Estelle Ana Baca

Category: Prose

Catch-all category for short stories, etc.

  • On Blogging

    I was once a blogger. It was during the years in which was benched at desk jobs with very, very little responsibility, and I was afforded the luxury of being able to cut my writerly milk teeth by means of web-based rant, analysis and confession. My life and my perceptions have changed since then, and I’ve not blogged with any sort of frequency in several years and good luck tracking down anything I wrote back then.

    A couple of years ago, I launched this site with the intention of getting back into the practice. I created blog posts written by one of my characters from my Ministers of Grace series and provided histories for various angels and demons. However, not even a year later, I abandoned it due to time constraints and went back to writing novels, poems and screenplays.

    Blogging ought to be considered a medium unto itself with literary potentials that are still being explored, in part because it requires its own skill set that separates it from other forms of writing. Writing on command is a great part of it, which is what makes it sister to journalism, but the fluid, mercurial nature of the internet is what sets it apart, for blog posts can be searched and found and updated and edited and modified, even deleted.

    Self-censorship and all other excuses aside, I’ve come to realize that I need to rekindle my facility with the medium. I’ve no intention to blog about my writing process, because I can’t imagine anything more boring to anyone but me. My life is off-limits: I’m a private person, and if you want to know what’s going on with me, you can rather safely intuit my life’s events based upon the matter of what I write. I’ve considered writing about things of a political and social nature, but as they inspire the wrath that curls inside my pen and fuels my creative fires, I reckon I’d drive myself completely insane by consistently focusing on such darkness. Besides, I prefer expounding my opinions via fiction.

    Therefore, I’d like to announce the start of a new blog series. I’m not sure how long I’ll be able to keep it up – it could last through the end of the year, or I might be able to keep it going indefinitely, who knows? – but during the third week of the month, I intend to provide a review and/or critical analysis of a book that I probably really should have read by now. You might be surprised: my late teens/early twenties were spent falling in love with Oscar Wilde, Rainer Maria Rilke, Virginia Woolf, Tony Kushner, Anne Sexton, Lawrence Durrell, C.P. Cavafy, Vladimir Nabokov and, last but certainly not least, Jorge Luís Borges. Weren’t you, too? I’ll be posting the first of this new series on Monday, kicking off the festivities with a post about Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar.

    I am once again a blogger. Hope you enjoy…

    ♥ EAB

  • The Art of Storytelling

    The structure for this little mixed medium étude is a little different: the first part’s got twelve syllables per line, with the third stanza featuring rhyming couplets, followed by the prose in the second part. That’s just the only way it’d work.

    “The Art of Storytelling”

    I.

    The arrangements spell out every prickly, crumpled
    inconsistency that shuffles in the hollows,
    for this is how the mind works: mirrored images.

    (Shhhhhhh look for me between the lines. I’m always there.)

    “…there are those times, like when it’s almost too much to
    awaken from your deeper slumbers to the cool,
    dragged out rhythms of your own breath, like when the best
    move you’ve got is to make that figure, the one pressed
    up against the opposite side of the glass, run
    as fast as she can in the other direction.”

     

    II.

    “Last week, I was asked to contribute a tale to a friend’s anthology – a ghost story, to be precise. I knocked it out without any hesitation, redrafted it, revised it, and handed it off to my friend with all due diligence and respect. When I presented it, I offered with it the apologetic proviso that I’d be more than happy to redraft, revise, and even reimagine it entirely so that it suited the artistic purposes of him who requested it.”

    “He told me that as long as I was happy with it, it would suit him.”

    “I replied that I was not happy with the work at all. I found the story itself to be a rather grim protraction of what was going on inside my head. The metaphors I’d layered within it were far from pleasing, for they’d served as an expression of the biochemically-inspired and situationally-catalyzed depressive episode that’s been occupying my head. Everything within the story had served as a means by which to work through that particular sadness, so that when I was ready to submit it, it struck me as an opus that I wasn’t happy with at all because of what it represented, even though I was the only one who knew what it meant. But it was honest work, for it came from within and was the best use of the billowy darkness within, and for that, I could be proud.”

    They say you should write what you know. The phrase, taken at face value, is most often cited by unimaginative writers as an excuse to mire their work in the mundanity and profane self-absorption of everyday life. Whoever coined it bartered meaning for brevity and lost its matter, for the phrase really ought to express that when it comes right down to it, it’s unavoidable to write about anything other than whatever you’re trying to work out in your head, maybe even forgive yourself for. The most you can do when perpetrating such unintentional nakedness is to embrace the process for what it is: write down the barest truth of what you know.

    ♥ EAB

  • A Chronoclysm

    A Chronoclysm.

    He’s not sure if it’s the hangover talking at first. He clenches his jaw and closes his eyes to reassure himself of his sobriety. He lets slip a vocalized groan that echoes within the vacant space of the classroom, and its sound slices through the silence, providing an antidote to his uncertainty.

    He takes a hesitant step toward the desk. He’d upset the lid when he shrank back from the old hat box on top of it, so he picks it up and places it on the veneered surface next to a pile of evidence that ought not to exist. He looks around for signs of any presence, human or otherwise, before he returns his attention to the photographs in the old hat box. He’s never considered himself to be a paranoid man. After all, he’s just a never-married thirty-eight-year-old janitor who works in his old high school. Nevertheless the trove of evidence before him makes him question his sanity. There’s a photograph of him at the prom, twenty years earlier, with Elaine Cooper, the prettiest girl in the whole school; a candid snapshot of him downing a shot of tequila on a beach somewhere tropical; a portrait of him posing with a toddler who resembles him so much so as to be confident of a genetic bond; a pretty, smiling woman on the porch at Grandma’s house, wearing his favorite ball cap, signed by McGwire himself; a thinner, fitter him with more lines around the eyes and less on the forehead that could have been taken no more than a few weeks ago. There’s no doubt that this is his life, that is, if his life had been lived over again by someone smarter, luckier.

    He retraces the chronology of his evening up to the point at which he found the box. He remembers getting to work, and that he, Dan and Carl divided their duties equally. It was his night to take care of the drama auditorium, so he took care of that first, before he headed down the D-wing to look after the classrooms that were in his charge. He remembers going through the first seven, all of which were occupied by teachers, emptying the trash and sweeping the floors. He remembers that he had to blast some fresh graffiti from a desk in Hannah Climent’s classroom, and that one of the kids had made a weeping mess with a half-eaten cup of strawberry yogurt in Jennifer Wiles’ room. He remembers that he felt compelled to make his way all the way to the end of the hall, and that D-7—which is unoccupied, spare and not in use by any of the faculty at Belmont High—was unlocked, its door cracked open to let in the rude fluorescence of the hallway illumination. He remembers thinking that everything was as it should have been, with the exception of the unlocked, open door and the addition of a old, blue-and-white-striped hat box on the teacher’s desk. He didn’t think there was any risk of opening it, until he had a moment to examine the contents.

    He chases a brave impulse and buries his hands inside the box. He discovers that there are hundreds of photographs, all the way to the very base of the box, and every last one of them is a testament to another life that might have been lived by him.

    There’s too much to consider. His brain misfires and rejects what lies before him. He doesn’t understand who could have done this to him. He hurriedly picks up the photographs that have fallen to the desk and onto the floor, and he shoves them inside the box and replaces the lid with conviction. He lifts the box and carries it outside the classroom, and he stops himself before dropping it inside the big black trash sack in his cleaning cart. The yogurt from the accident in Ms. Wiles’ room would mar the outside of the box, if not the photographs inside it, too, and after a few moments of consideration, he tucks it underneath the sack, so that only he knows of its existence. He steps back inside D-7 to insure that it looks as it should. There’s a photograph on the floor that escaped his attention, and he collects it and shoves it in his pocket before examining it. He looks around one last time, shuts off the light, closes the door behind him and locks it.

    He sees to the rest of his duties, has a couple of cigarettes and a beer with Dan and Carl before the night ends, and concludes his evening with a half-hearted “see you tomorrow” that he lobs at his co-workers. He trails behind their cars as they leave the parking lot, and he circles around the block a few times to make sure that no one else is around. He returns to the school, rushes back to the custodial closet in the main hallway and retrieves the hat box from his cart. He fights with the late March wind to keep its lid on while he locks the doors, and when he gets to his pickup, he places the hat box at the farthest end of the passenger seat, next to the door. He knows that it’s filled with the repellent evidence of a life that he can’t claim as his own, but he wants to protect it. He feels better with the knowledge that they’re in his truck, with him, and subject to his decision as to whether they should continue to exist or not.

    He empties his pockets when he gets to his grim apartment. He’d forgotten about the photograph in his pocket, and he examines the cramped handwriting on the back. It’s Mom’s, and it reads, “Len and Gary, May 17, 1986.” He knows the date very well. It’s the day they found Dad dead, hung in the closet of a motel in Overland Park, Kansas. He’d killed himself the night before, or so the police estimated.

    He flips around the photo, and it’s a picture of his dad, Leonard, and him, Gary Maloret, posing for a proud, smiling photograph in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC. Gary knows it never happened. The farthest east he’s ever been is Cincinnati, for his great uncle’s funeral. That he’s never travelled very far outside of St. Louis is something that’s always bothered him, but he’s never had the money for things like travel. He’s always given most of his paycheck to Mom and his little sister April, when she’s clean, and there isn’t ever very much left.

    He feels like he ought to be sadder, more affected by what he’s found in the box, but he finds the whole business to be more pathetic than anything else. He takes his position on his couch with a beer and a pack of cigarettes, and he stares at the photograph in the half-light of the TV.

    He glances at the hat box on the kitchen counter on his way to bed. He has no desire to fantasize about what he never had, and he resolves to head out to the countryside on Sunday afternoon, burn every last photograph and toss the ashes into the river.

    *     *     *

    Gary speaks to the woman at the bailiff’s desk at the municipal court, and he wonders if he looks presentable enough in his short-sleeved shirt, khakis and tie to speak to a judge. He looks down at his attire and feels like he’s borrowed an outfit from Joe Rosenthal, one of the assistant principals at school. Everyone at school likes and respects Rosenthal, and he hopes that his clothes are able to produce a similar impression.

    The woman at reception types on a keyboard and stares at the information on the screen in front of her. He wishes he could see what she’s reading. “Gary Maloret. Yes.” She fetches a document from her printer, stamps it with the date and hands it to him. “Please proceed down the hallway, through the double doors and into Room 4. It’s the second door on the left. They’ll be with you shortly.”

    He doesn’t understand. “I’m meeting the judge in there?”

    “Not in your case. Someone will be with you shortly.” She diverts her attention to the person standing next to him. “Can I help you?”

    He steps out of the way and obeys, heading down the hallway, through the double doors and into Room 4. It’s a small, windowless conference room with a table and four chairs.

    He takes a seat and reads the sheet that the woman at reception handed him. There’s nothing on it to indicate why he’s not supposed to speak to the judge about his traffic violation. He grumbles at the idea that if he were an attractive nineteen-year-old girl with a low-cut blouse, he’d’ve gotten away with running through that red light. He taps the table with his fingers in anticipation. There’s nothing to look at in the room except the pattern of the veneer on the table top. He focuses on it, and the patterns shift. He shakes his head and wishes he’d had time for another cup of coffee before he left for court.

    The door opens, and it startles him. A middle-aged woman enters. She’s got beady eyes and straw-like hair in a page-boy cut, and she’s mismatched a navy blue power suit with a tattered white t-shirt that has some sort of Asian-looking writing on it. The smell of burnt doll hair accompanies her into the room. “Good morning!”

    “Good morning.”

    She takes a seat in front of him at the table. “Forgive the formalities. We’ve found that people don’t show if we don’t give them a reason to come in, and it has to be a voluntary thing. Red tape. Ghastly stuff. Worse than contracts.” She peers at the name on the tab of a file folder. “Let’s see—Mr. Maloret. Will you correctly identify the forty-nine visages that I bear?”

    “Uh—sorry? I—”

    “No? OK. This might be another plebe job.” She opens the file and flips through its pages. “I’m called Shiravis. I’ll be handling your case. I take it you’ve had an opportunity to review the excerpts?”

    “What—what excerpts?” He searches the form that the woman at reception gave him for excerpts of any kind, and the page leaves him no clue as to what is being asked of him.

    “Oh mercy. A squawk job.” Shiravis looks up from the file. “Yesterday. Maybe the day before. Did you find something that made you aware that the life you’re living isn’t your own?”

    There’s a sensation that some of the air has been forcefully pushed out of his gut. “What?”

    “You did find them. Don’t worry. You’re not going crazy. What you saw were pieces of a life that you might have lived, had you not been drawn into a situational anomaly created by a 3,800-year-old rogue genie or djinn or pixie or whatever you want to call it. You, personally, weren’t supposed to be caught up in that, and so my superiors—whatever—have instructed my department to offer you a chance for retribution, if you so desire. Are you interested?” Shiravis laces her fingers together and gives her thumbs a twiddle while she waits for a response.

    He blinks a few times and pinches his leg hard. He’s certain he’s awake and at the courthouse, but he’s also certain that the woman mentioned a genie. He wonders if it’s possible to pinch himself while he’s still sleeping and expect it to register it as pain. “I—I don’t—”

    Shiravis grimaces and makes a few clicking sounds. “Why is it always on Thursdays?” She rolls her eyes. “You’re Gary Wade Maloret, born on January 8, 1973, right?”

    “Yes?”

    “And you’re the son of Leonard Wade Maloret, born on February 26, 1947, right?”

    “Yes…”

    “Your father Leonard was part of an unfortunate event that occurred back in 1984. There was an operative who went off the rails and began making unauthorized deals, and whenever those sorts of deals occur, it’s problematic, to say the very least. Unauthorized deals always involve collateral damage, such as in your case, and it takes years, if not centuries, to track down all the ripples and undo the damage. You wouldn’t believe the headache, but it’s all in the name of maintaining and preserving the interversal balance. Not my style, really, but I can’t complain too loudly without expecting consequences myself. Anyway—”

    Shiravis clears her throat. “Back in 1984, this genie or devil or rumpelstiltskin ran amok and made a deal with a certain—I guess coven or brotherhood might be the best way of describing it—and this brotherhood went on to acquire power that isn’t allowed. Plebes and squawks—forgive me—talents and humans aren’t entitled to that sort of fortune. It upsets the balance. There’s not much I can tell you, unfortunately, because you are a human, and your level of interversal comprehension is, well, shall we say lacking. For example, right now, you probably see me as nothing more than a woman in a suit, whereas a talent—that is to say, a human with what you’d call extrasensory perceptions—might perceive me as valkyrie or banshee or maybe even something as hilarious as a guardian angel. You’re all wrong, of course. No time to explain why, but trust me when I say that your brain wouldn’t be able to handle the explanation anyway. Know that there are higher powers, though, and they are not to be trifled with.

    “This genie or rakshasa or gremlin upset how certain timelines were supposed to occur in order to seal the deal. Your father was never supposed to have committed suicide at the Super 8 Motel in Overland Park, Kansas, in 1986, but he was one of the humans who was marked by this brotherhood as a sacrificial lamb when they made this deal back in ‘84. His death ensured that certain beneficial energies that were supposed to be doled out evenly were earmarked for someone else. As a result, your life has been a chain of misfortune because they took your right to know balance. With me?”

    He’s not sure how to respond.

    “That’s about the best I can hope for, I imagine.” Shiravis grins, but her eyes retain a sense of supercilious boredom. “Now, as your adjustment representative, it’s my duty to allow you the opportunity to reclaim some of those energies from those who have unfairly benefitted from this debacle. I’m not saying we can go back in time in this instance—the damage wasn’t that bad—but I can tell you that we’re able to offer you…” Shiravis goes silent and glares at him. The potency of her stare boring through him feels as though it’s actively peeking beneath his flesh, and he shivers in response. “Well. Stop eating all those chimichangas, lose forty pounds and we’re talking a potential three decades that’ll make up for the two-and-a-half of unabated misery. So—are you interested?”

    He must be dreaming. Dreams are, in many ways, the only source of release for him, and he realizes that the best thing would be to go along with what she’s offering him. He’ll wake up later, repeat the breakfasting, showering and dressing, head to the courthouse and sort out everything in the morning with his moving violation. “What do I have to do?”

    Shiravis rolls her eyes again. “‘It’s all just a dream’ is better than ‘no,’ I guess. First things first.” She slides out a form from the file, and she conjures a pen from the air itself. It twinkles when she slides the cap off and replaces it on the end. She makes three circles and two exes upon the page. “Initial here, here and here, sign here and sign and date here. Use day-month-year format, please, so that you write 31-03-2011. Understood?”

    She holds out the pen for him, and he takes it. He holds up the page. The words themselves are blurred, as if he were looking at them through prescription glasses that were terribly wrong for him, and the character of the blur shifts in the light as he adjusts the page in front of him. “What does this say?”

    “It’s a 9322GP-dash-C standard retribution contract. It means that you agree to carry out your end of what needs to be done to restore balance, particularly as it applies to everyone within your bloodline who was affected by the misallocation of energy.”

    “So my Mom and April’ll have better luck, too?”

    “Yessssss.” Shiravis’ upper lip floats up into a snarl. “It’s all there in the 9322GP-dash-C.”

    “What do I have to do?”

    “Let me check.” Shiravis flips through several pages in the file. “Oh, this is easy! It’s just finding a replacement. You’ll be able to do this, especially because you’ll have free will in your arsenal. Just sign, please, I’ll send in Axarita, and she’ll tell you what you have to do. And then, with a little luck, you won’t ever have to see my forty-nine-sided face again. Deal?” Shiravis holds out the pen for him.

    The pen twinkles again, contradicting the draining nature of the fluorescent light in the room. He leaps at the chance of being able to bring Mom and April some kind of joy, even if only in his dreams, and he obeys, initialing, signing and dating where appropriate.

    “Stupendous. You wait here.” Shiravis inserts the contract in his file and closes the file. “Axarita will be in here in a minute to outline the specifics of your task. I doubt I’ll ever see you again, but if you should run into any unforeseeable problems, please don’t hesitate to give me a call.” Shiravis slaps a business card on the table and slides it to him. “It’s been a pleasure.” She leaves the room without an attempt at eye contact or any sort of social pleasantry, and the door closes behind her.

    He picks up the card and examines it. The language on it is just as blurred as the contract that he’s just signed. He hopes he won’t ever have to contact her, for he wouldn’t know how if he needed to.

    He remembers that it’s all just a dream, though, and he happily tucks the card into the pocket of his shirt.

    The door opens. He presumes that it’s Axarita, but he’s unprepared for what Axarita is. Shiravis mentioned that Axarita was a she, but considering all outward appearances, she distinctly looks like a very, very young boy in Spider-Man footed pajamas. He doesn’t appear to be more than five or six years old. Gary considers that perhaps this visitor isn’t Axarita at all. “Are you lost, son?”

    “Don’t patronize me, Maloret.” Its—no, her voice is distinctly low, adult, feminine and confident. “I don’t expect you to appreciate what I’m telling you, squawk, but I’m stuck with this visage in this dimension until I can pay off my debt. I’m your shipper. That means that you’re stuck with me until you fulfill the terms of your contract.”

    “What’s a shipper?”

    “Shippers put you on your path to make things happen.”

    “So what do I have to do?”

    “We have to locate and make arrangements for your replacement. Tell me you have a car. It makes things so much easier when I don’t have to take the bus, looking like this.”

    “I came here in my truck.”

    “Beautiful. Let’s go.”

    Axarita opens the door with all the authority that her voice suggests and heads down the hall, and her carriage and gait align with that of an intimidating, powerful, mature female. Gary gives chase out into the lobby and into the parking lot. Axarita heads directly for Gary’s pickup, and she trots around to the passenger side. She’s so tiny that Gary can’t see her when he unlocks his own door, and it isn’t until Gary slides over and unlocks the passenger side that Axarita is visible again. She climbs up into the passenger seat.

    “Before we go anywhere, let me set some ground rules. Rule number one: no arguing with me. That includes arguing with me about where we’re going. When I say turn, you turn. When I say run, you run. When I say ‘step back and let me handle this,’ back off, find a place to hide and wait until I come for you. Rule number two: no giving me shit about my visage. There’s nothing I can do about it, so you’re just going to have to put up with it. Believe me, squawk, I’m much stronger than I look, and no one’s going to willingly fuck with someone who looks like me until it’s too late. If you do give me shit about how I look, I will not hesitate to pull your spinal cord out of your asshole and use it to repair bicycle tires. There’re a few reasons I’ve been sentenced to this visage, and one of them is because I don’t respond well to teasing. Got it?”

    Gary starts the truck. “Got it. But what are you? Other than a shipper?”

    “Shiravis didn’t tell ya, did she? Useless, that one. We’re Katavikrists.”

    “What’s a Katavikrist?”

    “We observe change as it occurs on its own and change what must be changed. We’re not from here.”

    “Where are you from?”

    “Where and when is more like it. Not here. That’s all you need to know for right now.” Axarita rolls down the window, and she stands to get a good look outside the window. “South. South by southwest. Let’s go.”

    “Where are we going?” Gary is game to continue dreaming, even though the dream seems to go on and on, without any hint of stopping.

    “You’re not dreaming. You’re going to put your truck into reverse, leave this parking lot and get on the I-55 south. The sooner we leave, the sooner we reach the replacement, the sooner this is all over, which leaves you wide open to convince yourself that this was all just a dream later, ok? So let’s leave now, before I start to craft an internal justification that non-action is equivalent to resistance and argumentative behavior, thus breaking rule number one.”

    Gary shrugs and silently obeys, guiding his little silver pickup truck toward the southbound I-55.

    *     *     *

    Axarita’s head pokes out the window of Gary’s truck, and Gary can’t help but think that the woman or whathaveyou in a tiny boy suit looks a rather like a dog. Axarita’s voice, though it ought to be lost in the din of the wind resistance, is louder than ever, and it sounds through the cab of the pickup. “Will you stop that?”

    “Stop what?”

    “First of all, if you haven’t managed to process it in that teensy squawker mind of yours, I can read your thoughts. Secondly, I told you that I don’t respond well to teasing. I wish I could take the visage of a dog. Dogs aren’t as limiting as little boys. Thirdly, you signed a contract, we’re on our way to take care of what you willingly signed up for, and no, this is not a dream. So knock it off.”

    Gary brakes and steers to the side of the road. The rumble strips at the side of the road noisily jar the entire truck. He shuts off the engine when the pickup has come to a complete stop.

    Axarita regards him with ferocious scrutiny. “Why have you stopped?”

    “Prove that this isn’t a dream, then. Prove to me that I’m awake, because I don’t believe that you’re what you say you are.”

    “If solid reality doesn’t convince you that you’re awake, then I’ve got nothing for you.”

    “Then at least tell me exactly what we’re on our way to do.”

    “Start driving again, and I’ll tell you while we’re on the way.”

    “Why can’t you tell me now?”

    Gary realizes with a sharp shock that his entire perspective has changed. He is no longer sitting in the passenger seat of his truck. The rough, harsh contours of the rumble strips on the highway dig into his spine and the back of his head. His chest feels tight, as if something more than a few hundred pounds is pressing upon it. He lifts his head, and he sees that Axarita is looming over him. She has Gary pinned to the ground by means of a solitary finger pressed into his sternum.

    “You are breaking rule number one. My patience is thin, and this will be your only warning. I appreciate it when squawks follow directions without resistance. If you think that this little feat of mine is impressive, think again. We Katavikrists are capable of bending spacetime to our will, so count on it when I say that I can put into practice a thousand different functions for the sinuses within your skull.”

    The weight is lifted from his chest, and he’s upright again, sitting in the driver’s seat of his pickup. Gary doesn’t mean to be startled, but his hands shake and his heart races. He draws in a few quick breaths to restore some of his nerve.

    Axarita’s stares out the window once more. “Drive. Please.”

    Gary starts the truck, and he steers them back onto the road. He can still feel the latent pressure upon his chest, as well as bits of asphalt poking through his shirt into his back. It occurs to him, with a deep sense of despair, that regardless of his grasp of reality, he is trapped inside his truck with this thing until this thing decides that he’s free to go.

    “You’re not a hostage. This was your own doing. Don’t hold me responsible because you don’t want to go through with this. I’m just doing my job, too.”

    “What have I said that I’m going to do anyway?”

    Axarita glances at him through the corner of his eye. “To be fair, it’s not entirely your fault that you have no idea what’s going on.” He resumes peering out the window. “Shiravis should’ve told you before she handed you over to me. She’s an adjuster. She’s supposed to be responsible for devising plans to fix damage within the dimensional fabric of the united interverses, but she’s really just a low-level bureaucrat. She’s under orders, just like me. Katavikrists like us only get involved when things are truly fucked, otherwise, none of you squawks know we’re here.”

    “Why do keep calling me—or us—squawks?”

    Axarita smirks. “That was the first sound any of you—and I mean all mortal creatures—on this world in this universe made. You’re all pretty much the same, you know, whether you like it or not.

    “Anyway, you’d never know it, but many of the interverses swing back and forth between the polarities—positive and negative, that is—and someone stole your share of positive. They did it so well that you didn’t even realize that things ought to be different for you and that you shouldn’t have to suffer through life like this. So we’re going to fix it. Or rather, I’m going to take you there, and you’re going to fix it.”

    “Why can’t you fix it for me?”

    “Because it’s your life and the lives of the squawks you care about. I can’t fix that. You have to choose to fix it yourself.”

    “What if I’m fine with the way things are?”

    “Then you shouldn’t’ve signed the contract.”

    “What happens if I don’t fix things?”

    “You know how I’ve threatened you with physical violence and death?”

    “Yeah?”

    “I’ll have to do that to you and worse. Just do what you’ve signed up to do, ok?”

    “Fine. You said I have to find a replacement and make arrangements. What exactly do I have to do?” Gary figures that the best thing is just to get it over with, and he hopes that he’ll be free to go by mid-afternoon.

    The air in the cab grows very thick without any warning, and it smells sickeningly sweet. Gary feels like he’s breathing in filaments of cotton candy.

    Axarita’s voice acquires an even more authoritative tone. “Start braking slowly. On each mark that I provide, decrease your speed by five miles per hour. Stay in this lane, but be prepared to go off the road and onto the shoulder. Got it?”

    “OK.” Gary obeys, for Axarita’s tone unnerves him. He gently applies the brake, and the speed decreases. “What’s going on?”

    “One moment… Mark.”

    Gary presses the brake pedal, and the speedometer goes from 60 to 55.

    “Mark.”

    The speedometer decreases to 50. An assembly line of cars in the left lane overtake Gary’s silver little pickup. He looks in the rear view mirror, and the luxury sedan behind him has edged up to no more than a car length away. Its driver is agitated and flashes the lights for him to increase his speed.

    “Mark.”

    45 MPH. The luxury sedan behind him edges into the left lane and passes him quickly, and the driver flips Gary the bird as he drives past. All the cars behind him are anxious to make it into the other lane before the construction barriers ahead force everyone to merge into a single, concrete-barrier-lined corridor, and he watches their migration in the mirror.

    “Increase your speed to 70. Now.”

    Gary presses the gas pedal all the way to the floor, and the pickup lurches forward, struggling to reach a greater speed. He pats the dashboard. “Come on, baby, don’t fail me now.”

    He guides his truck into the single lane of traffic. Over his shoulder, he notices that Axarita is staring at him. “It’s a shame that you’re sentimental about this vehicle.”

    There’s a blast of cold air from the air conditioner. Gary blinks in shock, for he and Axarita are speeding ahead through the single lane of traffic in another car. He overcorrects slightly and narrowly avoids striking the side of the concrete barrier.

    He glances at the rear view mirror, just in time to see his pickup crumpling into the side of the concrete barrier, followed by the catastrophe of a pile-up of cars colliding into the wreckage of his truck.

    Axarita’s mouth widens into a wicked smile. “That’ll slow him down.”

    ************

    Dear Reader, You’ve just read the first 5,000 words of a horror-y/sci-fi-ish shorter story I started and have, for the moment, abandoned. I might do something with it at some point—there’s too much in this story for me to take on right now—but for the moment, it is what it is. Feel free to yell at me for not finishing it. ♥ EAB

  • Tooth.

    A microstorysketchylittlething I wrote a while ago. ♥

    He’s a sheep in wolf’s clothing. His approach is buoyed by a bravado that I’d never see if he were naked.

    That smile. That grin. Delicious.

    We’ll meet later tonight. There’ll be no shepherd—human or celestial—to watch over me, so when he arrives, it’ll be perfectly moonless. He’ll be perfectly helpless, too. I’ll be the only witness to his precious futility. I can smell his childish motivation all the way in the now. It’s as adorable as my sons’ pretensions to hunt birds, because I know that they enjoy the sounds of struggle more than failure or success.

    What realigns my spine with anticipation is that none—not one—of the sheep will see all that black blood spilling all over his costume.

    I’ll only have defended myself—that’s what I’ll say!—so when I cast off the costume over my costume, no one will know any different. I imagine that in my enthusiasm, I’ll end up losing a tooth in the effort. Or will it be his tooth? No matter—I’ll reclaim it without any remorse. It’s my nature.

    If only we could play this game forever… but it will end tonight. I’ll sense the fear of the wolf’s approach in those around me. It smells just like a churchyard…

    For when it’s over, my patience will have run as thin as the wool I’ve applied to conceal my weapons, to my need to survive outside captivity.

  • Something Different

    Believe it or not, sometimes I write things that are unrelated to Nadiel. Call it a compulsion. Anyway, here: have a sketch. I reckon we’ll call this one

    Anima.

    She’ll hope it’s a dream later on. She’ll try to rationalize it, forming it into a wobbly excuse for the terror that rips through her on a daily, even hourly, basis. The truth is something’s not right within her mind, within her. There’s an illness that’s always been there, and although everyone has seen its branches extending from the roots of her, few know about the color of the bark, the texture of the leaves and the odor of those dark purple blooms on that sick tree.

    She’s faceless and nameless, even to herself. There isn’t any occasion in which she isn’t startled by her appearance when she stops by a mirror. Everything’s all wrong—the hair is too light, the eyes are too dark, her limbs are never that long or thin—and even her own name has an improbable combination of consonants and vowels so as to spill clumsily out of her mouth every time she utters her name. Identity in itself is a trick question to her.

    She’ll ponder her ability to value that which is beautiful at some point in the future, for in this moment, she’s looking after her niece—we’ll call her Olivia—and her nephew—he’ll be Sean—in her brother’s home. Her brother—Davy to family and close friends—is away, and Sean and Olivia have requested a bedtime story. She’s happy to oblige, and the three of them curl up on Olivia’s bed, a child on each side. The story is gentle and sweet, and it winds through all the obstacles with clean precision.

    But something shifts in the room, and she realizes that it’s the subtlety of its temperature. She pulls in the children closer, and there’s the distinct feeling of something horribly wrong within the atmosphere. Despair and a murderous anger seep into her, and its character feels as if it is part of her now.

    The children are gone. Davy is still gone, too, and she’s alone in his kitchen. The house is empty, and all its walls feel like they have never known any warmth at all. The tile in the kitchen beneath her feet is accompanied by the intuition that these stones were once used for some grim purpose in the past. This house, Davy’s house, is absent of the love with which it was once so full. And it’s his fault.

    He. It isn’t Davy. It isn’t Sean. No, nothing this ruined or perverse could belong to a child. It belongs to something older. She doesn’t care to consider his origins. She senses that it comes from that same awful place that nurtured that awful seed that grew into that awful tree within her.

    He’s taken a familiar—in more than one sense of the word—shape. It’s her brother—the younger, his name is Robert, but the name suits him as uselessly as her own name—but it’s not him. The eyes look like Robert’s, but Robert, although distant, considers his own anger too precious to share with the world in the way that he does. The smile is definitely not Robert’s. Robert doesn’t smile often, but when he does, he means it, and it’s brilliant. His smile has been carved by the sharp tool of menace.

    A single response crystallizes: get out of the house. He lets her, for this is just the first stage of torment.

    Olivia and Sean are waiting outside. They’re happy to see her, as if they hadn’t seen her in a long time. She puts them in the car, straps them into their seats and sets out to take them to their grandparents’ house, where she hopes they’ll be safe.

    But the house isn’t where it should be. No one lives there anymore. In fact, there’s nowhere else to go. She doesn’t know where her own home is. All the roads to the place she calls home are covered with sand from every last castle she built on with a plastic pail and shovel on the shores of her memory.

    Sean and Olivia are happy children. They don’t understand what’s going on. They’ve been playing in the backseat, and she’s grateful that they’re too concerned with their game to pay any attention to their driver’s panic.

    The only place to go is back to Davy’s house. She knows it’s too much to hope for that he won’t be there. She’d rather face him, truthfully, if only to get it over with.

    Davy’s home, and his wife—Rose, of course—is there, too. Rose is welcoming, as always, and the house feels divided on the inside, for there are two competing currents involved in a calculated exchange of energy within. Sean and Olivia are happy to see their parents, and they shuffle off to bed at their mother’s request.

    Rose senses that he is nearby, and she wants him out. She and Rose trade a silent agreement to do what is necessary to get him out, but he’s too quick for that. He knows that his ruse of wearing a Robert-suit doesn’t work, and so he decides that frightening the children is the next step. He wakes them, and when they are all assembled in the kitchen, he finds the largest, sharpest knife in the kitchen and cuts into his own neck with it.

    The children are crying. Davy and Rose shield them, but there’s not much they can do. He’s got all of them held in the kitchen, threatening all of them with violence and pain and torture, while the blood forms a discreet, consistent trail from the wound in his neck all the way down his front and his arms. He’s bleeding too much, and as far as she’s concerned, it’s obvious that he’s not Robert.

    She knows it’s a gamble to escape and call for help, but it’s the only thing plan she can muster. While he’s occupied with Davy, she makes a run for it, bursting through the front door, into the night, down the street and over a neighbor’s wall. She huddles behind it, out of breath, and calls the police.

    She hears the sirens. She crouches behind the wall, observing from a distance as the cops set up a strategic assault to destroy the very bad man who has taken hostages within a private home, a home that, with such beautiful children as occupants, ought to be so full of love.

    She’s paralyzed for a moment, for it occurs to her that he might not be he after all. He might actually be Robert, and as she hears the shouts and the gunfire from inside the house, she wonders if the declarations that the cops make to stand down are indicative of his or his passing.

    She rushes into the house, where there are alternating smells of smoke and blood. They make to attempt to restrain her. It’s Robert, and not he. The questions of culpability drip down the walls to mingle with the blood spatter, and they alter the gravity of the room and pull her to her knees.

    She feels a scream well up from somewhere deep within her. All of her bones have been crushed up, and their shards are released, tearing into her throat, as the scream escapes in a primal howl she never knew she was capable of producing. This is what she’s always feared: the sound of grief. She’s a crumpled mess on the kitchen floor, choking on the loss and puking up all the useless, best intentions she had of ever knowing her brother again.

    The smells temper: either she’s gotten used to the smell of death, or the air is clearing. She can’t decide which. She stands to leave and make a decision about the air by going outside. She glances at her reflection in the mirror in the foyer, and there’s a glimmer of something awful sitting in the chair. It’s he, and she wonders if she’ll ever be rid of him.

    ♥

error: Content is protected !!