Story a Day

“Come on, you’re going to be late,” Wendy said to Stevie.

“Just a minute, I’m looking for my comb.” Stevie dug through his backpack, pushing aside toys and books.

“The train leaves in three minutes!”

“Okay, got it.” Comb in tiny hand, he zipped his bag.

Hand in hand they ran to the platform, Wendy puling her rolling suitcase behind her. She let go of Stevie’s tiny hand as she headed back to her seat. By the time she had shoved her suitcase in the overhead bin and sat down, she realized he was nowhere to be seen.

“Stevie?”

“Wendy!”

There he was, out the window, still standing on the platform.

“Get in here.”

“The doors are closed.”

As the train pulled away, she watched her brother wave goodbye. She was scared. What could she do? Would he know to catch the next train? If he didn’t, what would she tell Eddie? Sorry, I left my little brother in Chicago? If only Eddie and their mom had let them have cell phones.

Stevie watched the train with his sister on it pull away. Maybe now he would live with the pigeons. They could carry him around the city. He wondered how many pigeons it would take to pick him up.

Stevie knew the way to Mom and Eddie’s. It was no big deal. When the next train pulled into the station, he climbed on. It was only a few hours, and even though it was night, he didn’t fall asleep.

When he got off the train, there were Mom and Eddie and Wendy, all sitting on a bench.

“Stevie!”

“Yeah, I’m here.”

image: wishymom on flickr

tomorrow: real plot.

I couldn’t sleep anymore. Every time I slipped into a doze, I dreamed about the chocolate unicorns. You wouldn’t think it, but they got as bad as Freddy Krueger.

Drinking coffee helped at first. I drank coffee constantly, all day long. The stained mug next to my keyboard became an office joke. I also took up smoking. A cigarette at ten PM, another at midnight, another at two in the morning: that’s how I kept myself from going to bed. I squatted shivering on the front stoop, dragging on a cigarette to stay awake, watching black cats strut from one shiny pool of streetlight to another on the black asphalt.

In between visits to the frosty, butt-covered stoop, I watched cable and kept up on my email. Around three, I would drag my red eyes to bed and flop onto the mattress. 

Sometimes I was able to stay awake until almost four. You might wonder how that was possible; after all, I was only getting three hours a night. Wouldn’t I slip away as soon as my head hit the pillow? But fear kept me awake. I had several hypnic jerks a night. But every night, I lost.

Chocolate unicorns. These weren’t cute little die-cut advent-calendar candies. They weren’t sculpted wedding cake toppers, front legs reared, manes billowing behind them, petal-pink details painted on in glittery watercolor with a three-bristle brush. They weren’t candy.

The unicorns were seven feet tall. Chocolate dripped warmly from their sides. Nostrils flaring, they stampeded through my apartment. Every night I ended up underfoot, trampled by a hundred chocolate hooves.

Maybe something was wrong in my personal life.

image: Vaguely Artistic on flickr

Maria waited in line to cash her check. When the teller handed her the stack of bills, there was a flyer on top. “You should come to this party tonight,” the teller said. “I’m shorting you a few hundred, to make sure you come. Find me on the veranda.”

“Can’t I just have my money instead?” she asked. But the teller was busy ripping long strands of duct tape and using them to cover his mouth and eyes. The other tellers were closing the heavy black shutters to their windows.

“Will you give me my money at this party?”

He didn’t even nod. The bank manager stood behind him and frowned, arms folded, like a bouncer.

She went to the party for her money. Flyer in hand, she approached the wide, white marble steps of a mansion.

The air was sweltering. At the door, a butler handed her a bowl of water. “To counter the heat,” he said helpfully. She carried the bowl through the house. Other guests were dipping their fingers in their bowls and dropping the water on their foreheads. A few were soaked; maybe they had dumped their bowls on themselves, or each other.

She touched the water. It was very warm. She left it on a piano bench.

Out on the veranda she found the bank teller. He was sitting on an exercise ball, using a paintbrush to apply melted peanut butter to the skin of a reclining, naked woman. He had shaved his eyebrows.

“All right, I’m here,” she told him.

“Ah! I was hoping you would come. Hold this, would you, love?” He handed the bowl of peanut butter to a child in a tuxedo.

“Now, what was it I was supposed to give you? I can’t quite remember.”

She noticed his eyelashes were missing. ”Your bank owes me two hundred and seventeen dollars.”

“Ah, yes, of course. Only I’m a little short on cash right now. Why don’t you take this key? It opens the machine on the fourth floor. There should be at least a thousand dollars in there.”

“Okay. Fine.”

“Splendid.”

There was an elevator on the veranda. She stepped in. As the doors closed, she saw the bank teller placing licorice whips and gumballs artfully on the skin of the naked woman.

The inside of the elevator smelled like lavender. There was toilet paper hanging from the ceiling.

The elevator doors opened on a small attic. “Fourth floor,” sobbed the unbelievably despondent, female elevator operator. Eyeliner ran down her face.

“Thank you,” Maria said.

The attic was empty except for a pinball machine. When Maria touched it, its lightbulbs and whirligigs started to flash and flutter. She found the small keyhole next to the coin return. She opened the machine. It was full of rubies. There must have been ten thousand dollars’ worth.

It seemed like a test. She took a few small stones, which she assumed to be worth about what she was owed, and she quietly left.

I dove into the icy, clear cove. I ignored the pink coral that skinned my left wrist as I swam, and I reached out to grab the purple object I had seen from shore. It was a key. The key was old and rusty and had purple beads on the handle.

I cleaned the tarnish off the key and hung it from a nail on my wall, next to green glass Japanese floats and some brittle, yellow seahorses I had mounted behind glass in a spruce frame. Then I took a shower, hung my wetsuit over the shower rod, and microwaved soup for lunch.

I own most of the houses on this side of the cove, and new renters always have to come to my cabin for an interview. One day, a man called saying he wanted to rent the little one-room at the top of the cliff. So I told him to come in for a chat.

He gasped when he saw the key, and he went outside without explanation. I saw him open the door of his aging, seafoam Ford and rummage behind the seat.

He brought a book into my cabin. It looked like an old diary. It had a big keyhole, and it was covered with purple glass inlay the same color as the beads.

I handed him the key, and he opened the book.

The book was full of maps.

All that summer we went treasure hunting, but each time we only found keys. Big keys, small keys, house keys, filing cabinet keys, buckets and boxes and envelopes full of keys. We followed every one of those maps. We have lots and lots of keys, but we’ve yet to find anything to unlock.

image: takacsi75 on flickr

Being more tired than she had ever felt before in her life, she lay down on a bed and slept. While she slept, people came in and out of the room. The intruders looked for socks in her sock drawer, rifled through her bookcase, repainted the moldings and started wallpapering the walls. She lived alone, she liked her old wallpaper better, and the socks in the drawer belonged to her. Therefore, normally, she would have been affronted and upset by the strangers’ intrusion. But today she was only glad they didn’t wake her for long. That’s how tired she was.

While she slept, she dreamed about many things. It was the blissful kind of dreaming that comes from sleeping very hard. At one point, she dreamed about wallpaper.

The new wallpaper didn’t drive her crazy, even though it was of a jaundiced color. It turns out that yellow wallpaper isn’t dangerous in and of itself. Please make a note of this. There are many other things to be wary of, but interior design is rarely the real problem. The wallpaper in your room is only a symbol, or at best a red herring.

you decide if this means anything. but it doesn’t.

image: O Siam on flickr

This is a busy time for me in the world outside Story a Day. But nothing will keep me from posting a story a day. Not even the gross humiliation of putting my name on a story like this one.

That day, some stuff happened. Now, of course, stuff was bound to happen on every day. A day on which no stuff happened at all would be unusual indeed—that sort of day would be stuff, or at least “a thing,” in itself, due to its very uneventfulness. Some would argue that an uneventful day is impossible, anyway.

But still, on the day in question, stuff happened that no one had ever expected.

There would be a witness to the stuff. The witness-to-be was having a lot of emotions that day. In addition to emotions, he also had thoughts demanding his attention. He was very busy paying attention to his emotions and thoughts. He would not have even noticed the stuff, had not “a thing” caused him to gain perspective.

The witness was simply doing his usual business, namely being absorbed in feelings and thoughts, when the “thing” happened.

The “thing” distracted him. That’s when he realized stuff had being going on, ever since he had gotten out of bed that morning.

Stuff continued occurring all day.

There was a moment when the stuff built and built. The stuff was so amazing that its witness forgot about his emotions and thoughts. On the other hand, emotions still affected his actions, unbeknownst to him. He had emotions about another person, and about things he liked to do, and about himself. On that day, he was paying more attention to the stuff, thanks to the “thing.” But still, from his actions, it was clear what his feelings and thoughts must have been.

The stuff crescendoed. It culminated. Then, eventually, it decreased. It settled into a low hum that would continue resonating through all the days the future could possibly produce.

image: paulwb on flickr