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A short story in the spirit of Halloween...

“Everything about him was dark and smokey, like one of those bars you’d find on a side road, where they play the blues the way they used to, slow and so full of sorrow it sounds like crying.”  Field of Bones 

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Something a little different than what I usually shoot.  I think it might be blue Star Wars juice. I'm pretty sure they have wine glasses in Star Wars, right?

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Postcards Found in a Shoebox (a series) I was in a part of the city I didn’t know, in a diner that was open at 3 am and had a Pepsi sign in the window. I was on my third coffee when a rich and rowdy group of thick-gutted men came in, stumbling and talking like their volume dial got stuck on loud. The place was near empty, but they had to sit in the booth next to me. I thought of you then. How you’d smile at me in that knowing way because this kind of thing happened to people like us. They ordered chips, fried chicken, and coffee. I overheard a man say, “Next time I’ll just find myself a woman I don’t like and buy her a house.” The group roared as he took off a thin wedding band and dropped it in his water. It splashed and sunk to the bottom. On my way out, after the men had left and the jitters from my fifth refill ramped up, I spooned out the gold ring from the glass. I warmed it between my fingers as I walked the empty street. I tried it on. It was a perfect fit, just like you had been. Two blocks down I found a man nodding off in the doorway of an empty storefront. He asked for a few coins. I gave him the ring. It wasn’t until I woke up near noon that I kicked myself––for taking the ring, for giving it away like it meant nothing. Because it did mean something, just like you. Just like you. 

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Postcards Found in a Shoebox (a series)

You dragged me around the corner and pointed––that’s it, that’s where I saw Twilight Zone, that creature crouching at the edge of the airplane wing just staring. You know the episode. It was real. It was there, looking at me through the glass. Babe, I say, the tv isn’t even plugged in. You sure you didn’t dream it? You set the camping chair up in the road close to the curb. Set it up like you were watching a movie and waiting for me to bring the popcorn. Our reflections looked back at us sorry souls talking about the unbelievable. The sun was going down, and you had that bulldog with a bone look on your face. I knew you wouldn’t let it go. I set up my chair, sat beside you. At some point we held hands. And when the sun ducked below the houses and trees––right when it went dark, static shot across the tv screen, flickering and frantic until two eyes, boiling red, stared at us from inside the glass. A single talon tap tapped as if knocking to come in––into our world. The damnedest thing––all I could think of was buttered popcorn, even as its clawed fingers reached through the screen.

For more posts like this one visit carmenkern.com.

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Postcards Found in a Shoebox (a series)

We hadn’t talked for days. I don’t remember why; why you threw down the book you were reading, why I walked out. But the flowers I bought at Mr. Higgins corner store, I still see them plain as smog over the city. Daisies. White ones. The black center dark as midnight. I stood outside our door, nervous as I was for our first date. I knocked even though I had a key. You were wearing the clogs you always wore. The clip-clop getting closer as my hands sweated. I looked straight at the peephole, tried not to blink. For a second, I didn’t think you’d open the door. Didn’t think that both of us liking punk rock and watching the original Star Trek meant we could make a go of it. But you did. You opened it right up, gesturing me in with a little nod of your head. It’s about time––you said it as if you’d been waiting for me for a lifetime. The daisies lasted two weeks––we lasted a hell of a lot longer.  

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Postcards Found in a Shoebox (a visual story series) You did everything in squares. Four was your magic number, the one that calmed you, the one you divided everything by. It took your mother and I a few years to figure this out, how you slept better in the refrigerator box you made into a fort, and how fifty-six cheerios in your bowl went down without a tantrum. We weren’t as smart as you, not by a long shot, but you helped us along. You made us better. And when we took that last trip together before you went to college, you mapped out the whole trip––a right turn only trip, until sixteen days later, we pulled into our driveway again. You said it was better than backpacking Europe with your friends. Years later, you brought me here. After graduating from architecture school and working in a design studio. We sat in front of the building you’d designed, on the perfectly placed benches, me on the yellow one, you on the green. I felt it like I never had before, the rightness, the peace. My boy, after all these years it seems I’m still learning from you. 

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What you selling? Asked the young man, or maybe he was old, who could tell under the sweat baked dirt. Every morning for three weeks he asked the same thing when I opened up the lifeguard tower. He slept under my feet, in the shade. Nobody cared but the cops. They made him move every once in a while. They’d nudge him out of the shadows, his bags hanging from a long pole he balanced across his shoulders––two of them dangling from either end. He’d shuffle in the sand, making tracks like a sea turtle until the cops moved on, bored of watching him. The last time I saw him on the beach, he was propped up against the wood bracing, drinking a Red Bull. I threw down my pack and stood beside him. We watched the moon fade. The tide curling in and out. We watched skaters and joggers and selfie-takers as the smog burned off. “What you selling?” he asked. This time I answered, “Immortality,” I said. “You don’t look like that’s in your wheelhouse. You the Devil?” he asked squinting in my direction. “Tell me, Chester, what does the devil look like?” His laugh was worn out sandpaper. Then he said, “I don’t rightly know.” I showed him I could smile. “How much is Immortality going for these days?” he asked. “Whatever you can afford Chester, whatever you can afford.” carmenkern.com

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Postcards Found in a Shoebox (a series) Saturday the 44th This is where we said we’d meet, by the Ferris wheel in my dreams, like it was a real place and not on the edge of all the worlds. You were anyone, faceless and holding white flowers in one hand and pink cotton candy in the other. They’re for you, you said without any lips. I laughed at the craziness of it. I looked up at the yellow and red cars on the wheel, circling the planet that was us and wondered if gravity would really hold us down if we didn’t want it to. And like in most dreams, suddenly we were somewhere else, in the red car at the top and leaning over the railing. We were little kids now, kicking our feet out back and forth until the car was rocking. I threw out a torn piece of cotton candy and watched it float up and up, the pink even pinker against the sky. I want to remember this, I say, clasping your fingers in mine. You won’t, you whispered it like a secret. You never do. The words felt true. Can we meet at the roller coaster next time? I ask. You squeeze my hand and say, it’s your dream baby, we can meet wherever you want. carmenkern.com

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I’ll take door number one...

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Postcards Found in a Shoebox -- a series

Friday the 43rd

We argued that day, looking for the safe house. There’s no one to ask for directions, I said. It’s not a guy thing. You clicked your teeth, the way I hate, the way you do when you want to piss me off. But the pencil-drawn map said 434 Amity Rd. I held it in front of your face, made you look until you believed me.  We didn’t dare circle the block again. Not with the Seekers out there looking for anyone still human. You took your foot off the clutch, let the car die out right there in front of the red door. It sputtered three times--funny how that’s the thing I remember most of that day You grabbed my hand, squeezed it once without looking at me. This is it, you said. I wasn't sure if you were saying of asking. It didn’t matter. The number was all we had, that, and each other. Bags in hand, we crossed the street. I let you do the knocking and stepped to the side, just in case. Truth is; I was scared. Truth is; you were always the strong one. carmenkern.com

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Who you gonna call? Sorry, had to say it...

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Postcards Found in a Shoebox--a series

Tuesday the 26th

I think I came here once before. There was two or maybe five of us following lipstick clues written on recipe cards. I’d found one duck taped to the bottom of the bench, the lipstick smeared and ripped off along with the tape.

We laughed, tossed it to the wind and went for shots of bourbon. Then again, I could have been alone. This time, there are no clues. Just me, driving north.

Looking for something I can’t remember.

photo and words by CARMEN KERN carmenkern.com

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Good morning Phoenix!

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Goodnight Phoenix... 

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They left it there. As if it hadn’t held all they owned––the scrounged up, the stolen and the bartered. There was a time when it was full, heaped with what they thought of as survival gear. The first day out, on the road outside the city, they knew only two things would keep them alive, water and weapons. Water they had. A whole case of it hidden on the bottom of the cart. Weapons were another beast all together. They’d never believed in carrying. Never felt the need. Until now. It wasn’t until they’d pushed the cart over seventy miles of potholed asphalt that they abandoned it. They had their weapons now. Along with blood stained clothes they never got clean. They left the cart in the back of a looted Walmart. Seemed fitting, they said, then walked away with their shotguns and pistols held at the ready. They never looked back.

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The closer you think you are, the more it disappears... decent-xposure.com

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They lined up, seeing who was the tallest. But it was the short ones I wanted. They were the anchors in this top heavy world.

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