It's All Write

I wrote you something

[alittlebitofiction]

Anatole the Russian

“Welcome home little sister.”

These were the words spoken to Jane Kites by the ghost of Anatole, the Russian, when he appeared before her at approximately 9:15pm on Thanksgiving eve.

 Jane was drunk, and furthermore, she was doped-up and tricked-out on Percocet.

 The ghost of Anatole, the Russian, was felt and heard, if not clearly seen by Jane. She was sitting on the roof of her parents’ house, having crawled out from her bedroom window, smoking a badly hand-rolled cigarette and crying. She had left the state of conscious thought some time ago, most likely around 8, and was now in a strange and inky black place. This was a bad state to be in if you wanted to avoid doing terrible things like ruining Thanksgiving – which she had. It was, however, an excellent state for being visited by ghosts. The ghost of Anatole, the Russian, had some things to say to Jane and other business pressing upon his ghostly mind and overall the timing was perfect: Jane needed a miracle and Anatole, the Russian, needed a body partially exited by its soul. 

Jane would probably have rolled off the roof and fallen to her death and or significant bodily harm at approximately 9:12, had Anatole not come on to the scene. As it was, at approximately 9:11, Jane was nodding a bit and crying sideways and largely gone from her the world. That had been the point of taking all those Percocets and drinking all that wine. Jane tickled the drunk dragon’s tail. She tap danced up, tippity tap tap, to the line between “I don’t give a shit bliss” and “dead-eye, blackout annihilated.”

Anatole, from across the great divide which separates the living from the dead, reached out a hand and touched Jane’s clammy brow. She sniffled. She was beyond the point of perceiving external stimuli. For example, when her mother had tilted Jane’s face up and yelled “Go to bed!” Jane had blinked, muttered something incoherent, and shuffled off into the kitchen where she tried to roll a cigarette and serve herself some leftover green bean casserole. Failing on both accounts before forgetting about the endeavor entirely, Jane left the kitchen, leaving a half-rolled cigarette mashed into cold, congealing casserole.

 Out on the roof she smoked as best she could, drawing deep breaths on her badly rolled smoke, and crying because she was sad and on a primal level, was frightened of herself and what was happening with her life.

 Anatole, on the other hand, was sanguine in a way that only the dead can be. The worst is over and the whole of existence may finally be viewed for what it is: absolute random, luckless rubbish. 

[alittlebitofiction]

Ray Gun Man (Part 1)

Ray Gun Man

Outside in the dark, something stirred. Mitchel Krogan peered closer and frowned at his own reflection staring back at him in the glass. Through the kitchen window all was silent and nothing was there. Nothing is out there, he mused to himself. Still, there was something. Something both there and not there. How could a man know this? He wondered, and passed a hand over his two-day beard, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. Pausing to look at the window once more, he filled his water glass and drank it down. God I would kill for a smoke, he thought.

     It was the beginning of fall and the leaves were deep in the Krogan’s backyard. In the day they looked like piles of little banana peels. Mitchel’s wife called them peely piles. “Mitch,” she’d say, “Go pick up the peely piles, put em’ in the composter.” Neither one of them knew what kind of tree it was that dropped these leaves in their backyard. When they’d moved in years and years ago they’d rejoiced at the opportunity to have a proper back yard for a garden. In the banana peel tree’s shade they’d planted vegetables and flowers. Somewhere out in the dark, Mitchel knew, there were probably a few stalwart stalks of kale, squash, and maybe even one last pumpkin. The season was drawing to an end and when Gracie returned from her trip she’d have Mitchel spread hay over everything for the winter.

     Placing his empty glass down on the counter Mitchel considered checking the fridge to see if there were any beers left. Even with the cold – and their house was drafty, the floors like blocks of ice under his feet – a tall cold beer sounded good. Something to bolster the spirit and fortify the nerves. Gracie wouldn’t be back until tomorrow. The house felt empty without her. Mitchel’s wife of 5 years, Gracie was a devout attendant of the home fires – she cleaned and she cooked. She played music depending on her mood and the task at hand. Snappy jazz for dusting, baroque classical for preparing stews, and old blues and soul for reading. Mitchel missed his wife that night. If she were here the fridge would have a fresh 6 pack of good beer, and the heat would be turned on. And Mitchel would have someone to ask “did you hear that? Something? Maybe some animal, something, mincing its way through the peely piles? No? Good. Me neither.”

     Bed was out of the question. It was only 9:00pm. There was really only one logical choice: Mitchel headed for the workshop. A half-finished basement down a short flight of stairs, the workshop beckoned most nights. Once an electrician by trade, he had made his living replacing wiring and outfitting things with switches and new plugs.  He had electrocuted himself more times than he could count and sometimes Mitchel thought he could hear a slight buzzing in his ear, like a tiny yellowjacket hovering in his ear canal. It was an unpleasant sensation and he did his best to ignore it when it happened. The workshop was full, and busy with scrap items and tools, but all was generally arranged to a purpose. In the North corner was Mitchel’s brass pile. In the West, frosted domes from old ceiling and table lamps were lined according to size on a three-tiered shelf. Built-in shelves running the length of the room’s far wall held odds and ends – coils, gears, cones, vacuum tubes, and various copper and brass bits and pieces. In the center of it all was a well-used oak workbench and standing atop the bench was the Saturean. Standing 3 and a half feet tall, the Saturean was a metal man made from lamp posts, an old exhaust tank, two brass lampshades soldered together into a perfect golden orb, and arms of bronze-plated tubing complete with two clamp hands.

     Smiling, Mitchel approached the Saturean, already he was feeling better. He was among friends here. The Saturean’s comrades lined the wall opposite the tool shelves. They ranged in size from a foot to one standing a full 5 feet. Mitchel made a decent enough living selling lamps made to look like flying saucers, ray guns, and the odd custom lighting piece. He would never part with his spacemen, though.

     “I can’t decide,” he said aloud, pawing through a wooden box of parts. “You need a free hand to take your samples, I know that. But I think you should have a saw for your left. It just feels right.”

The Saturean did not respond. It’s gleaming face - two specially crafted glass button eyes, a vacuum filter nose, and tea strainer mouth held an impassive but generally friendly look.

     “Well at least you have your gun at the ready,” Mitchel inspected the robot’s side arm, grafted directly into his right hand.

     Mitchel was aware that he was talking to himself. He wasn’t crazy. He was just a little bit of a starchild. Just like the astronaut had said. The astronaut! Mitchel paused, a saw bit in his hand, and he fell into memory.

     He’d met the astronaut while working as a jewelry courier in San Francisco. By day he zipped around town delivering boxes of diamonds and necklaces strung with pearls the size of grapes. He lived in a apartment in a fat, short brick building with flowerboxes in the windows and a view of the water. A quiet man, he didn’t make many friends. The astronaut next door was the exception.  Mitchel called him Rocketman, after the Elton John song of the same name, and the two enjoyed dinners and late night cigarettes and the occasional early morning walk and coffee.

     The astronaut was every bit the part of a celestial journeyman, a starshined hero, a man who had broken free and explored the outer limits of man’s own knowable world. He was handsome in a way that was distinguished but his age was impossible to pinpoint. He had white hair and dazzling green eyes.

     It was on a cool summer morning, as Mitchel and the astronaut watched fog roll in from the bay and creep its ghostly creep across land that the astronaut changed Mitchel’s life. “I had a dream the other night.” The astronaut began, and shivered into his coffee cup, causing it to slosh a little on to the fire escape where they had perched. “I never told you anything about the end of my time with NASA. He continued. “But it was not the most graceful parting. Those sonsabitches at least held up their part of the bargain though, so I guess that’s something.”

     His eyes closed, Mitchel frowned at this memory. In his mind he saw an old apartment with a kitchenette and lime green linoleum floors. He smelt the sea in the air and recalled the bitter, burned taste of the cheap instant coffee he’d brewed that morning. He missed the astronaut and wondered what had become of him and thought wistfully how much he wished he could talk to him. Mitchel signed and put the saw bit down. Maybe he would go out and get himself a six pack and while he was at it, maybe a pack of smokes. Gracie was on him to quit but he she wasn’t here and he could throw the pack away tomorrow before she got home. He was in the final stages of finalizing his decision when he heard it. Footsteps above his head. Footsteps in his empty house. Mitchel shuddered. 

[alittlebitofiction]

Excerpt from "The Arc (A tale of time and space)"

The pub in which the devil tends bar is not at ground level. To enter it one must descend a set of squat, uneven stairs and step through a stone archway with the words "abandon all hope," carved into it. Located in a dangerous and unfashionable part of town, the bar services a loyal clientele of alcoholics, drug addicts, thugs, and miscreants. It is a place where you could get a tot of hard liquor before noon, meet a lover for a discreet tryst, or search out dangerously rough trade. At night drugs are sold over neat whiskeys served in smudged water glasses and unspeakable things go on in the bathrooms. 

"Ah! What'll it be Love?" This is my greeting upon entering the filth and foul air tonight, much as it has been every morning, afternoon, and night since James decided to hold court here some 20 years ago. 

The Devil speaks in an Irish brogue, goes by the name James, and is addicted to cocaine. He is tall, with a neat, ruddy beard and curly auburn hair he keeps tucked under a derby cap. He dreams of one day undoing all of existence. 

"James-" I get this far before I am interrupted by James holding up his left hand to me in the universal sign of "stop." With a flourish and a wink he pours out two generous droughts of his drink of choice: Wild Turkey, 101 proof. 

We clink, then touch our glasses to the bar, down our drinks, and pause for a moment to savor the sensation that follows a shot of something strong to the head: the body reels and the mind's focus softens. 

James replaces my empty tumbler with a bottle of cold beer. I put away half of it with one long pull. 

"JAMES," I say, a bit too loudly. 

"Yes, Love?" he replies, leaning on one elbow, his face inches from mine. His breath is  malodorous and hot and his eyes smolder in the dim light.

"We have a problem," I begin, but no sooner have I spoken then we are interrupted by the entry of an ugly little man dressed in ostentatiously tacky finery whom I recognize as James' coke dealer, Lethe.

"AH!" James exclaims, slapping his burly palms together and leaving me with a fresh beer for company while he sets about making genial small talk with Lethe.

Swiveling 180 degrees I survey the early evening bar crowd. To my right, seated at the bar, is a hard-living-looking blond woman drinking a glass of room temperature white wine. In front of us, the cramped, dark bar moves and mutters-its population a fraction of the critical max it will reach around the night's dark meridian. 

So far there are some leather dykes-an anti-effete cadre of surly women with snarls for smiles and black laquer on their nails. Their ranks include a dental hygienist (by day), a tattoo and piercing artist, and a fussy, plump brunette the others refer to as "Jiggles," much to her jiggly chagrin. The dykes are regulars here and they dislike me. There has been animosity ever since a friendly game of pool got out of hand and I came at them brandishing my pool cue like a spear. "Don't mess with me, dipshits, or I'll run you through and make bitch skewers out of ya!" I believe is what I said. 

Turning back around I stare glumly down at the bar, which is a decoupage affair of old-timey newspaper clippings arranged under a yellowing shellack. At a cursory glance the clippings are just a jumble of headlines but in fact, they chronicle soe of the greatest and most wrenching of mankind's tragedies. 

Under the headline Spanish Flu Pandemic Claims 30 Million! there is a grainy shot of grim doctors and nurses standing amid beds full of bodies in a makeshift ward at the Bronx Zoo, Front and center, grinning directly into the camera is James. 

Calamity without equal, Miles Long Conflagration Claims San Francisco "We Shall Rise Again!" Vows Mayor. In the picture for this a group of men haul away debris and bodies on stretchers. Amidst the fuzzy frowning faces one man is visibly grinning, his mane of curly hair peeking out from underneath a derby cap.

"Dammit all to hell." I mutter. I am unhappy that things seem to have come derailed. The Thief has gotten the drop on us, and just when we were so close. Or maybe we weren't close at all. It's been eons, a millennia of efforts, big advances and then decades of waiting. A poet I like used to ponder "what does it mean to say 'forever?'" tonight the phrase sends an uncomfortable shudder through me. 

The blonde senses my mood and, turning at my muttering, gives me a glance that says "I too find life to be terribly unfair and would sure love to commiserate with someone who understands." The look could also just be a harbinger of her asking if I have any smokes to bum or drugs. I have no intention of letting her engage me in friendly banter. 

I grunt at James, who is now preparing to leave his station at the bar and accompany Lethe to the back room of the bar. Rolling my eyes I wave my empty beet bottle.

"You think I'd forgotten about you, Love?" He asks with mock surprise. Sashaying over he places two fresh bottles in front of me and with a dismissive wave of his hand announces "I am now going to go be indisposed." 

"Watch the bar Love, and don't fret about this latest development. Everything is under control."

So that was that then. Our train had derailed, the track was now on fire, and the conductor was about the go for a little tour of the clouds for anywhere between an hour and a week. But not to fret, everything was under control. 

I say this last part out loud, so all the blonde hears is "under control."

Sensing that I am primed for some heart to heart, she turns to me with an ingratiating smile and says, "Something got your underbits in a bind, girl?"

I turn and fix her with an incredulous stare.

"Talk to me again and I'll have James turn you into a giant herpes sore." 

"What are you going to get from the store?" She responds, cupping her ear and leaning dangerously close to the tipping point off her stool. 

I shake my head and return to staring at the bar.

"HEY," she waves her hand at me. She won't be denied her barroom banter. She smells lonely, her energy hops around like a fish out of water. She is barely alive and the most alive parts of her are her fears and desperation. 

"Look, I feel ya honey, I've had one of those days myself."

"What, was your next customer yelling at you to hurry up from the end of the bed?"

Now it's the blonde's turn t ostare at me incredulously. 

Sighing, I pick up my beer and head over to a table in the back of the bar. 

I drop into my chair a little heavily. After I finish these two beers I will be properly buzzed. I ponder the night's events and the greater scheme of things into which they fall. I try to comfort myself with rational platitudes. There was an incalculable calculus to existence: when dealing with imperfection (life) perfect calculation was impossible. Things go wrong. Nothing is ever easy. 

For a moment the bar went silent. Like, really silent. Like I had gone deaf for a moment. I blinked and looked around. The sound returning, after the soundlessness was a shock. The round thuds of glasses being placed on tables, the threads of voices, my heart beating in my chest. The jukebox started up - nobody was anywhere close to it. Things were getting pretty godammn curious. I look around and feel both sobered up and completely drunk at the same time. Something was about to happen. 

[alittlebitofiction]

Deprivation Experiments: Sleep (Excerpt)

The red Honda Civic lurches to the left and fishtails a little as it swoops up and around the silver Stingray. The Honda’s driver—a sweaty, pallid, sleepy-eyed maniac—grips the shaking wheel and stomps the gas. The engine revs desperately and the Corvette falls behind them. At the speed they’re going, which can’t be less than 90mph, the shallow dips and twists in the road make the girl’s stomach feel like it’s come loose from its moorings and is floating free in her abdomen. It lifts in the direction of her throat as they drop down a slight hill and then crashes into her ribcage when they take a turn at speed. “I should say something,” she thinks to herself.

The rest of the car’s passengers: a boy seated next to the girl named Brad, and a boy in the passenger seat named Sean, seem completely okay with what is going on. They laugh and drink their beers. They egg the maniac driver on. She purses her lips and tries to settle into herself. She lets her mind wander.

How long can a person go without sleep? The girl wonders this as she presses a can to her lips and drains the flat, warm dregs of her Miller High Life 

This was where five days of heavy drinking had brought her. She tried to count in her head the hours of sleep she had gotten since her parents left town Monday night. She had gotten about 3 hours that night, then none the next, then a cat nap Thursday netted her another hour and a half, and then last night she had no idea when her blackout started (approximately around 9pm) and her actual loss of consciousness occurred (most likely sometime around 2am).

“Hey,” she turns to the smart but reckless boy sitting next to her: Brad, her friend and presumptive ally. “Brad, I think we need to tone this shit down.”

They were close friends with an unconsummated mutual lust. Brad had driven the 6 hours south both because it seemed like as good a thing as any do, and because she had asked him to. They shared the girl’s parents’ California King bed but nothing happened between them. On the one night that they went to bed together and were conscious enough to have any idea of what they were doing (opposed to the other nights, when they stumbled in sideways, cross-eyed drunk and passed out cold) they drew together and she tucked herself into the natural hollow of his body, and he in turn wrapped himself around her curled form. Years later she would regret not turning around in that moment and putting her lips on his. 

“Aw come on, don’t be such a chick.” Brad slurs his words a little; he is quite drunk but not so drunk that he doesn’t see the logic of the girl’s request. Open containers, underage drinking, a clearly intoxicated driver: reckless driving was a bad idea. Still, he didn’t really care. He toed the line up to the edge of the gorge all the time without falling in. Sometimes you got arrested. Sometimes you crashed a car. Sometimes you passed out and woke up having shit your pants with your memory full of holes and your brain melted to a hot thudding ball of terrible wonderment. No big deal. Life was a bitch anyway, he was just doing what came naturally to him. And now, as a visitor in the girl’s town, on the girl’s adventure, in the girl’s charge, he was just having what would really be kind of a normal Saturday, or Monday, or Thursday afternoon.

“Seriously, you’re being such a GIRL,” he sneers. The world “girl” is an insult and the girl looks down at her lap, her feelings hurt. Brad was often unkind to her. He sort of loved her but also hated her. She could be so smart and at times, pure loveliness, but she also tended to get offended easily, and complain, and expect too much of him. Also, there was something he really resented about his love for her. It pierced his heart like a fish hook and held him tight, dangling in a terrible, painful agony. “Fucking women,” he thought, and fished a fresh beer out from the cooler at his feet. 

[alittlebitofiction]

from the stacks (Summer 1998)

At night the moon is silvery bright and full and it is unfathomable to her that he is out there. Broken bones and open handed gestures--just as she had now performed: the saving of a life, swimming in the dark, the smell of freshly oozed pine sap. These things conjure the past. Some gray nebulous forrest of memories. A place she had once been.  Now her body is just a litany of complaints. As she contemplates herself: dry husk and bone, cornsilk fine hair, head nearly full to brimming with ghosts and lessons. She puts forth her mantra: medicine balls and band aids. She feels her bones, they whisper to her at night, "fold and bend," they say. "Give in. Give in."