Category: My stories

Spider

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I’m watching a spider climb up the side of this fence.
This is fascinating.
It extends each leg, one by one, and pulls itself along.
It’s graceful, smooth – like walking your fingers up the board.
But with a spider. More legs.
For five minutes, I watch it, but it feels like an eternity. Like watching the sand run out of a gigantic hourglass kind of eternity.
When the spider reaches the top of the board, it slips around the edge and stands in the sun.
A bird swoops down and eats it.
For a moment, I stand there, just staring.

Cursed Town

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They say Westchester’s a cursed town. I wouldn’t know.
I was sent here to computerize the county’s record-keeping. Getting all those stacks of marriages, births, and deaths from the old ledgers to my laptop for processing down in Albany.
Three days in, The Town Hall burnt to the ground.
Here’s the weird part… everyone ever born in Westchester vanished like smoke. As if they’d never existed.
And everyone who ever died and got buried here, well, they weren’t dead anymore.
Not a problem for those not born. But the rest, well…
Damn Zombies make you wish you’d never been born.

Keep a little bit of fog

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Jackie keeps a little bit of fog in a jar on her kitchen shelf, and she watches it swirl around from time to time.
How she captured it in there, I don’t know, but I’m sure it wants out from the way it lashes against the glass.
“Don’t let it go,” she says. “It brings me good luck in here.”
She’s never burned anything in the oven, nor has any of her pots ever boiled over.
Without even trying, her pasta is perfect.
Still, I watch the fog, and wonder if it is suffering.
Oh well. It’s time for dinner.

Closing Windows

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Y’all may have been wondering why there wasn’t a story from Elisson this past Weekly challenge.
You know, looking back, the first person I called when Edloe died was Steve.
I wanted to let him know that the cat he’d gone on pilgrimage for to visit was…
It was amusing to watch Edloe’s reaction to a reverent stranger.
Food helped.
Never did get a chance to get to Atlanta to visit Matata.
Time’s about windows. They only look wide open for what feels like forever.
When they close, it”s too damn fast. That slamming shut jars me to the soul.

Best Ideas

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I get my very best ideas in the bathroom.
You too?
Yeah.
So, I like to keep a notepad in there.
But today, I totally forgot a pen.
No, I wasn’t going to write anything using something… gross. Ewwwwww.
I tried to repeat my great idea over and over so I wouldn’t forget.
But Nardo came into the room, meowing for attention, so I pet him.
By the time I was done in there, I had forgotten my idea.
So, I put a box of pens in a drawer in the bathroom, took 5 Ex-Lax, hoping for inspiration to return.

Band In A Box

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Somebody showed me “Band In A Box.” Just set up a looping track, set the key and the beat, and you’re ready to play or sing along.
It really works.
Until this morning, that is. I pushed the button and nothing happened.
My virtual bassist caught a nasty virus from a digital stripper, then he wrecked his car in a racing game.
No backups, either. The funeral’s tomorrow.
The guitarist looked up Yoko Ono on Wikipedia, fell in love with her, uploaded himself to India, and vanished.
The drummer became a Pastafarian – Flying Spaghetti Monsters.
So, anyone for Guitar Hero?

Put Em On The Glass

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Arnold requested that they put his name on the door to his office, but the office manager kept declining it.
So, he’d write his name in dry-erase marker on the glass door.
The janitor would come by after hours and wipe the glass clean.
This went on for years. Other employees got their names on their doors, but even when Arnold got promoted up the ranks, he never did.
Finally, Arnold outranked the office manager and demanded to know why his requests were declined.
“What the hell do you expect with a last name like Shitfucker?” said the office manager.

Dictator

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The townspeople got word that the country’s dictator, after many years of ruling with an iron fist, had died overnight.
There were celebrations, cries of freedom, and they threw together an effigy of Old General Montcastle for burning.
Then, they looked around and realized things really hadn”t been all that bad with Montcastle running things.
They put the effigy in the town square and started to pile up flowers at its feet, turning it into a memorial of sorts.
Montcastle’s son got word of the memorial and said “Collect the flowers, but we’re still burning the place to the ground.”

For The Birds

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Ever sit down in a restaurant, and you hear people babbling in another language, and you just know it’s about you?
I’m that way with birds. I think among the chirps and tweets and caws and trills, they’re talking about me.
I grabbed a bird off of a clothesline and demanded to know what it was saying about me.
It kept cawing and scratching madly, so I asked it slower and louder.
That always works with people, right?
But no matter how hard you try, it doesn’t work with birds.
So, I threw it against a wall and walked home.

The Best Tea

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Back in WW1, as our boys fought the Kaiser, we made sure they were provided with the best.
The best guns. The best uniforms. The best food. And, most of all, the best tea.
Now, conditions weren’t always the best, and it’s hard to transport millions of teacups through enemy lines. And no civilized man drinks tea from a tin cup.
So, the boys would put tea leaves on their tongues and we’d pour in the boiling water.
They made a contest of it, who could hold their tea the longest before swallowing.
Sugar? Lemon?
Pathetic Nancy boys, those were!