams shines. Befuddled, bewildered, a babe in the woods and the woods are beyond weird. Arthur embodies the deep-seated feelings we have that the world is one big party and we’re not only not invited, but if we go, we’re the hired help. Arthur gives the madness a touch of the ordinary and the humor emerges from tweaked humanity, the kind that lets us laugh at and with each other.

But above all that, I owe Adams for hundreds of smiles and lightened moments when my patience and interest were strained beyond endurance, when the droning voice or insipid event dragged on and on towards infinity.

Two words: Vogon poetry. Those who’ve read the novel will know what I mean.

 

 

Flash Fiction: LETTERS

[Most people that know me would say I have a romantic streak an inch wide, but that's not true: it's much wider than that. I'm also intrigued by letters, the almost-lost daily activity  (for many) of handwritten pieces of the heart and mind. I typed most of mine--lousy handwriting--but even so, several relatives and friends have told me that they saved my letters, cherishing them for years. I never agonized over writing one, essentially letting them fly, but so many of them touched the recipients more than I could imagine. I wish I'd known earlier.]

LETTERS

            The first letter sped across the intervening space, tucked within canvas, the very day after they'd met. Its response, perfumed ever so lightly with lavender, criss-crossed the county and arrived into eager hands. Words, tender and fragile as soap bubbles, were being shared.

            Letters then flew and rode and were carted like butterflies on a gentle breeze, filling the summer days with yearnings and sighs, with new memories, new hopes and new fears of being forgotten. Fall went from butterflies to equally-colorful leaves, letters now probing and confiding, seeking deeper into the illusion for the reality of souls matched in the heavens.

            The chills of winter blanketed the increasing ardor, wrapping it in the glow of its own contentment, incapable of dampening Love's flame. The eruption of Spring multiplied the letters, which then multiplied again into gilt-edged formal cards requesting a response s'il vous plait.

            For a while, the letters ceased, but a distant war and a call to honor made the letters fly, sail and truck to lands filled with the hateful violence of inhumanity. Fears and the frequent touches of despair, even thoughts of death and tear-stained lines weighed the letters with realities best left unmet. A bootie, pink-edged, made one letter bulge and two hearts squeeze with the dread possibility of hopes and lives dashed forever.

            But then letters, stiff, starched, serious soldierly letters said the time had come for the other letters to become unneeded and a flurry of letters, now tear-stained with joy, flew and raced to share the news, the plans, the changes and the future so bright and clear.

            No letters for a few years, until a step up the proverbial corporate ladder made the letters reappear, from points north, south, east and west, all radiating inward and outward from a tiny hamlet that to one person was a universe and to the other an anchor that demanded to be raised. Questions became demands and accusations, words going past each other without regard to each other, speaking to themselves, hearing nothing but their own angst. The letters dwindled to postcards with perfunctory details, then one day, they stopped.

            A few months later, one large letter, papers folded over carelessly, wrapping within them the words that signaled the end of any more letters, of any more words between these two. The papers, minus a few pages, were returned swiftly, slashingly, finally.

            Four months passed.

            A tiny letter, scrawled with crayon and kisses, made its journey. Held in trembling hands for an hour, receiving a drop of plumbed sadness before resting on a sleeping chest. Its response delighted tiny hands, and then every day, sometimes twice a day, crayon, pencil and even watercolor, like butterflies new to flight, wended their path across a landscape changed: the hamlet that felt like an anchor now seemed like a world, one that gave a soul purpose.

            A small letter reached out, not to tiny hands, but to a tiny hope that maybe, just maybe, a spark burned where once a fire kindled. For days...nothing. Then, from words, from many words, from what could have once been too many words, but were now not enough, the answer whispered like a wave...maybe.

            More words, many more words than were ever used, flowed from a heart torn by its own failings. Words of apology amidst lines of regret and sorrow, words that recognized that the shared had been so much more than the perceived, that what the heart had was so much more than what the eyes could have ever seen. The folly of blindness mixed with yearnings and sighs, with memories and hopes and fears of being forgotten, the passion of long ago barely restrained by the most powerful new hope.

            Its response, perfumed ever so lightly with lavender, criss-crossed the land and arrived to eager, tearful hands that, it now said, would never need to receive another letter again.

Essay: LOCK AND CHAIN

[When you develop certain habits that help keep you out of trouble, or capable of dealing with the unexpected, you feel a touch of mastery. If the environment changes and you let those habits fade, the moment you realize you always need them is...sobering.]

Lock and Chain

There are some summer nights when nothing moves. The air sleeps, the crickets chirp as isolated metronomes and it seems as if everybody chooses that time to stay put indoors.

I was walking from the bowling alley back to my apartment, an hour’s worth of exercise I was settling into. My habit on a jaunt like that was to amble along, thinking about nothing and everything, hands in pockets. The voice cut my reverie and I froze.

“Who you callin’ a nigger?” The voice was high-pitched, sharp, but strained.

I looked up. Seven young black men were arranged next to and against the dark-side Mr. Quik brick wall. Two of them pushed off the wall to complete a semi-circle in front of me. The speaker was a thin, gangly guy about my age, wearing a Dodger cap around his neck. He was glaring at me.

“Nobody,” I answered.

Dodger Cap feigned surprise. “You called me a nigger!” He looked around for support, agreement, chiming in. One guy, unbelievably wearing a leather jacket, nodded.

I shrugged. “No.”

He convulsed, affronted. “You callin’ me a LIAR?” he yelled.

“Yeah.”

The group moved, but stayed the same. Dodger Cap took a step forward. Only then did I realize I wasn’t an observer, but a participant. The radar I’d developed since childhood had faded to black. This was not banter and I had failed to act before it had gone too far.

Dodger Cap took a wild swing at me. I stepped back and when the guy on my right tried to grab me, I side-stepped and pushed him into the others. He and Dodger Cap went down.

Suddenly heavy metallic clinks broke the muffled silence. Leather Jacket had a length of large-linked chain, a heavy padlock at its end. With two short swings he got it in motion, the others stepped back and he swung at me.

I saw the flash on my left and I ducked. I felt the padlock cut the air above my head and thud into the bricks, chunks and fragments flying. I pivoted and ran, bursting through the group into the parking lot beyond. I ran without looking back, without thinking of anything but distance. I heard vague jeers and a word or two. I didn’t look back. I ran until I was sure they couldn’t follow. I got home in under half an hour.

The anger I kept expecting never came. My usual pattern of self-abuse over any perceived failing never raised its ugly head. I’d fallen out of a useful habit because I had come to believe that the world had changed, that it was fundamentally different, that my past was an anomaly that the present would never enact.

I was wrong. I didn’t even shrug it off: the moment of recrimination simply dropped away like a dead leaf. The radar, that useful habit, came back, like retrieving the old flannel shirt that’s become a second skin.

I kept walking, kept passing through the same area where once seven guys tried to make trouble and seldom gave them another thought. As lessons go, it was relatively painless.

Flash Fiction: INTERESTING TIMES

[Have you ever written anything with a sense of loopy adventure, just going pedal-to-the-metal with the words and seeing where you end up? Well, that could describe most of my writing, but here's a story that seemed to just pour out, as if I were merely transcribing someone else's loopy word adventure.]

INTERESTING TIMES

            When Pritchard was about to turn 17, he figured out the secret to anti-gravity. Over a furious four weeks between his first kiss with Melanie and his mom's loony "Sweet 17" party (that included a clown, to the utter humiliation of everyone at the party, including the clown), Pritchard (he hated his given name, Percy, so he fixed it) drew up the design, polished the theoretical underpinnings in a 34-page article (never published) and built the prototype, that he tested on Muggs, his loopy bulldog. The dog's maiden, er, flight, caused the poor mutt to vomit and run away for almost a week. The anti-gravity prototype was now disguised as an 8-track player in Pritchard's home-built display of passé technology.

            Between Melanie (who went off to college somewhere in Michigan, while Pritchard stayed near home) and Sally, Pritchard figured out faster-than-light travel, pushed to a superhuman effort in consolidating theoretical physics and what he called "hyperquantic thrust dynamos" for lack of a better name. Sally, a smashing little redhead with birthmarks in the darnest places, was Pritchard's first lover, and the extended post-coital daze dampened Pritchard's other thoughts about FTL travel until Sally joined the Navy and was eventually shipped out to some port in East Asia.

            Pritchard tinkered with hyperspace signals based on string theory tunneling until he met Lois, the tall brunette with the perfect dimples on her (most-often) unseen cheeks. Inspired by Lois' fond memories of her childhood in eastern Louisiana, Pritchard made the conceptual leap between his anti-grav concepts (already proven) and FTL travel (which he tested by sending a 54-inch probe to the Moon and back in 6.4 seconds...twice) to discover that time could be unlinked from gravitational space-time and moved anywhere. After a frenetic series of tests, drafts, edits, rebuilds and several cameras destroyed in tests (though one brought back an intriguing half-picture of what could only be a T-Rex in full attack mode), Pritchard finally got his prototype to work after using parts from his last FTL probe (disguised as an over-sized Sith lightsaber) to power his "time capsule." Two trips later (17th century France, smelly, and 15th century Japan, bloody), Pritchard plonked Lois on his lap and took her back 16 years to the tree-lined Alexandria streets of Lois' childhood home.

            Only to lose her there when she absolutely freaked out after seeing her mom sneak out of their house, climb into Russell Graham's house through the den window and rock his world in a way that made Lois sick and made Pritchard want to get to know Mrs. Killian a helluva lot more.

            With much effort, involving a frantic car chase, a brush with fat, chaw-chewing Southern cops, another couple of looks at the Killian Method for World Rocking and getting Lois blitzed on cheap tequila, Pritchard got them both back to their time/home and took an extra two days to convince Lois her pot dealer was dealing from the bottom, not the top.

            Redecorating the time capsule into a home entertainment center with a rad game system and enough speakers to drown out Spinal Tap, Pritchard gathered the fake 8-track player and the über-nerdy fake lightsaber and tucked them into a hidden panel at the base of the new 72-inch plasma screen he bought for himself from the beaucoup royalties he made on his only patented invention: a cell phone accessory that found your wallet, purse, briefcase, keys, car and nearest coffee shop for you.

            But every once in a while, Pritchard would carefully dismantle the home entertainment system, and use the time capsule, anti-grav and the now-real lightsaber he invented for fun to hit the Cretaceous creatures like a meteor strike, or leave the anti-grav and Sith weapon home and just drop in on Mrs. Killian...for old times' sake.

Essay: MIZ EVELYN

[It's an awful feeling when you realize you let a great opportunity pass you by.]

Miz Evelyn

Her house was diagonally across from the cemetery where William Faulkner is buried. The house had seen better days (so had Faulkner), but it retained a degree of sober elegance, much like its owner.

Miz Eveleyn was rail-thin, white-haired and her cane was more battering ram than walking stick. She moved slowly but implacably and forced herself to walk around the block on every sunny day; a 5-minute jaunt for me, a 45-minute epic for her.

She spoke clearly and directly, never wasting words. She rented out the second floor of her home because "Money is a tool and I need tools." She selected her tenants on two criteria: "Good manners and good grammar." A former English and literature teacher, she was forever challenging whomever she spoke with to "Drop that 'ain't'" and "Nothing is broken so don't say 'fixing'."

Her two great joys at the end of her life were baked potatoes and pancakes. During that lazy summer, I'd frequently bake a few potatoes and share them with her. A couple of times a week I'd mix up some pancake batter, knock on her door and make breakfast for us. She was always a gracious host and in the battle of wills over who would do the dishes, I won because I raced to the sink ahead of her.

She told me a little about her life. After getting married, she discovered that her husband "Was not good for anything or anyone," so in the mid-20s, in her mid-20s, she went to Europe and bicycled around the continent for two years. She came back because "Europe was headed for disaster." She didn't get a divorce because her husband "did the smart thing and died." I asked her if she missed him and she glared at me and asked "Would you miss a bad toothache?"

Our conversations that summer were frequent, but brief. I had my own interests, whatever they might have been, and Miz Evelyn reminded me too much of my paternal grandmother, in both looks and attitude. I felt drawn and repelled. The months went by, I saw her every day... and yet I didn't really see her.

What could I have learned from a woman who biked around Europe in the Jazz Age? And what could I have learned from a woman who referred to Faulkner as "Billy," as in "Billy was always a brat" and "Billy thought he was clever, but all he ever did was tell secrets?"

Miz Evelyn is gone now, when and how I'll never know. Youth often disdains old age, almost always for the wrong reasons. I missed a golden opportunity to explore a life utterly unlike my own, to live a time that will never return. I once read that what you do and regret you can recover from: what you don't do leaves a regret that never heals. How true.

Flash Fiction: ROAMING HOODS

[The thing about flash fiction is that it imposes severe limits on what you can write, in quantity if not in thematic choice. Here's a story that kept trying to grow longer, kept trying to leap beyond my self-shortened leash and howl deep into the forest.]

ROAMING HOODS

            He hated being called “Robin Hood.” Robin Hood was a trifling piker while he was a true plunderer, a real robber-man. But that “stealing from the rich to give to the poor” just put a lot of pressure on Roaming John (as he liked to call himself) and incensed him no end. He was much more comfortable with “stealing from the rich and keeping to himself,” but he needed some goodwill from the gentlefolk and so every once in a while he’d hand out some trinkets and coppers. Every time he did so he felt a part of his gut burn as if with lye.

            Roaming John was a big man, broad of shoulder and with a beard that resisted any effort to trim and tame. He carried a sword meant for a giant, and though he often cursed its ungainly weight, he did enjoy the fear it put into nobleman’s eyes when he unsheathed its gleaming length.

            The early months of banditry yielded great gains and a few scars, but as months became years, Roaming John had to roam farther and farther to find booty and avoid capture, by either the King’s men or Robin Hood’s. As his roaming took on the appearance of fleeing, he was forced to spend even more on the poor, tarnishing his reputation beyond easy repair.

In the winter of his fourth year of outlawry, Roaming John holed up in a former nunnery with his tiny band of henchmen. The snow-covered woods were unmarked well past St. Swithin’s Day when a tiny knock was heard at the oak door. Royce of Bergen, he of the very few teeth, opened the door and gaped in surprise. Standing there was a slip of a girl, holding a naked rapier of impressive Damascene steel. Her words were blunt in the icy air: “I’ve come to kill Roaming John.” No laughter would mar this pronouncement. Stepping aside with an eerie courtly air, Royce bowed the girl in. By fortune, Roaming John was passing the oak door and was quickly faced by a rapier’s tip, rock-steady at eye level.

            Roaming John opened his mouth to speak, but Royce’s toothless grimace made him stop. “What is the meaning of this, girl?” he rumbled.

            “You stole our money. I’ve come to kill you and get it back.” The rapier was still.

            Roaming John shook his head. “Mayhaps I did, mayhaps I didn’t. But I cannot let you kill me on a simple claim. Have ye any proof?” The rapier wavered. Trembled. Then dropped to point at the cobbled floor. A trick of the light made it seem as if the girl’s eyes held tears. “I—I lack such—proof. I was merely told my family’s silver had been taken by Roaming John.”

            In a flash, Roaming John pulled out his sword and swung at the girl. Royce was startled into a warning cry, for even such as he was shocked at his leader’s treachery. With the grace of a cat, the girl ducked and rolled, rising to her feet and thrusting so quickly at Roaming John’s neck that he stumbled back. Pressing her advantage, the girl lunged and thrust, forcing the huge man and his sword to struggle to stay intact. “Royce!” bellowed Roaming John.

            With a fluid motion, the girl flung a small pouch behind her, its contents tinkling mutely on the stone floor. “Keep it and stay away!” she commanded. Roaming John’s backward steps ended against a wall and the hellish fury of the girl’s attack pinned the villain until at last, tiring, his massive muscles failed to sweep away the rapier’s tip in time and it buried itself with a meaty thwip into his throat. Gagging and gouting blood, Roaming John collapsed like a fallen tree and died.

            Turning lightly, the girl saw Royce staring agape. Pulling a larger pouch from her leggings, she said “Round up the men. Tell them there’s money now and treasure aplenty on the morrow.”

            Royce nodded dumbly. “Who are ye?”

            The girl smiled. “Maid Marion.”

Royce gaped again. “And what about Robin Hood? He hates us so.”

Marion raised the rapier’s bloody length at Royce and said “He’s dead. In the same way.” She licked the blade and grinned in carmine glee.

            Royce turned to run, stopping not until his feet touched the quiet roots of the distant Black Forest.