Category: writing

I wrote this today as part of my commitment to the Clarion West Write-a-thon. A dedication means that person sponsored it by donating to CW, and then provided me a writing prompt that sparked the piece. If you would like something written especially for you, please consider sponsoring me.

Here’s all the work of the 41 days. You’ll also find these pieces cross-posted at Sterling Editing as incentive for writers to practice their editing and story-building skills.

Enjoy.

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Bubble and Sass

For Nicola, who wanted another story of Bubble. I love you.

Bubble the Box-Master was relieved when all but one of the Usurper’s boxes were quelled and their flattened carcasses carried away. One box was no trouble, but so many at once, all needing reconnoiter, domination of contents, and then regular re-intimidation… it was frankly exhausting, and took time from his responsibilities in the neighborhood. Pirate was becoming restive without proper supervision, and there was a tribe of rats in an oak tree on the next block whose spines needed snapping.

At least the Usurper was finding his proper role in the order of things. He had learned to recognize rudimentary commands — out, in, food, lap — and was proving unexpectedly good at helping Staff understand the autonomy a busy cat required.

“Oh, let him out, Susan, he’s got things to do.”

“What if he runs away again?”

“He didn’t run away. He came to find me and bring me back to you.”

“Danny, you don’t know anything about cats. They don’t fetch,” Staff said. “But I love that you’re such a romantic.”

#

Bubble made his rounds and found a message from Scooter: Oak tree. New development.

Scooter was waiting under a bush. Bubble settled beside him. Rat trouble?

Scooter twitched his tail in a laugh. Trouble for rats.

A soldier rat lay dead under the tree. A second made its way cautiously along a branch overhead. Step, step, pause. Step, step, pause, a black-eyed terrified look at the crushed warrior below. Step, step–

Whooosh. Death dropped from a crook in the tree, landed with four-footed surety, seized the rat in sharp teeth and broke its neck with casual elegance, then slung the body sideways and sent it spinning to land splayed near its fallen comrade.

The tabby cat on the branch stared at Bubble and Scooter with green-eyed battle joy. She gave them a hiss of triumph, then turned and leaped, twisted beautifully, landed lightly on her feet, grabbed one of the dead rats in her jaws, and disappeared into the bushes.

Bubble blinked in approval.

Toldja, Scooter said.

They rose and stretched, and investigated the remaining rat. A beautiful kill; and the intoxicating scent of the killer. I like her, Scooter said. Bubble turned a cold stare on him and bristled slightly. But not really my type, nope, not all all, good luck with that, Boss, Scooter said, and hunched a moment before he took himself off in the other direction.

Who was she, this mysterious malefactor of rats? Bubble the Besotted followed her trail into the brush.

#

And around. And around. And again around the neighborhood in a loop. She was everywhere but wherever he was. Bubble the Backtracker approved of her more and more. He like a challenge.

He found her, at last, in his own back yard. She sprawled in the grass, licking her leg unconcernedly. The second rat body lay a foot away.

Bubble assumed the crouch of non-hostility for a minute, and then proceed to give himself a thorough bath as well. Eventually, she rose and yawned and stretched, and came to touch noses with him.

Sassafras, she said. I brought lunch.

Bubble’s heart swelled. A huntress. It was so romantic.

They ate the rat except for the liver, which Bubble encouraged Sass to leave as a gift for Staff and the Usurper. Sure enough, a few minutes later, the Usurper came out barefoot, stepped on the liver, yelled, “Yooock!” and dropped the box on the patio while he hobbled back inside calling for Staff to bring him a paper towel.

He didn’t eat it, Sass said.

They never do, Bubble said. But they seem to appreciate it anyway. Come on and help me with this box.

By the time the Usurper returned with the packet of Friskies treats, Bubble and Sassafras were curled up together in the box. Sass was asleep: beside her, Bubble the Boyfriend raised a baleful eye.

“Awesome,” said the Usurper. “You go, dude.” He shook some liver-flavored nuggets from the packet and put them within reach. Enough for two.

Very good. Very good indeed. A reward was in order. Bubble butted the Usurper’s hand and rechristened him Majordomo. Tomorrow he would make sure to mark all Majordomo’s possessions properly, and then turn his attention to the delicate matter of introducing Sassafras and Staff. Always so much work to do. It was frankly exhausting, being head of a family.

He blinked, settled himself more comfortably against Sassafras, and went to sleep; and dreamed of rat corpses piled ten deep, of drowsy tumbles in the afternoon, of black and tabby kittens in the sun.

I wrote this today as part of my commitment to the Clarion West Write-a-thon. A dedication means that person sponsored it by donating to CW, and then provided me a writing prompt that sparked the piece. If you would like something written especially for you, please consider sponsoring me.

Here’s all the work of the 41 days. You’ll also find these pieces cross-posted at Sterling Editing as incentive for writers to practice their editing and story-building skills.

Enjoy.

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Allie Allie In Free

For Jeanne Magill. Thank you for your support of me and Clarion West.

Alice Watts found the house on Larch Road when she was ten; already old enough to imagine herself in someone else’s life, already old enough to yearn; already sure she would never be more than she already was, the silent, watchful child of people that other people called trash. So much already in her life.

And so the industrial road that separated her Walton Springs neighborhood from Larch Road might as well have been a mountain that she could never climb: no native guide, and too many ways to slip and fall. People from the Springs never crossed Walton Road. But on this summer afternoon, Allie was on her bike on the Springs side of the road, pedalling furiously away away away, her face stained with tears, her mouth and chin smeared with blood where Teddy had slapped her aside when she’d tried to put herself between him and her momma. “Leave her, she’s just a child,” Momma said, and pulled Allie up and whispered, “Go on now, and don’t come back for a while.” And then Teddy grabbed Momma and she said Teddy, don’t make my little girl see this, and Teddy shoved Alice out the door, slam, Allie on the outside —

Then the noises began, and she grabbed her bike and did a running start out onto her street, and all she could do was ride away, away, until she found herself on Walton Road with its deadly blind curves and its dangerous traffic of semitrailers loaded with enormous steel pipes or doomed cows bound for slaughter, pickups with biting dogs in the back beds, souped-up beaters that looked like nothing but had it where it counted, like the hard-eyed boys who drove them. There were no sidewalks, just the huge parking lots of the warehouses and the big-box stores, the junkyard and the auto repair shop. Everything on the Road moved fast, and a small girl riding too close to the edge could get knocked down in the windslap of their passing.

She should have turned into the factory outlet mall and made her way back to town. But she was full of something horrible and huge, some feeling like teeth eating her from the inside, and all she could think was away, away, go go go! So she worked up as much speed as she could, and then she pointed her bike toward the other side of the Road and shut her eyes and went.

Air horns. Air brakes. The stink of diesel and rubber and when she opened her eyes, the looming toothy grin of the chrome grill ready to bite her in half, and the shocked O face of the man behind the windshield as he wrenched the steering wheel into the four-inch swerve that saved her life. The bumper and the great grinding tires squealed past her and her bike thumped over the grass verge and down toward the railroad tracks below. She flew up from her seat and for a moment she thought she would go right over the handlebars; then she came back down hard and her left pedal smacked her in the calf, and her feet found their purchase and she rode bump bump down the hill and across the tracks, thud racketaracketa THUD and it slowed the bike enough that she could put her foot down and scoot to a stop and finally stand, trembling. It all happened so fast that she could still hear the truck driver’s final shout of fucking crazy KIIIIIIIID! fading away.

Her bottom hurt where she’d come down on the hard rubber bicycle seat. Her calf was aching like sweet jesus billy-oh. Her jaw was tender. But the chewed-up feeling was tucked away somewhere inside her, like a balloon in a closet: it would pop out as soon as she opened that door, but right now… right now, where was she?

About a hundred feet away was a bright yellow barricade with a sign: Larch Road. No Trespassing. On the other side of it, a road began, winding away underneath tall trees whose branches interlaced to form a thing-opy, a canopy of leaves through which the sun sparkled and danced.

She pushed her bike across the weedy dirt and around the barricade. She knew what trespass meant. It meant her and her momma and the guy in the truck and the boys in the old cars. It meant what Teddy was doing right now. And Allie thought away, away, and set her bike upon the road, and went.

I wrote this today as part of my commitment to the Clarion West Write-a-thon. A dedication means that person sponsored it by donating to CW, and then provided me a writing prompt that sparked the piece. If you would like something written especially for you, please consider sponsoring me.

Here’s all the work of the 41 days. You’ll also find these pieces cross-posted at Sterling Editing as incentive for writers to practice their editing and story-building skills.

Enjoy.

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Perfect

For Jill Seidenstein. Thank you for your support of me and Clarion West.

Jack got to the restaurant a half hour early to make sure everything was ready. The champage chilling. A duck breast reserved for Holly because it was her favorite. And the small box safely handed to the matire d’ for the dessert presentation. That was the part Jack found hard: giving the ring to a stranger.

“Take good care of it,” he said. “I want tonight to be perfect.”

“Of course, Mr. DuBois. Of course.” The man smiled. “I know what it’s like.”

“How long have you been married?” Jack said.

The maitre d’ laughed. No, he snickered. “Oh, not for a while now.”

Jack managed a smile, but he was imagining Bam! Pow! right in the kisser. It was like a doctor making jokes about cutting off the wrong leg while you were on the gurney counting backward by sevens. And now his hand was trembling a bit. Did he really want to punch the guy?

The maitre d’ was looking at Jack’s hand too. “I think I’m a little nervous,” Jack said. He looked at his watch. The fussing over preparations had taken forty-five seconds. Only twenty-nine more minutes until Holly arrived. He blinked. Maybe she could come early.

The phone rang. Holly. Kismet. God, he loved that woman and her perfect timing. He answered and said, “Honey, want to start early? I can move up the reservation.”

“Jack, um…” Uh oh. That was not stress he heard in her voice, it was not. “My meeting’s running long. Goddamn Rick Marcuso is insisting that we talk about delivery schedules seventeen months out, can you believe this asshole?”

It was stress. Now Jack wanted to punch Rick Marcuso too. He could feel his face becoming tight. The maitre d’ stepped back with his hands raised a bit, I’ll just give you a moment.

“I’m not sure how long I’ll be,” Holly said. “Could we just stay in and have pizza?”

“No!” Jack said. “Um… no, honey, just… just take as long as you need. I’ll get our table and wait for you.”

The maitre d’ had seemingly become fascinated with the molecular structure of the wood grain of his podium.

“Jack, really–”

“Holly, I’ll wait. Take your time. Love you.”

“Fine,” she said. “Whatever. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

He ended the call and tried to hand the phone to the maitre d’. “That’s yours,” the man said.

“Oh. Right,” Jack said. “I think I’m a little nervous. Oh. I think I already said that.”

The maitre d’ said, “Perhaps you’d like to wait in the bar?”

#

Forty-nine minutes and three martinis later, the maitre d’ led Holly into the bar. She was still in her work clothes, swinging her briefcase and wearing the adrenalized mad-dog grin of a woman who has just stomped her enemies into the corporate mud. She was practically vibrating. He stood to embrace her.

“God, I need a drink,” she said.

Jack said, “How about champagne?”

She smiled. “Perfect!” Behind her, the maitre d’ smiled and gave Jack an approving nod. Everything’s back on track.

The champagne was chilling at the table. Holly beamed at Jack as the maitre d’ popped and poured and left them with a discreet smile.

Jack opened his mouth to say To us or I love you, but Holly clinked her glass with great gusto against his and said, “Jack, you must be psychic,” and drank a big gulp of champagne. “Psychic. Because not only did I crush Marcuso in the meeting, I got co-ownership of the project and I’m in charge of the goddamned delivery schedule now. So here’s to Rick Marcuso for shooting himself in the foot.” She raised her glass again. “Fuck him.”

She drank another hefty gulp and said, “Honey, are you okay?”

“Sure,” Jack said.

“You need food. We should have stayed in, we’d be eating by now.” And before Jack could respond, she had touched the arm of a passing water server and said, “Excuse me, can we please get some service?”

“Um, sure,” the server said, and gave Jack a look that blended sympathy and Uh oh, not going so great, huh?

Perfect.

Jack watched the water server confer with the maitre d’, and the maitre d’ said something, or did he snicker? Jack wanted to punch him again. Instead he smiled at Holly as she gave him her blow-by-blow with Marcuso over the last of the champagne, and the appetizer, and half of the penne pesto she ordered instead of the duck because she was too wound up for anything fancy. He would be happy if he never heard the name Marcuso again. Jesus, was he really going to propose to a woman who called guys by their last name like they were all in the locker room? Was he really? Yes. Yes! He was. Oh god, the dinner plates were being cleared away and the waiter was saying, “And now for dessert–”

“Oh, let’s just get the check,” Holly said. “It was a great dinner, but I’m pretty beat.”

“No!” Jack said. Holly blinked. The waiter smiled desperately and looked back and forth between them. “I mean… ” Jack said, “Um, I’d really like some dessert, Hol.”

“Fine,” Holly said. “Whatever. Get what you want, I’ll be right back.” She sighed, stood, slung her purse over her shoulder and trudged toward the bathroom.

“Well–” the waiter said delicately.

“Just bring me the fucking shortcake,” said Jack.

Holly was in the bathroom for seven thousand hours. What did women do in there? It was too hot in the room. He could feel the sweat under his arms. The whipped cream was melting. It was perilously close to dripping all over the diamond discreetly tucked under one of the strawberries beside the shortcake. This was a terrible idea. It was the across-the-universe opposite of perfect.

Holly sat down opposite him. “Okay,” she said, “Eat your dessert, Mr. Sweet Tooth, and let’s get out of here.”

Was he really going to propose to this woman who all of a sudden had no sense of timing whatsoever? Was he really going to hand this diamond — that he’d agonized over on four separate visits to the jeweler, until he’d been sure it was perfect — to a stranger? But then she smiled and shook her head and said, “Sorry. Take your time. I love you.” And he loved her too and his brain was melting along with the whipped cream and all he could think to do was say, “Here, have a bite.” And push the plate across the table. Well, really, he kind of punched the plate, and it slid and caught on the tablecloth and shot the shortcake right into Holly’s chest.

She shrieked and came to her feet, flapping at her chest with her napkin, shoving shortcake and berries and whipped cream onto the carpet, and “No!” Jack said, and scrambled out of the chair onto his knees and began pawing through ruins of the cake as Holly said, Jack, what are you doing? Jack, stop it! Stop it! and everyone was staring and at the side of the room the maitre d’ put his hands over his face and Jack finally found the ring inside a dollop of whipped cream, and held it up and shouted, “Holly, would you shut the fuck up, I’m trying to ask you to fucking marry me!”

The room was absolutely silent.

“I love you. Please marry me,” Jack said. He could see from the corner of his eye the maitre d’ and the waiter holding each other’s hands in a death grip.

“Oh my god,” Holly said.

The room held its breath. The world hung suspended. Jack’s heart stopped beating. The whipped cream slid off the ring onto his finger, because his hand was shaking.

Holly’s eyes filled with tears, and she smiled a perfect smile.

I wrote this today as part of my commitment to the Clarion West Write-a-thon. A dedication means that person sponsored it by donating to CW, and then provided me a writing prompt that sparked the piece. If you would like something written especially for you, please consider sponsoring me.

Here’s all the work of the 41 days. You’ll also find these pieces cross-posted at Sterling Editing as incentive for writers to practice their editing and story-building skills.

Enjoy.

---

Heart of a Dragon

For Michael Eisenstein. Thank you for your friendship and support.

I was nearly out of the barracks when I heard my name, and turned as the boy stumbled to a halt before me. He was pale and panting; our training gear is deliberately heavy and hard to run in. He overbalanced, and for a moment I was sure he’d tumble into a heap of wood and metal and untoughened youth. I didn’t comment, and I didn’t offer help, and I would have kicked him in the face if he’d gone down. They need to learn. Better a broken nose from me than the sword edge of an enemy, or the teeth of a dragon.

He saved us both some unpleasantness by righting himself and gasping, “Captain Sora, the king sends for you in the audience hall.”

That’s never good. “Is Lieutenant Rane still on the training grounds?”

He nodded. His jaw had the set look of a man trying not to throw up on his superior’s feet.

“Thank you,” I said. “It’s Jery, yes?”

“Yes, Captain. Thank you, Captain.” He looked at me the way many of them do, as if the world turns on the wave of my hand. They are in what someday they’ll remember as the simpler times, when life is reduced to what you can or cannot make your body do, and it’s clear where the kicks are coming from.

“Return to training,” I said, and stepped past him to begin a fast walk to the barracks and the inner keep beyond. Behind me, I heard him take two weary steps. I looked back and said, “Run, soldier. And I’d best find you there before me heaving your guts up, or I’ll know you didn’t commit.”

His face grew paler still. “Yes, Captain,” he managed, and began to make his body do more than it could.

#

I stopped on the grounds long enough to rinse the dust from my face and hands, and confer with Rane. In a corner, Jery was leaving his morning porridge in a pile of straw.

“I see you’re breaking the spirit of the young again,” Rane said.

“The job of the old,” I said. He smiled with his eyes. We are Sora and Rane, and we are so far beyond lovers or friends that most can’t understand what we are. But we are it.

“So,” he said,” the king.”

“I don’t know.” The king is not always predictable. He gets notions, and sometimes they’re unpleasant. We like to be prepared. But one can’t always be ready for these things. Sometimes the only thing that saves a person’s life is being able to run your guts out.

“I’ll go see what he wants,” I said. On my way past, I clapped Jery’s shoulder. “Good,” I said, and he looked up with a stained mouth and eyes like a kicked dog. “Do that every day for a month and no one will ever outrun you in armor.”

He looked confused. The young assume that we never run, which is all very well if the goal is to die young and be sung about by bleaty bards in alehouses. Me, I’d rather have the ale.

“Not an order. Just a suggestion,” I said. The boy was willing; time to find out what kind of brain drove the body. I looked once more at Rane. We nodded in a way that could do for Back in a minute or Goodbye, and I went on.

#

The king was leaning back in the great wooden chair he used as a throne, booted ankles crossed, arms folded on his chest, eyes fixed on the doorway. He was lean and graceful and gone gray long ago. I had not yet parsed whether it was age itself, or bitterness about it, that drove William these days. But I was glad not to be young in his service.

He wasn’t alone. Many of his inner circle were already present, the ministers and advisors. And, surprisingly, his daughter at the back of the room, staring out a window.

I bowed. “Your Majesty. Lady Catrin.” A general nod to the rest.

“Captain Sora,” the king said, without moving. He had a useful gift for stillness that I’ve tried to learn over the years. I practiced it now, and waited in silence while everyone except the girl tried their best to look as though they weren’t actually there. There was so much not being said in that room that I could hear clearly the world outside the window: the thunk of wooden swords on the training grounds, the noise of tradesmen and market customers, horses and pigs, faraway laughter. Then the girl prince turned, and I saw that she was angry and not hiding it well; it made her look younger than seventeen, and put me even more on alert.

She said, “Father–” and he straightened and turned his head like a hawk, and raised a hand to stop her speaking. He was quick enough, but anyone with an eye could see that once he had been very fast indeed, so much that he would perhaps now feel slow by comparison.

He returned his attention to me, and settled back into his chair.

“Captain Sora,” the king said again. “My advisors tell me that I have become old.” He steepled his hands; behind them, his eyes glittered at me like an old canny bird’s.

I said, “We’re all older than we were, sire. Including your advisors.”

He smiled. “My advisors worry that age weakens a ruler.”

In that case, I was surprised his advisors still had their heads. It certainly explained the tension in the room.

“Your Majesty is not weak,” I said, and it was true. One day old age or old enemies would kill him, but he would never be weak.

“Hmm,” he said. “Still, it appears new strength is needed on the throne.”

I carefully did not look at Lady Catrin as I said, “We find our strength in our children, sire.”

He waved a dismissive hand back toward the window. He didn’t even look at her. He simply said, “I have no sons.”

It appeared that stillness was a family trait: his daughter might have been made of stone. I said, “Do you not think to find strength in women? You have women in your council. You have women in your guard.”

“Yes, Jane, I do,” he said with some asperity. “You may be surprised to hear that I’ve observed my Captain of the Guard is a woman. You are strong. You fight….” And then he did surprise me, by saying, “You fight with the most beautiful, precise brutality I’ve ever seen, and I respect it. But fighting is not ruling, and my daughters do not even fight.”

Something cracked behind the girl’s stony eyes. Some glittered there, very like her father.

The king said, “And so I must find a different source of strength.”

Gods, he means to marry her off and put some docile dickless boy on the throne, I thought, and rule from behind. Here comes a war.

He smiled, and surprised me once again. “Captain Sora,” he said, “you will please ride out immediately and find me the heart of a dragon.”

I wrote this today as part of my commitment to the Clarion West Write-a-thon. A dedication means that person sponsored it by donating to CW, and then provided me a writing prompt that sparked the piece. If you would like something written especially for you, please consider sponsoring me.

Here’s all the work of the 41 days. You’ll also find these pieces cross-posted at Sterling Editing as incentive for writers to practice their editing and story-building skills.

Enjoy.

---

Go Do

For Karina Meléndez. TQM.

On the first day of every summer, my little sister Bibiana put on warpaint and feather bracelets, and went to the hilltop behind our house with whatever she could find as a drum. Bang bang bang bang. Bibi dancing on the rise, pounding an empty suitcase, making a joyful noise with a stewpot and a spoon. Summer has begun! When our parents started locking up the bang-ables in anticipation, Bibi used her hands and her voice; her small body was all the instruments of celebration. Summer has begun!

Alicia, come with me, she said, every time. Come with me! But I was too embarrassed. Instead, I watched from our window as she marched toward daybreak in her pajamas and Fozzy Bear slippers, and threw myself back into bed when I heard my father come out of sleep with his standard solstice greeting: ¡Caray, ésa niña loca! Then he woke everyone up yelling at Bibi, grumbled at my mother for her part in the genetics of it, and ended by making us all pancakes for breakfast. Every year. And under her solemn child-in-disgrace warpaint face, Bibi would give me a wink. Summer has begun.

I asked her about it once it was clear she would go on doing it forever, in spite of my parents’ earnest family discussions every spring as the end of the school year approached. “How can you?” I said. “They get so mad.”

She shrugged. “I just go do it,” she said.

“But you get punished.”

“Alicia, what if the summer is waiting every year for me to shout it in? And one year I don’t do it because I’m worried what Papa will do? Then there’s no summer! Did you ever think about that?”

“That’s crazy,” I said.

#

I did all the normal things. Bibi did all the rest. My last two years of high school were a special hell; Bibi started her freshman year in her woolen hat with the raccoon face and little ears, and all I could do was put my face in my hands when I saw her, and hiss You are embarrassing me! in the cafeteria line. And she answered by chittering at me, and then pulled the wooly freakshow-alert off her head and said, I have to take off my raccoon hat to talk human to you.

“If you are doing that in classes, I will kill you, I swear,” I said. She grinned.

It just went on from there. I got used to adults saying, “Bibiana is very…creative,” and other kids telling me Your sister’s a fucking fruit bat. Now it was me who shrugged. I had problems of my own: making grades good enough for college, finding activities that made me cool to kids now and recruiters later, staying on the right side of the mean girls. I was busy. I had a lot to do. And so I didn’t protect Bibi much from the blank stares and snickers of the world.

#

And now I haven’t seen her for a while, and I wish she were here with her rainbow-striped kneesocks or the gossamer wings she wore strapped to her back for our father’s funeral, ignoring the whispers, placing origami butterflies in his coffin to take with him. I wish she were here with her eyes lighting up, I know! Let’s go do– She sends me email every so often; pictures of places she is, or snapshots of herself with girlfriends or musicians or men with feathers in their hair. Sometimes she is grinning at them; sometimes she is looking right into the camera, right at me, smiling a secret smile. Alicia, come with me!

I hope she still sends them. They discourage computers on the ward; maybe they’re afraid people under Close Observation are just itching to use the internet to figure out ways to kill ourselves or each other with materials on hand, like those science challenges to make a fusion reactor out of whatever is in the refrigerator. They do let us have visitors, but David doesn’t come anymore because the new girlfriend doesn’t like it; and I think my colleagues are embarrassed when a normal person stands up in the middle of a busy day, so much to do, suddenly stands up on top of her desk and yells, “Can I please get some goddamned tech support, I can’t make this fucking thing work!” and then begins to weep. But maybe one of them will be braver. Miracles happen.

Oh my god, miracles happen.

Bibi steps off the elevator, and turns, and grins. She is wearing the raccoon hat, and she pulls me close and chitters.

I say, “Take that off and talk human to me, you loca chick.” And then I hang onto her while she whispers into my ear, Está bien, Alicia, hermana, estoy aqui. And then, with her secret smile, my sister whom I love insanely says, Come with me.

#

So we get me out of there, and I go with her to a park overlooking the water, full of people on their lunch breaks who are not eating messy sandwiches because they’re afraid of spotting their suits.

Bibi solemnly hands me a set of child’s facepaints. “You know it’s February,” I say.

“I don’t think the summer will mind coming early,” she says.

And I won’t mind it either. So we put on our feathers. We clap. We shout at the sky.

I wrote this today as part of my commitment to the Clarion West Write-a-thon. A dedication means that person sponsored it by donating to CW, and then provided me a writing prompt that sparked the piece. If you would like something written especially for you, please consider sponsoring me.

Here’s all the work of the 41 days. You’ll also find these pieces cross-posted at Sterling Editing as incentive for writers to practice their editing and story-building skills.

Enjoy.

---

Everyday Magic

For Jon Anastasio. Thank you for your friendship and support.

Serena loved Open Mike nights: the everyday magic of music on the tiny stage of her sidestreet neighborhood joint, the way people settled in over beer and brats and cheered each other on. Her regulars were folks on their way home from the jay-oh-bee, community college study groups, young marrieds whose date-night budgets didn’t stretch to taxi fares, old-timers whose wives were dead or fled. A lot of them couldn’t sing worth a damn, which they’d all learned the hard way during the six-month stint of Karoake Hell before Serena sold the gear on eBay. But that wasn’t the same as making music together.

And tonight it looked like they might have some new voices. The couple at table five who were on their second round of vodka slammers, both wearing the classic Open Mike look, the mix of I cannot wait to blow you all away and Oh jesus fuck please someone shoot me now. The man in his seventies at the bar who put his name down when he thought no one was watching. And maybe the guy at table two. He wasn’t an easy read: the well-traveled guitar case against the wall didn’t jibe with the fresh careful haircut, or the boxed-in look in his eye. He drank his beer slowly, and by the time he was was near the bottom he still hadn’t put his name on the list. He looked like he was so far down his own rabbit hole that he might not even remember it was Open Mike, in spite of the banners over the stage and the adrenaline in the air.

When it was time, Serena stepped up on stage to applause and a wolf whistle from Bernie Ellison, who was still trying to get lucky one day. “Welcome to Open Mike at Layla’s,” she said. “All performers get a round on the house. One song to a customer. Let’s make some real music tonight!”

First up was Lamont Miller, freshly-showered from his construction job, his guitar like a toy in his big hands, singing another one of his unexpectedly delicate folk songs. This one was about a green river in a canyon, an eagle overhead. Lamont, soaring.

As the applause was dying, Bernie called from the back, “That was real good, Lamont, especially the part about the fish.” The couple at five looked startled, and then peered at Serena as if they expected her to shut Bernie down. She gave them a reassuring smile: it always took new folks a while to figure out that audience was a verb at Layla’s.

“Lamont, come on over and get yourself a beer,” she said. “You did good.”

Billie Mae Turcott stepped up with her ever-more-buzzy electric guitar. Punk wasn’t really Serena’s thing, but Billie was so passionate, and she was getting better at staying on the beat; and with every song, she brought a little more Billie Mae and a little less recycled Siouxsie Sioux. She took a Cosmo from Serena and high-fived her way back to her seat. Serena saw the guy at two frown a little: but she wasn’t that good.

The couple climbed on stage. “We’re real excited to be at Layla’s,” the woman said, as she checked the tuning on her acoustic. They called themselves Spider Bob and TJ, and they fulfilled the terrible promise of their names with squeaky voices and off-key harmonies. But theirs was a love song, and their glow touched everyone in the room. “Y’all just married?” someone called from the back, and Spider Bob blushed desperately and nodded while everybody cheered.

The old man was next. “I’ve heard about this place,” he said in a low and fragile voice: then he sang an aching a capella rendition of “Danny Boy” that had them all in tears, and Serena knew without being told, the way she sometimes did when the music and musician were particularly true to each other, that his wife had died in his arms in Intensive Care two nights before. It was all there in his music. He got a hug from everyone between him and the Jack Daniels that Serena had waiting on the bar.

She felt a touch at her elbow. The guy from table two said, “Can I still sign up?”

“You’re next,” she said, and waved him up to the stage.

As soon as his fingers touched the strings, as soon as he opened his mouth, Serena knew he and music were in one of those passionate long-term relationships, that they rode and rolled each other like a rollercoaster. He played clear and strong and true, and what he played made Serena shake her head as she drew a beer: a heartbroken it’s-all-over song. A breakup song. By the time he finished, Spider Bob and TJ were clutching each other’s hands and sniffling. He let the last chord die. He gave the crowd a thousand-yard stare. He said, “Thank you very much,” held his guitar for a moment, and then leaned over to put it away.

“Don’t you dare,” Serena said. He jerked, and blinked in her direction. “Don’t you dare come to my Open Mike with all that music inside you and then tell it goodbye. Not on our watch. Oh, please,” she added at his look of shock, and jerked her chin at the haircut. “What, you got a real job?”

He nodded slowly.

“Well, boohoo for you, big guy. All these people have real jobs, and they still make real music.”

“I just–”

“You just nothing,” she said. “You promise me right now that you are getting your ass back here next Tuesday to play, and nobody gives a damn about your presentation deadlines. You got that?”

He stared at her. Finally he said, “What is this place?”

“This is Layla’s,” she said. “Open Mike, every Tuesday. Come make music.”

“Shit,” he said. “Okay.” And Serena handed him the beer, and everyone cheered. He nodded, and drank, and she knew he felt it. They all did. A little everyday magic.

I wrote this today as part of my commitment to the Clarion West Write-a-thon. A dedication means that person sponsored it by donating to CW, and then provided me a writing prompt that sparked the piece. If you would like something written especially for you, please consider sponsoring me.

Here’s all the work of the 41 days. You’ll also find these pieces cross-posted at Sterling Editing as incentive for writers to practice their editing and story-building skills.

Enjoy.

---

The Real Deal

For Jean Rukkila. Thank you for your support of me and Clarion West.

I land seven hours late, welcome to the modern fucking world of air travel. I get out into the long-term lot in a cold gray whippy-wind afternoon, welcome to another fucking summer in Seattle. My car battery is dead. Welcome to my kick-the-tire hurt-my-foot scream-like-a-motherfucker life.

I limp my ass and my rollerbag back to the terminal and find a taxi, and once we’re on our way, I check my phone and find the email informing me that while I was on Air Turbulence over the Rockies, the client signed with the Asshole Competitor. No surprise: I blew the most important deal of my life with one stupid remark halfway through the box lunch. I have been stewing in failure all day, with a hefty side of bitter sauce. Stick me with a fork. I’m done.

But apparently I’m not. There are fifty-seven million emails from Thea:

How did the meeting go?
Fwd: LOL Funny!
Fwd: Your Daily Joke!
I hope the meeting went great!
See u at home soon!
Fwd: LOLcat so cute!

If I had known Thea likes stupid internet jokes and bad English translations of foreign signs and fucking LOLcats, maybe we would never have made it past the first date. But like anyone with a bad habit, she kept it under wraps until I was totally crazy about her, until we bonded over the Mariners and Indian food and the Harry Potter films. Then she let the bad jokes creep slowly into our lives, along with her health-food obsession and a fondness for sentimental television commercials.

Today I can’t even pretend to laugh. I have tell her I blew the deal and maybe the promotion and maybe the career, and I just don’t know what to say, I just don’t know, and the taxi takes me through a downtown full of people laughing in happy-hour bars, a couple of guys high-fiving each other outside the bank, and then we turn a corner and leave all that behind.

My phone rings.

As soon as I answer, she says,”Hey, how did it go?” There’s the little growly sound in her voice that means she’s happy, and I can imagine her quirky smile, and I hesitate. Then my phone goes ping! and a text message opens: an inane photo of a cat in a negligee with the caption Welkum Hoem TomKitteh! And apparently I am not done with failing, apparently the whole day has just been the runup to the really special moment when I open my mouth and say, “You know, Thea, LOLcats are so butt-stupid I can’t believe it every time I see one.”

When I walk in the door, there are candles on the table and Frank Sinatra on the iPod, and the smoke of something-gone-wrong in the air, and Thea sitting puffy-faced on the couch staring at the floor. She is wearing sweat pants and her oldest t-shirt, but her hair looks nice and somehow I know that she was in one of her jungle-print nighties when she called.

I stand in the doorway. I have no idea what to say. I’m angry at me and her and the client and the airline and the car battery and how a whole deal can go down in flames in a moment, and I’m afraid to open my mouth because I don’t know what might come out.

She says, without looking at me, “I was making aloo chard, and then I decided to sit down and cry, and it burned.”

And suddenly I know, the clearest I have known anything all day, that this is the most important deal of my life: Thea and her hand-labeled collection of curry spices and her leopard underwear and her ability to laugh at stupid things, and christ knows I sound butt-stupid when I say, “So you charred the chard?”

She looks up. There’s a long moment… and then she shakes her head and I see the small corner of a smile that tells me I haven’t blown it completely yet. I drop my bags and say I’m sorry, I tell her I love her, and I tell her what I did today, and I swear to myself that tomorrow I will find her the perfect LOLcat if it kills me.

I wrote this today as part of my commitment to the Clarion West Write-a-thon. A dedication means that person sponsored it by donating to CW, and then provided me a writing prompt that sparked the piece. If you would like something written especially for you, please consider sponsoring me.

Here’s all the work of the 41 days. You’ll also find these pieces cross-posted at Sterling Editing as incentive for writers to practice their editing and story-building skills.

Enjoy.

---

Burn Bright

For Kate Schubert. Thank you for your friendship and support.

No one understands anything these days. They don’t know why computer systems have begun to fail and their clouds drop data like rain. They don’t know why skyscrapers suddenly shiver on their massive skeletons and occasionally shed pieces of themselves onto the street. They don’t know why millions of bees have massed over Santa Cruz and Wichita and Richmond, their buzzing a giant bullroarer in the hand of heaven. They don’t know why the sun is swelling into ecstatic death five billion years early.

These days the scientists go sleepless and sweat over solutions and try and try and try. The governments go on full alert and send their troops into the streets to curb the panicked riots of the Save us, dammit, that’s why we pay our taxes! crowd, and the hell with posse comitatus. The celebrities and politicians go to underground shelters, looking reluctant and noble for the cameras. They don’t seem to understand that the deep places won’t save them; they will die in darkness as surely as we above will burn bright.

We hear it’s bad in the cities as people bunker up and hoard food, and the stink of uncollected suicides rises in the streets. We hear the sea is full of bodies, and the Grand Canyon… well, never mind. That doesn’t matter now. What’s important is that we do the right thing for our own.

I confer in my office in Town Hall with the city councillors, which is a grand way of saying that the four of us who have been running things for a while have our shoes off, our feet up, and a bottle of wine open so we can argue in comfort about what to do next.

I let everyone else talk first. I am the mayor, and I often get what I want; that makes it more important to know what other folks want too. Even now. Maybe especially now. So I listen while Tyrone makes a case for death being a private event best left to each family; Jess ponders the need for a community ritual; and Stu, whom I’ve always suspected of a fascist streak, opines that the criminal, the sick, the elderly and the reluctant ought to be given a little social assistance with their dying so as not to be the inheritors of the earth in case the sun wanders off to another part of the galaxy to do its burning. Stu is not so smart, but he does like to think things through.

Everyone says their piece. There’s a silence. Outside, the sun is brighter than we’ve ever seen it. Tyrone pours us all more wine.

“What do you think, Bea?” Jess says.

I think that I’m sixty-four and a grandmother and a farmer and I am going to have to kill my animals myself so they don’t suffer; and though they will not understand why they’re dying, they will know that I am doing it. I think that I am in a mighty rage, and it makes me feel alone and small under the weight of the question: how shall we die? I was planning to go home and end as I’ve lived, on my own terms. But now I have listened to what they’ve said, even Stu, and I realize that we may be only a small town, and we may only be small people, but we need each other like we always have. Even now. Maybe especially now.

“I’ll tell you what I think,” I say. “I think we should have a picnic in the park. Everyone comes. Everyone who wants to,” I add for Stu’s benefit. “We have a nice day and a nice evening, and then before dawn we have some Kool Aid or some special wine.”

“What about the ones who won’t?” Stu says, with his chin out.

“This is America,” I say. “Everyone’s got the right to die alone.”

#

After we’ve settled Stu down and are into the details of the plan, I say to Jess, “Will you play us out?”

Her eyes fill with tears. Finally she says, “Yes, I… Yes.”

#

On the last afternoon, we all sit down under trees and tents to fried chicken and steak and pork chops, potato salad, pots of boiled corn, enormous bowls of strawberries, blackberry pies. We have a lot of fun. The grownups tell all the old stories about each other and laugh so hard we snort our wine. The smaller kids splash in the fountains and run shrieking with laughter back to their parents for more sunblock. It’s the teens I feel the worst for: too old to play, too young to laugh with human joy in the face of human death. But we all do our best. And the last dusk falls and our part of the globe turns from the sun and begins its journey back. Somewhere in the world, people are beginning to burn.

About an hour before dawn, the sky is already light enough to see each other clearly. I catch Jess’s eye, and nod, and begin to pass out drinks.

Jess carries her cello to the chair we’ve placed in the clearing. The rest of us sit. Everyone looks at me.

“To us,” I say. “To life.” And we drink.

In the distance, the sun is firing the tops of the trees. Jess pulls her cello closer and begins to play.

I wrote this today as part of my commitment to the Clarion West Write-a-thon. A dedication means that person sponsored it by donating to CW, and then provided me a writing prompt that sparked the piece. If you would like something written especially for you, please consider sponsoring me.

Here’s all the work of the 41 days. You’ll also find these pieces cross-posted at Sterling Editing as incentive for writers to practice their editing and story-building skills.

Enjoy.

---

Because The Night

For Dave Slusher. Thank you for your friendship and support.

“You are ripe for this experience,” Mark says, and looks at me like he is already taking off my clothes. Like he can see me naked. The boys at frat parties always blow this moment; they stare at my boobs, their mouths drop open a little, and I can practically see them riffling through their mental inventory of Playboy centerfolds. And that is why I have never said said yes. But Mark is not a frat boy. He’s a thirty-two-old doctoral student, and he has never stopped looking in my eyes the whole time he has been asking me and waiting for my answer.

“Come on, Cathy” he says. “What are you, afraid of a little moshing? We don’t have to mosh.” We don’t have to slam our bodies together in a pit full of sweaty safety-pinned headbangers. Okay, good. Because I like The Eagles and Fleetwood Mac and Steve Miller, and I think what’s-his-name, Sid Vicious, is skinny and weird. And I don’t know if I want to go to a punk show tonight.

“I don’t really like punk music,” I say.

“You have no idea what you like.” He smiles as if he’s thinking But you will, and he will be the one to make me like it.

And I believe he could. That’s what makes it so scary. So exciting. In five weeks I’ll pack my dorm room and my dad will drive over from the Tri-Cities to bring me home for the summer, to get an office job or run the cash register in the A&P, to hang out with sorority sisters and nice boys my parents know. This man is not nice at all, and he wants to take me to the Paramount and put music in my brain that will get right up inside me so that he can get there too. So I don’t know if I want to go to a punk show tonight.

#

You can say yes or no, Cath, my mom always says. It’s up to you.

#

We stand and wait and drink our beer and we don’t say a word. Mark is beside me and a little behind, one arm draped loosely over my shoulder. It’s crowded and dark where we are, bright and hot on the empty stage, and then people begin whooping and clapping and stamping their feet whup whup whup whup whupwhupwhupAOOOOO as the band comes out.

And the singer is a woman. A pale skinny woman in dark skinny jeans and a British flag t-shirt. I didn’t know there were girl punk singers. I didn’t know a woman could open her mouth and say Well I don’t fuck much with the past but I fuck plenty with the future and then turn her voice into a growl like a hand coming up inside me from my crotch to my stomach to my chest into my brain, that would make me wish I had said yes in my life to whatever could make me sing like that, I didn’t know I didn’t know, but now I do and the knowing makes me dizzy.

At some point I lean back against Mark. He plants himself to take my weight, and his free hand comes up under my shirt, and he says into my ear, “Do you want to go somewhere?”

I can say yes or no.

And so I say, “Fuck no,” and I stay for both sets. And then I let him take me home.