111. The Cop-Thing
July 19, 2008
I usually tell it as a ghost story. You know, like it happened to someone else. Because no one would believe me if I told them I saw it really happen.
You’ll see. You won’t believe it either.
Audrey was driving. Rob was riding shotgun, because he’s Audrey’s boyfriend. Ashley and Cal and I were in the back. We were going to a party. We were talking about who would be at the party, where we knew them from, how long we would stay.
Just past the cemetery, someone in a huge SUV T-boned us. We didn’t have a stop sign, and they did, and they just plowed right through it. The crash was loud. We were scared. We were just in a little Acura. We spun around at least one-eighty. The SUV had hit us just in front of the front passenger seat. The front of Audrey’s Acura was crumpled. We all got out and checked ourselves for contusions. Rob had a bruise on his forehead—the impact had been closest to him—but really we all seemed okay.
After we had shaken ourselves out, we realized the SUV had left.
“Son of a bitch!” said Audrey. Now she had no one to pay to fix her car. We hadn’t gotten a license plate number. Hell, none of us had even noticed the make or model.
Audrey dialed 9-1-1. Ashley and Cal were huddled together on the curb. Rob paced in the dark, deserted street, safety glass twinkling around his feet. I sat on the hood of the car and listened to Audrey’s phone call.
“Yes. Police…. Yes. I was in a hit-and-run, they destroyed my car. No, I didn’t get the license number. It’s only been a couple minutes. No, I didn’t get the make and model. Okay, that would be great. Thank you. We’re on the corner of—shit. Where are we? Where the hell are we?“
“Twenty-sixth and Morrison,” I told her.
“Twenty-sixth and Morrison. Okay. Thank you.” Audrey hung up her phone. “Son of a bitch! Fuck!” She paced around in the street with one hand on the back of her head. Read the rest of this entry »
109. Lightning Bugs
July 17, 2008
1.
Kelly stood on a subway platform in New York. It was March, but unreasonably warm. An actual rat scurried across the grimy tracks. Kelly shuddered. Maybe it was her shuddering that made him notice her, or maybe he only felt right approaching her when to do so would distract her from vermin.
Sometimes, later, as she packed the children’s lunches or baked her hundredth cake, she would wish he had never approached her. Usually, though, she wished for other things.
“Kelly,” he said softly. She turned around. She looked up. His eyes looked kind, but hungry, she thought. It was true that he was thin. Read the rest of this entry »
99. Remy
July 7, 2008
Remy always knew who the unhappiest person on Earth was, at every moment. Who it was changed pretty frequently—maybe ten times a minute. Whatever was making them unhappy, Remy felt it. Most of the time, it was torture or starvation or thirst or a broken leg or a grievous head injury. Sometimes it was someone who had just discovered they had AIDS or cancer, or was really sick with a disease. A few times a week, the unhappiest person on Earth would be a girl who just discovered she was pregnant. Remy hated these women a little. He hated unrequited lovers. Even the kids whose dogs died he had to hate a little. That was nothing compared to having your children murdered in front of you. Or raped. He thought some of the world’s unhappiest people needed to chin the hell up.
Remy saw a lot of war.
Remy also knew who the happiest person on Earth was. This changed about as frequently as who was unhappiest. The happiest person on Earth was often having an orgasm. Remy had a lot of orgasms every day with the world’s happiest people.
You’d think that he would get a lot of lottery winners, but there weren’t very many. He got only slightly more lottery winners than newly pregnant. Prayers were happy people, though. Meditators were happy too. The dying were sometimes very happy. The happy dying were Remy’s favorites. Read the rest of this entry »
91. Peter Parker was from Oregon
June 29, 2008
My uncle was murdered when I was a teenager. After the memorial, I went hiking in the Cascades to sort it all out.
The woods smelled clean. The views were amazing. As night fell, I reached a flat space that looked good for camping. I took off my pack and sat, sweating, on a big rock. After a few minutes’ rest, I pitched my tent and started cooking dinner.
As I was eating, I felt a sudden, searing pain on my thigh. I took of my pants quickly. Sure enough, a strange-looking spider fell away and ran into the bushes. I covered my oozing wound as well as I could with cream and gauze. Then I tried to sleep it off.
The next morning, my wound looked as angry as ever, but it seemed it wouldn’t kill me. At least it hadn’t been a Brown Recluse. I took down my tent and rolled it up. I put the tent bundle in my pack. I noticed my camp was full of ripe huckleberries. I ate a few.
As I headed up the day’s mountain, I felt much more nimble than I usually do. Also, when I tripped over a root, I caught myself by squirting this sticky white junk out of my wrists.
I had become a dude who can do things spiders do.
Sometimes I wonder: should I have felt an urgency? A need to use my new abilities for justice or revenge?
Even if I should have, I didn’t. Sure, there were villains back in the city. But if I took that route, the work would never be done. I’d always let people down.
The sun was golden and mild. I forded a crystal-clear river.
Better to just enjoy myself. Ben would understand.
image: stop.down on flickr
29. Jeneane
April 28, 2008
It was one of those September nights that surprises you with how warm it can still be. It was eight PM, and the sun was still blazing. Earlier that day, Jeneane had seen a patch of moss on the sidewalk and thought it was a teeming cluster of ants, like it would have been in March. That’s how warm it was. Tonight, Jeneane was even wearing flip flops. Her toenails were a shiny lavender.
She left the bar, calling goodnight to her friends. Tim and Matt and Kerry and Diana were all going to catch the train. Now that she lived on the west side, Jeneane had to catch her bus alone.
She fished in her purse for change. Her depth perception was cheerfully, drunkenly impaired. It struck her, as she tipsily rifled through her knitted shoulder bag, that something was different. There was an odd, a completely unfamiliar, sensation in her right pinky finger. Not that the inside of her wool purse felt different, or her comb, or her embossed leather wallet with the familiar jagged teeth of its broken zipper.
Her finger itself felt strange.
She stopped walking. She pulled her hand out of the shoulder bag and studied it.
She had four fingers and a thumb, all five nails painted with the same lavender polish she’d used on her toes. But there was a sixth finger, too.
She had six fingers on her right hand.
She wiggled what was now her pinky. It had three perfect joints and a perfect, unpainted fingernail. A freckle sat between the top joint and the healthy cuticle. Read the rest of this entry »
19. Conclusive Results
April 18, 2008
It was just an experiment. Judy just wanted to see if anyone would find her.
First, she quit her job. Then she cancelled her cell phone service. Then she closed her email accounts and deleted her profiles.
But her friends still knew where she lived. So she moved two streets over. She signed the lease with a fake name.
Remember Richard Scarry’s towns? Those hamlets where every animal was an entrepeneur with a shop and a house, and everyone stopped by to say hello to everybody else? It turned out that Judy’s town was pretty far removed from Richard Scarry. Judy had a cute female neighbor who walked a Jack Russell terrier every day past Judy’s new apartment. The girl had red hair and always carried a purse made of old tires. Whenever they passed, the girl thought of something to do in her purse. She seemed to think it rude to make eye contact.
About two months into the experiment, Judy saw Ted outside a restaurant. He was drinking tea and reading the vitriolic alternative weekly in the glaring sunshine. There were lilacs on the table. He wore a nice sweater and sunglasses. Judy thought he was attractive, in a hipster kind of way.
She and Ted had had many long bullshit sessions in college, over a couple of red plastic cups, at those sort-of intimate parties where everybody tries to talk to everybody once. They’d traded dating stories and sexploit stories. Once, with four others, they’d broken into a golf course.
But this was a scientific experiment. So, obviously, she had to wait for him to recognize her.
“Hey, do you have the time?” she asked.
“It’s about four-thirty.” Ted didn’t look up.
“I live in the neighborhood, maybe you’ve seen me around?” She tried to sound mischievous.
He mistook it for a come-on and looked slowly up at her. He said, “Show me which house is yours, and maybe I’ll remember.”
Did he think she was just some random girl hitting on him?
“Sure, it’s just over this way, come on.”
And then of course she invited him in to see her books. When she closed the door, he rested a hand on her hip. She slid a hand inside the waistband of his pants.
And why not? She hadn’t talked to a human being in weeks, aside from the kid she ordered Turkish Golds from at the Seven.
As he put his clothes on, Ted looked at her with a fog in his eyes.
“I just feel like I know you from somewhere,” he said. “But I have to get going.”
She walked him to the front door. She opened it. She was startled to see a man on the front stoop about to ring the doorbell.
Self-conscious in her robe, Judy said, “Sorry, can I help you?” Ted was waving sheepishly and ducking out behind the suited man.
“Ms. Judy French?”
“Yes….”
“Is this your social security number, Ms. French?”
“Yes.”
“I’m here to ask you a few questions about the default status on your student loans. May I come in?”
images: Jakob Lodwick on flickr, Jeff Werner on flickr.
18. CRASH
April 17, 2008
Blook Blarnett was writing a story for her daily fiction blog when her computer completely died. She spent hours trying to resurrect it, to no avail. She didn’t consider asking a professional to repair the six-year-old imac. The idea was funny; ridiculous. Planned obsolescence was upon her.
She remembered seeing a “naked computer repair” service in the back pages of the Portland Mercury. How strange that someone made their living as a solo, nude Geek Squad, she thought. How odd their life must be. Not that she was considering calling that service, or any other.
It was hopeless.
Blook Blarnett unplugged her brand new external hard drive, wondering if it had been harmed.
Reluctantly, she cashed in that card she’d gotten on her nervous first day at the central world office for daily fiction blogs. Every daily fiction blogger (of which there were thousands; more than a hundred in Portland alone) was allowed to stick complete, shameless autobiography in their fiction blog ONCE, in the formative weeks only.
After doing that, they would never get another chance. They had to think of other ways out.
Her hand shaking, she stuck the laminated card in her blog. The blog took the card and generated some autobiography.
Sighing, she went to work. She made a mental note to call the CWO before lunch.
9. Untethered
April 9, 2008
We’re walking across the bridge, her and me, and it’s full-blown-ass springtime, and I start getting this… floaty feeling I get sometimes. Like I’ve been untethered. Like I’m above myself.
The sun is sparkling on the water, and she’s chattering away, and I just can’t keep it local. I don’t mind, really. I’m nodding and watching leaves in the breeze. Not just watching: studying.
“You’re taking this really well,” she says.
“Wait, what?”
“Listen, I’ll sleep at a friend’s house tonight and, you know, come over to pick up my stuff in a couple days.”
Uh-oh.
Suddenly I’m right back. Square within my skull and shoulders. But it’s too late, because she’s walking away, and I’m standing in the street alone.
A few minutes later, I’m sitting on my front step looking at a mysterious word lettered in pink chalk on the concrete: “SCOOT.”
I dial up Tyler.
“Hey man, it’s me.”
“Hey.”
“So, I think I just got dumped, dude.”
“Ouch dude. That is raunchy.”
“Thanks.”
SCOOT, the sidewalk says.
“So there’s only one thing I want to do, man,” I tell him.
“What’s that, bro—” Tyler hiccups. “—Brohonda?”
“Skinny dipping. Dude, are you in?”
“Wait— skinny dipping?”
“Skinny dipping.”
“What— I— Yes, dude. Crap, yeah, anything. I’l be there in ten.”
Clack goes my cell phone.
Tyler calls up friends and all of us tread water in the black river. There are tall brown cliffs with dark grooves. Scrubby little trees. The night scenery is utterly, like, majestic. The water is completely freezing.
It’s actually all pretty fucking sweet.
image: Matilda Su on flickr
1. Something Funny
April 1, 2008
The teenage shirtless kid danced in front of my field of vision, so that I would look up from my book. The sun glared on his white chest. He carried a skateboard.
“Hey, hey, you wanna see something funny?”
I didn’t wanted to give him a dollar. Reflexively, my eyes followed his pointing hand.
Sitting on the curb by the bus stop sign, right in front of us, was a very white and somewhat plump woman. The boy was pointing at her ass. Her track pants were riding so low that both full globes were nearly resting on the concrete.
I belong to a nudist association. My wife and I attend colony meetings on Sundays. I looked at the boy mildly, as though he were an expertly plated entrée made of snails.
He laughed, clearly at peace with my reaction, dull though it was. He tried the other bystanders in turn: “Hey, you wanna see something funny? Right there.” The boy was using this routine on an urbane-looking man when the gentleman brushed past him and tapped the sweats-wearing girl on the shoulder.
“Excuse me, miss?”
“Yeah, what?”
“I’m sorry, but you might want to consider standing up and, ahem, readjusting your clothes.”
She stayed where she was, popped a Freedent, her dimpled mounds remaining in full view. She stared levelly at the gentleman, who coughed.
“It’s just that this fellow over here appears to have something of a crush on you, and he’s taking out his affection on the rest of us.”
“That so, you little bitch?” she called to the boy, who was holding a jug of Gatorade to his face, breathless with laughter.
“Oh, Ashley, I have such a crush on you.”
“Shut up, you little punk, or I’m telling Mom you steal from the Seven-Eleven.”
When they stepped up onto the bus, Ashley’s ass, remarkably, was still blindingly visible, a half-moon above her pants’ tattered waistband.
