Waiting was something he disliked these days because it made him realize how much time he had on his hands. — Armand ML Inezian, “See Me”

Featuring work by:

• Dennis Cass! (book, blog, DCWYTBMA)
• Dennis Conrow! (radio, pictures)
• Myself!
• Brendan Sullivan! (blog)

Pretty layout design by Dennis Conrow.

And hey. That was fun. Want in on the next prompt? Want out? Email me, or just keep an eye on the ol’ blog.

I’ve found that this whole “requiring first publishing rights” concept goes violently against the instincts I’ve honed over the developing years. My first desire when I really like something I’ve done, or if I’m not sure if I really like something I’ve done, is to smear it all over the internet. See what strangers have to say. Instant gratification! Hello, world! “Not cool!” say respectable publishers.

But seriously, I don’t know how I’ll handle that. So how about this: want me to email you a short story? You’d be free to email me back with comments, or say nothing at all. It will be just like a blog post (note to potential publishers: this will not be like a blog post at all): in your inbox. Baby steps. I’d feel so much better just knowing you saw it.

Email me or comment if you’re interested.

Currently reading: Tuesday; An Art Project (Issue 3): “Grief And The Imaginary Grave” by Rowan Richardo Phillips

It may or may not have been raining at your funeral, but I knew that this is how I would remember it. It is always raining at funerals, the coffins typically made with a cherry-type wood.

I see damp sod, clinging to the edge of the earth. Your gleaming mahogany casket covered in, let’s say, roses. Slowly descending into nothingness. It’s much nicer this way; there’s a purer truth to the expected. In the rare event a participant does not herself recall the weather or the quality of casket-wood at a funeral, tell her how it was. Your description will fill in the blanks, manifesting it in her memory. Like dandelion seeds, taking root, making room — occasionally other, smaller truths are sacrificed, but such are the casualties of war in a paradigm-centered world. Now she retells the tale. In her story, from now on, there will be rain.

A slow, gentle rain, she’ll say. When it slid down the windshield it was reminiscent of tears. Like the car was crying. Plop, the trees are crying too. Plop, the gas station is crying. Plop the church-top tiles, plop the edges of our umbrellas, plop plop plop the whole world understands. As you can see, the specific volume and speed of the rain are key. Mist may have the appropriate sense of theater, but it lacks catharsis. Hail is overly surreal and besides we would have to move our cars which would be decidedly practical. Thunderstorms are possible at a funeral, but only if you are a demon; they are otherwise too aggressive or ominous and we are not here to tell ghost stories about you — in fact, we yearn for your spirit. We cannot stand you being away forever like this. There are so many parties we were going to invite you to. There are so many times we’d planned on crying in your arms.

Become a ghost. Please. Sift down through the grey clouds like flour and drift into our apple pies. Curl into a rain drop and slide down our windshields. Hover around like mist if you have to. I will conjure you now, with my Ouija board.

Figure 1: Acceptable Comments to Make Into a Microphone During a Funeral
1.) He was a good man.*
2.) His passions for mountain-climbing, bear-fighting, and endangered-wildflower-saving were quite inspiring.
3.) He loved to laugh. His laugh was memorable in some fashion.*
4.) He never said a thing he didn’t mean. He never meant a thing he didn’t say.
5.) I envied him his rubber boots.
6.) He will be missed, but of course, we are glad to see him out of his pain.*

* These comments may be considered the requisite attention-getters, theses, and concluding statements, respectively: and could, on a less original day, form the skeleton of your paper.

Oh hey, as long as we are on the subject of writing and putting down the record, let it be said that I don’t recall the first time I saw you. Or the second, or the third. You made no impression whatsoever in your newness, and you failed entirely to look familiar. What I do remember is the first time you touched my shoulder.

“Hey, wait,” you said. Your hand landed in a gentle grasp.

I turned around.

How would you appear to me now, my conjured darling? A softer, blurrier version of your previous self? Mere dust particles hovering in dark air? A glow, a feeling of coldness, a slamming door? You will spell things out for me and I will follow you to the ends of this earth.

Figure 2: Unacceptable Comments to Make Into a Microphone During a Funeral
1.) Well, no one really believed he could eat the whole thing in the first place. Am I right. Am I right!
2.) And other assorted brash jokes relevant to the cause.
3.) The other night I cried in the shower. The hours wasted away.
4.) Weren’t there others, he loved?
5.) And if so, where are they today?
6.) “Mortality or timelessness!” I finally thought to myself, leaning against the tile. “Choose your poison.”
7.) I turned off the water, grabbed a towel and emerged a remarkably clean woman.
8.) Which brings me to my central question:
9.) does anyone here know whether he loved me?
10.) There is dirt under my fingernails, there are sharp pieces in my eyes.
11.) But seriously, folks.
12.) The water is useless, it won’t rinse them away.
13.) Just before he left he shrugged. Don’t you even try to suspect I didn’t catch that.
14.) (Painful smile, a shake of the head.)
15.) Also, of course, he married her. Hey.

You may notice that the list of can-nots is always longer than the list of cans. Sorry, that’s just life.

In the memory, I sneak away from your funeral, cleverly using the terrain to my advantage. White skin camouflages against wet birch trees. Black-gloved hands like ravens, huddled atop angel statuettes and granite blocks. I skitter from tombstone to tombstone with few difficulties, until your procession is nothing but a parade of glum eraser-bits on the horizon. I throw myself behind some shrubbery, poke my head out from behind a frosty pine, and make a break for the back wall of a family crypt.

In my hand there is a clutch, and in the clutch I keep a tiny notepad and a tiny pen. I plunk down into the wet earth and I write you the letter I’ve always meant to write: the letter I have been composing in my head since the day you left. It takes me as long to write it as it did to live it.

I scrawl your name onto my paper bundle, and underline it with a girlish swirl.

What do you do with such a letter? Bury it, of course.

Conveniently, we’re in a cemetery.

Let’s end it with this possibility. I have returned from your funeral, and I am setting my things down in my apartment. Let’s say I live alone. Let’s say I am surrounded by ancient bookshelves and knotted rugs, let’s say there is a large marmalade cat making eager infinity symbols around my legs. I have said it all to you at last, and have no regrets: not about a single word in that letter, not about keeping them from you for one million years, not about hiding behind some poor family’s crypt and burying my confessions in their yard. Everything is quiet. I change out of my rain-soaked wool and tattered nylons, and put on a kettle of tea.

The rain stops.

Currently reading: The Girl on the Fridge by Etgar Keret.

They’ll play a Keith Jarrett disc and everyone will listen, they’ll play a record and nobody will feel sad. And the ones who are on their own won’t feel alone tonight, and nobody will ask “Milk or cream?” because by now they’ll all know one another.

In the dream you’re aware it’s a dream, but that only makes slumber all the sweeter.

In the dream you have never kissed or hurt anyone, and everyone you will ever love is in your backyard. They are pouring iced lemonade and handing it to you, smiling. The wind is in their hair, their teeth are gleaming white, and they are full of anecdotes from their travels. They are wearing their favorite t-shirts. They just discovered their favorite band. They want to tell you everything, and in the dream you are a wonderful listener. You hold each person’s hand as they speak to you. “Tell me more,” you say to them. “How high was the wall? Did you speak the language? Were the breads soft like cake, or tough, like tires?” You are unladen with the past, light on your feet, trusting, entirely lovable. You are eager to fall in love with each of them for who they are. You are focusing on their words instead of your own. They wink and laugh and the sound of the wind in the leaves is the most incredible thing.

You are listening and nodding and holding their beautiful hands, pale and olive covered in fine hair, convinced that from now on you will mean every word you say, that any goodbyes will be brief and to the point.

What the hell are you doing?

Yeah, seriously! What the hell am I doing? Fiction? Plots? Imaginary . . . characters? What? And this was supposed to be fun and easy! Short and “flash” fiction have always been my favorite formats to read, and what I assumed I’d write, if I only had the time.

And now I have the time! Rejoice, rejoice, Emmaaaaaanuel.

Here’s what I initially hadn’t figured on, and what I promptly figured out a mere few hours after awakening that first blissful, sunny morning of freedom: writing takes practice . . . and I haven’t written any fiction in seven years. Seven years may not sound like so long to the more wizened of us out there, so here’s some perspective: seven years ago is equal, for me, to two life phases ago. That’s pre-post-college working life, pre-college hilarity life, all the way back to mid-high-school omgwtfbbq life when — oh, why pad the truth — I wrote about mermaids.

And cats! The culmination of my fiction-writing career thus far, my epoch, was at the tender age of fourteen, when I realized I could write a story about . . . mercats.

I’d like to think that my brain cells have been about 75% replaced in the past seven years. This would be a pretty convenient philosophy, since beyond freeing me from the embarrassing preoccupations of my former psyche, it could follow that I — as in, my current brain implementation — have never done this fiction-writing thing before. This is certainly what it feels like. I open up a blank TextEdit file, turn off my wireless, and stare blankly, desperately, like someone told to compose an essay in a foreign language.

Because here’s the problem when you’re just making shit up: you can say anything. What. Do. You. Choose?

I realized that I could use some boundaries, and a clear place to begin. I needed to write a lot at first, without getting frustrated with the details or worrying that it sucked a little. I needed to read a lot, and take from other writers, because that’s what everyone tells you.

So, okay. Branches.

I’m not under any illusion that these are great, publishing-house-publishable stories. For both of our sakes, I hope they’re at least somewhat entertaining, worth your time. I would welcome any comments containing criticism, encouragement, violent insults, ambivalent shrugs of doubt, and perplexed questions in regards to my abilities (unless we’re dating — in which case, please say that you love me).

One every two weeks, until I’ve written ten. I have a general rule that I don’t write anything I don’t enjoy writing, because it shows. If I’m still pulling my hair out by assisted-story number ten, I’ll move on.

But let’s give this a go, shall we?

Currently reading: No One Belongs Here More Than You by Miranda July.

I hated my job, but I liked that I could do it. I had once believed in a precious inner self, but now I didn’t. I had thought that I was fragile, but I wasn’t. It was like suddenly being good at sports.

They say that it doesn’t happen this way, but I know some girls that it happened to, and it’s true: you can just wake up one morning and have breasts. Not huge, porn-y boobs, but a nice, tasteful rack, big enough to catch everyone’s eye. Breasts that get in the way when you reach for things, breasts that make old t-shirts look fantastic, breasts that get thought about hours after they leave the room: it happened to my friend Stacey. She said it was so unexpected that she didn’t even notice them until she tried to zip into a dress that morning, and even then, she just thought she was a little bloated or something. Like big boobs weren’t a plausible explanation. They weren’t even in her mind. But later that day, all these guys whistled at her in the hallways between classes, and she looked down and was like, wait, whoa, what? Bam. These things happen, people.

And, not incidentally, this was exactly how something else happened to me.

I woke up one morning and the change had occurred.

Immediately beautiful, swanning, blossoming into a woman –

Nope.

Although it must be said, that Stacey’s overnight transformation helped me recognize mine for what it was. I was more attuned to the massive potential hidden in a night’s sleep. Secretly, I’d been hoping for breasts myself. Every night I had willed them into sudden being, willed myself to be like her, for my nail polish to stop chipping, or for my teeth to straighten out. And other things.

Instead, that particular Sunday morning, I just really, really wanted to throw a curve ball.

And I could tell that I would be good at it, immediately, because of how badly I wanted it. Or not me, exactly: it was all contained in my left arm, like a rubber band, stretched back. We’d just learned about potential energy in Mr. Bing’s class, and that’s exactly how it felt: only the rubber band kept pulling further and further, taut taut taut, so that it almost hurt to stay still. It was all I could do to keep my arm from whipping around in the sheets, throwing imaginary curve balls everywhere. My arm wanted this more than anything. As for me — Elizabeth, girl and person, mental entity — I’ve never been interested in sports of any kind.

And that didn’t change, even years later, to this day. The complicated rules frustrate me. So much of it is waiting, slow, slow relocation. Occasionally I wonder if I’d be better off working in retail, or as a waitress, or as a teenage housewife: something vaguely dirty, sexual and suddenly adult — like Stacey. But then I step up to the rubber and it’s that same feeling. Power surges through the entire left side of my body, pooling and puddling in my calf and biceps.

Push into the ground, and — step, follow-through.

It’s like, if I didn’t throw a ball right now, I’m going to explode.

How fascinating! So you just woke up one morning, and you could throw the perfect curve ball, the perfect game.

That’s right.

With no prior practice, not even any interest in baseball?

Yes.

And, she stole a brief glance down at her notes, you struck out every player on the opposing team?

Yes.

Well that’s just an amazing story, truly the American Dream. You are a talented little girl, Elizabeth, and thank you for taking the time to speak with us! For CBN News, I’m Roxanne Sprok in Denver, Colorado.

I’m sorry, I did not get the chance to correct you: I’m not a little girl, Ms. Sprok.

Okay, technically, that’s not true. I am little. I am five foot one, lost easily in crowds, unnoticed in classrooms. I am fourteen years old and I look like I could be ten: mostly a deal-breaker with peers who are all trying to look like Sex In the City stars. The videos in health class offer crackling reassurances that these awkward years will pass: that this is all a gradual procession to confidence and adulthood, that we should accept ourselves and one another in this time of change.

But I have never, ever felt right in this body. Not now, not when I was six, stretching back as far as I can remember, has been the question “When will I get bigger?”

And these slow, annual . . . potential inches are meaningless to me, do you understand?

It would take a miracle to achieve what I’m looking for. Something sudden, drastic, unexplained. The kind of thing that happens overnight.

It just so happened that we had a baseball in the garage of the house I lived in growing up, so I threw on some shorts, skittered through the kitchen, and grabbed it, then ran into our backyard. Our yard was massive in those days — all kinds of rolling green and chirping frogs. Somewhere, a neighbor was mowing their lawn.

I wound my arm back, pushed off my left foot and took a step with my right, and I chucked it. The throw, while not a curve ball, was exactly what I wanted at the time: soaring, spinning, one hundred stories above it all — and I was flying with it, looking down. Buildings were Legos and people were ants. Clouds were massive unicorns and whisping castles. Back down on earth, a little girl was spreading open her arms, in a kind of dumbstruck surprise, victory, almost surrender.

Currently reading: Sea Change by Jorie Graham.

Everything unpreventable and excited like / mornings in the unknown future. Who shall repair this now. And how the future / takes shape / too quickly.

I am densely packed in the middle, my edges scattered, nebulous: not unlike the Sun itself. I was enjoying a lemonade on the porch swing when it occurred to me that you might come along. Forces are strong here, our repulsions overcome.

“Are you busy?” you asked. “I brought old copies of People.”

You arranged your electron cloud like a hoop skirt, orbiting electrons rustling on the swing next to me. The planks creaked under our combined weight. A familiar sound, once: our weight, resting together. When our valence shells briefly converged, you said “sorry” — quickly.

“It’s all right.”

White plasma churned and whorled.

“So,” you said. “How have you been? Have things been much different, here?”

I wanted to tell you everything, like they never do in French films: that when you left I slept for days, weeks, months, depleted and shook-up. That I gathered a new identity. That we had unknowingly witnessed the beginning of life itself. That I don’t even know how I wound up here, in the center of the solar system swinging on a gravitational arm around the galaxy, but yet I could predict that I would be here again, this exact position, 250 million years from now.

“It moves faster in the middle than it does at the poles,” I said. “It makes me a little giddy.”

You scoffed, perhaps bored already. “Does it.”

“Yes.”

“You always did like a good ride.”

White plasma churned and whorled.

“I’m sorry,” you said, flipping open a magazine. “Too soon? Let’s take a look at Katie Holmes’ wedding dress.”

I stared into my lemonade, and did not offer you a glass. “How old is that issue?”

“Does it even matter? They all just do the same things, over and over again. Anyway, we’re on the Sun. What are days, weeks, months?”

“We could measure them by their lives. Whether they are wearing white or pink. The age of their children, the state of their lips: young, older, Botox, more Botox.”

“Don’t be sick.”

Somewhere in the house behind us, a cat meowed, a long, plaintive call. I’m the first to admit: I never should have adopted her. The Sun is no place for a cat. But I was very lonely for a time, and loneliness breeds selfishness. I named her Keylimepie. She is white and soft like Wonder Bread.

You lifted your head. “Was that a cat?”

“I don’t know. Was it?”

“It was! It was a cat. You adopted one when you moved to the Sun, didn’t you?” You sigh in aggravation, turning to shimmering photographs of Jessica Simpson’s matching magenta sweat-suit. “Well, that was a terrible idea.”

“She was irresistible as a kitten,” I say. “But, you’re right. She has never cared much for this heat.” Sometimes I put ice cubes on her back, and she purrs and cries at the same time. The minute I crack the tray she comes running, every time. Tiny ice shards fly into the air like glass and she’ll lick them off the linoleum floor. My little Keylimepie.

“Let’s change the subject,” I say.

“Agreed. This whole conversation has been completely nonlinear thus far, and difficult for some of us to process. I propose we start at The Beginning.”

I smile. “You make it sound so proper, capitalized.”

“More things should be treated that way, don’t you think? So many people, places, things, descriptions, are sacred, archetypal, individual.”

“All right. So let’s start at The Beginning. Beginning of all Beginnings, symbol of Beginninghood.”

You took a deep breath and grinned nervously, directing your question to the distant flames. “All right. So then, my erstwhile-dear: had you perhaps noticed that we — the two of us, our romance and its dissolution — started It All?”

“It . . . All?” I repeated.

“You know what I mean. The universe. Life. Quasars, broccoli, dark energy, Botox. Saturn’s rings.”

“Ah. That stuff.”

“Yeah. That stuff.”

“Well we hardly created all of that. I mean, we were involved, affected by it, but that doesn’t mean we were responsible, for crying out loud. Is that what you’ve always thought?”

“We parted, and the universe was born.”

“Yes?”

“. . . Seems like a pretty neat coincidence.”

“Look, look look. As individuals we had nothing to do with it. It was that force, that drove us apart . . . that created all of that.”

“Right.” You looked me directly in the eyes, gleaming. “So, do you think the universe would have been created if we had never been together?”

I paused. “I don’t know.”

You smiled victoriously.

“Look, I’m just saying, because of . . . butterfly effects, and all that. Who can say what would have happened, if there was an atom’s difference in that mess. Speculation is rendered pointless, by . . . by the infinite potential of it all.”

“It’s not pointless.”

You almost seemed injured, for a moment. In my mind I reached out to take your hand, to apologize with my eyes, like they do in French films. But by the time I’d finished imagining it the moment had passed. You had been skimming to the end of the magazine, and were already cringing in disgust.

“When will Mary-Kate and Ashley get their act together, anyway? I can’t take them any more.”

You chucked the magazine over the side of the porch and it shuddered into instant carbon, the black wisps fluttering like hellish paper cranes for a moment. These soon disappeared into small gaseous bursts, emitting a whimsical dying cry as they went.

Wheeeeeeee!

Whee wheee, wheeeeeee!

“Huh,” you say. “That looked much more dramatic than I’d intended.”

The heat was stupefying, molten waves beginning to lap the porch stairs. I began to regard your presence uncomfortably. You with your dateless archives of the Earth starlets’ lives. Your inability to respect the passage of time, your egoism and sophomoric analysis.

“It’s been really nice, catching up,” I began.

“I see,” you said.

“No, no. It’s just . . . I get tired so easily, in this heat. I begin to lose my senses. You won’t want to be talking to me in five minutes, honestly.”

“Matter can’t be created nor destroyed,” you quipped. I thought the look in your eyes changed, but it may have simply been a new tilt to your face, a sudden reflection of fire. “You can’t get rid of yourself so easily.”

“Myself?”

“Past tense. Your old self. By which I mean me.”

I considered this. “Was that a threat?”

“Of course it wasn’t a threat. It’s just, you know, difficult sometimes. To be the one who’s always being told to leave.”

“I never wanted you to go in the first place.”

“Say it ain’t so.” Then, “really?”

My gaze shifted down, like an actor pretending to say something difficult. I noticed that my glass was empty. All of the lemonade had evaporated out of it — my donation to the universe today.

“Really.”

“You didn’t seem particularly happy to see me again.”

“Well. I had become accustomed to life without you. Isn’t that fair?”

You stared at your pile of People, the endless cycle of lives documented, photographed, Photoshopped, built up, ignored. Your electrons orbited furiously. “Did you know they’re calling them TomCat now? He jumped on a chair on national television, he was so excited.”

“That was years ago.”

“It was yesterday!” You let out a high cackle.

“Hey. Stop it.”

“It’s right now. It’s tomorrow! It’s 4.5 billion years old.”

Suddenly the universe was swirling. I felt sick. “I said stop it!”

“Why?”

“It’s . . . this is important. To know these things. To respect the When.”

“Why? Why calculate the Past? Do you think you’ll get the Future?”

I was faint, heavy and exhausted with resistance. “I can’t . . . I can’t think right now, but I know you’re wrong,” I said. “Let’s stop joking around. Leave, and we can discuss this some other day. I’ve been unstable.”

“Unstable!” you roared. “I get it, is that an isotope joke?”

“Please. Some other time.” I stood up weakly from the porch swing.

“Let me help you,” you said, approaching me.

“No, no.”

You smiled mischievously. “Let me help you,” you repeated, reaching for my hand.

And now we propel toward one another! And now we collide. Wham, it would go, in our comic book. Kaplooie. There is a sudden explosion of violent light.

What excuse can I give? Forces were stronger than I had remembered. Heat dissipates into the atmosphere, to warm and reveal quasars, broccoli, dark energy, Botox and Saturn’s rings in its light. And I am you are me are one, we are obliterated, there is no more we: a new element stalks the Milky Way. A few minutes from now, the porch swing will creak with our combined weight.

White plasma churns and whorls.