What I've Learned So Far

More fiction that fits in a single tweet.

In the elm outside his window, a mockingbird cycled through a dozen bird calls without ever using its own. He could identify.

~ ~ ~

Of course he was a gentleman about it. He was always a gentleman about things. Which was itself part of their problem.

~ ~ ~

That woman, in those jeans, made him think of the first time his high school girlfriend played “Happiness Is a Warm Gun” for him.

~ ~ ~

What kind of barrier was 6,000 miles and an ocean when faced with the combined power of Twitter and true love?

~ ~ ~

Resisting plastic surgery, she bore a dowager’s regal face. But years of tennis & sunscreen had given her the legs of a teenager.

~ ~ ~

Calls went unanswered, e-mails unread. He sat through meetings without ever looking up. He could only think of what he had lost.

~ ~ ~

“Oops.” *

~ ~ ~

When he listened to that song, he thought of the wrong woman.

~ ~ ~

She called him “sweet.” He liked that, but wished she’d believe he had a salty side.

~ ~ ~

His confidence was like the wax in Icarus’ wings. Her incandescent good looks were like the sunshine.

~

* My daughter wrote that one.

~

Previously:

• Tiny Stories, part 6.

Image by JD Hancock.

“Write when the book sucks and it isn’t going anywhere.
Just keep writing. It doesn’t suck.
Your conscious is having a panic attack
because it doesn’t believe your subconscious knows what it’s doing.”
—Cory Doctorow

~

Related: Raison d’etre.

Photo by Amy Palko.

This week I marked another anniversary of my birth (as I discussed in this post), and now I have 12 months to get whatever done that I’m going to get done before I turn 40.

That has a way of focusing the mind, you know? It’s led me to a few thoughts:

• While I really enjoy the short fiction I’ve been writing every day on this blog, it’s not the best use of my fiction-writing time and energy to keep it up. I’m sure there will be more work in this vein to come, especially since my friend Amy Palko, whom I’ve taken as my photographic muse, has so many good Creative Commons-licensed photos to use as inspiration. So instead I’ll be focusing my efforts on finishing some longer short fiction — proper short fiction, with plots and everything — that I can publish for broader recognition and actual money. (Crazy!)
• Last week I posted a picture of a box of notes and draftwork that I’ve had sitting around for ages. I’ve taken time since then to go through that box, clear out some of the cruft in it, and pull out some of the good material that’s ready to be used. No need to organize the whole thing exhaustively, which is the kind of time-wasting chore that I tend to do when I don’t really want to write, but want to feel like I’m doing something writer-ish. Life is to short for writerish nonsense when you’re intent on actually writing.
• I want to be careful about sharing my writing goals here, not because you don’t deserve to know them, but because I have a bad habit of talking away the energy around my goals. So, here’s this: I have goals around submitting fiction and essays for publication. I’m writing them down. I will let you know when they start to bear fruit.

That’s what I’ve got for now. Thanks for your kind attention.

Photo by GollyGforce.

Reflecting on what he had lost, he mused that he had spent his life writing between the lines — and worrying about the neatness of his handwriting. It was literally true, but the analogy also worked in many figurative ways.

No wonder she had found him too demanding. He found himself too demanding, too. But he had had many years to build up the calluses against it. She was not thus enured.

And now she was gone.

He wondered whether he would find another woman as good, but who would write between the lines with him. O was he condemned to live alone?

Because he did not think that he could violate the lines.

Photo by Amy Palko.

This was his Hundred-Acre Wood. When he was a boy growing up in a city, he didn’t understand the magic of Christopher Robin’s forest retreat. It was just part of a story. Now that he was grown, with a list of responsibilities that started with kids and a business and aged parents and went from there, he not only understood that magic — he needed it.

He hit his favorite stretch of the trail and his eyes lit up, something like they used to when he first met his ex-wife, long before reality set in. They used to go for long walks or sit and read the paper, even when they had pressing business. These days, the trail was pressing business: it was booked in his Outlook calendar, four days a week, from now until the end of time. (The other day he took his senior staff out to lunch.)

His morning had been full of meetings with people who worked for him. His afternoon would be full of one big meeting with people to whom he owed lots of money. His head had been full of ideas and plans when he got out of the car, and it would be again by the time he got back to the office.

But just now his mind went blank as he kicked into stride.

Photo by Amy Palko.

It sat on the same shelf where it always had — a cut-glass picture frame with a portrait photograph inside.

On the day it had been put on that shelf, the sun shone watery but too bright in the winter sky. That was the striking memory, a tiny item from a red-letter day that was supposed to be special for a happy reason, but became memorable for a sad one.

How many people — friends, neighbors, kin — had wondered what might have been done, that day or in the days leading up to it, to stem the tide of a family history?

Seventeen years later, the other shoe had finally dropped.

But the photograph remained.

Photo by Amy Palko.

When everything went to Hell, people started finding out fascinating things — among them, that the mythic creatures from the late-night movie screens in their childhood minds were no myths.

Vampires existed, zombies, werebeasts, ghouls . . . but they were much worse than you thought, because they came straight up out of Hell itself. Their minds had festered for centuries, creating new ways to exercise their revenge on the upright, the unblemished, and all of those free from torments.

The other ones, those that had been on Earth all along, paled by comparison. They were quite real, the werewolves of Transylvania and the night terrors of the Adirondacks. But those monsters were to the beasts of Hell as a tomcat was to a tiger.

Sheila was finding that out anew with each passing minute. She had been running so long through the woods, and her body was so poisoned with adrenaline and fear, that she no longer remembered when it had begun. As dusk fell, the creatures behind her seemed to be always closing the distance on her, sometimes even coming into view for brief moments, yet never quite overtaking her. This was part of their game of cat and mouse.

Her lungs and legs cried out for rest, but she would not stop. She was not tempted to think that it would be better to give up and let the beasts overtake her. What came next would not be better. She had seen it.

She crashed through a gap in the trees and saw a Gothic church, surrounded by the same wood she was in, but on the other side of a creek that formed almost a ravine. Plunging down the hill, she wondered if she could out-climb the creatures following her — and wondered even more if the rumors she had heard about old churches were true.

At one point, having forded the creek and climbed halfway up the other side, a wolfish, scaly thing the color of burgundy closed within twenty feet of her. Even an office-dweller with soft hands like her, who had never been in a fight in her life, saw how to use her elevated position to advantage: rocks thrown in the creature’s face and a standing dead tree levered down the hill onto its head bought her the time to reach the door to the north transept of the church.

She slammed the door behind her, surveyed the rubble inside the place, and started dragging a toppled pew over to the door to block it. Before she had dragged it five feet, she heard panting outside, from at least two creatures. Yet they did not even scratch at the door.

The rumor was that churches — old ones, imbued with centuries of faith by devoted believers — were havens against the invaders. She hoped it was not another urban legend, like the tale of the great black swordsman who had liberated Madrid (or had it been Barcelona?) from the forces of Hell. The fact that the beasts would not even touch the building gave her hope.

She walked to the center of the church and sagged onto a pew. The river of adrenaline that had coursed through her had left her feeling nauseated and weak. Her legs shook even though she sat still. She worked to calm her breathing as she looked overhead to the stained-glass windows. Only the highest of them still caught any daylight; they cast a faint orange glow, like a distant campfire. It was silent outside except for the rooting and snorting of the beasts. She could hear one scrabbling through the bushes on the south side of the church.

And then they began to howl — first one, then two, then all of them. She was surrounded.

Electricity had been out in this part of the country for weeks. When she first started running, she carried a battery-powered lamp with her. But it had long ago given out. At one gathering of survivors, a kindly man too injured to carry on had given her a hand-cranked lamp that did not need batteries, but she had lost it during her flight through the woods. Soon the church would be sunk into total darkness.

Sheila forced herself to stand up and take an inventory. In the waning daylight she had seen that much of the church furniture was intact. Looters had quickly lost interest even in unguarded valuables when they figured out how dire their own situation was. She patted her pockets: whistle, folding knife, compass, nail clippers, and — ridiculously, she thought — a travel-size packet of tissues. Come to think of it, the compass was ridiculous, too, unless it stopped pointing north and started pointed toward safety.

She felt her way along the aisle, tripping on a microphone stand that seemed out of place among the original Gothic appointments of the church. At the altar, she put her hand on the cold silver of the candlestick that had gleamed in the dying embers of the day. She hung her head, leaned on the altar with both hands, and wondered if it was true that silver repelled the undead.

Her hand came to rest on something on the altar, a tiny box . . . a box of matches. Shaking, she opened it halfway and felt inside to count them. Three. Her hand sought out the candlestick and snaked up it to find a candle only partially burned.

Taking deep breaths to steady herself, she lit a match and lit the candle on the first try. One candlepower was enough to show her that the sanctuary had many more candles after this one.

She walked around the sanctuary, picking up hymnbooks, the microphone stand, and other debris to clear the aisles. She had not been in a church since she was a little girl.

As she passed near the north transept where she had entered the church, she heard something: a low whimper. She heard it again. Then she heard a faint but unmistakable scratching on the wood of the door.

She went back to the front of the church and sat in the pew nearest the altar. She looked up at the candle burning steadily on the silver candlestick. Wax slid silently down its side, almost in reflection of the tears that slid down her face.

She wondered if it was too late to start praying.

Photo by Amy Palko.

Her arms were strewn with tattoos.

He thought she was the sexiest thing he’d ever seen.

Somehow, even in his boring khakis from work, he talked to her for twenty minutes.

That jawline killed him. The cheekbones. Her skinny, muscular frame.

He’d always said “You talk to a girl as if you want to hear what she has to say, she’ll at least be nice to you.”

There was no “as if” with this one. And this was better than nice. It made him think he had a chance.

She laughed when he made a joke. She leaned up and talked in his ear when the music got loud.

To emphasize a point, she put her hand on his arm. His heart thumped.

But she would not tell him her name. She made him guess.

He started far afield: “Melodia? . . . Agnes? . . . Ethel?”

She laughed at that, and he died a little inside to see her soft lips spread wide over dazzling teeth.

She was all the wrong things for him: too young, too pretty, too wild . . . all the things he wanted.

What could she see in him?

Even as he enjoyed it, he dreaded the moment’s demise.

She excused herself to the ladies’ room, and he knew that was it.

He looked around the club, but couldn’t find his friends.

Outside he was neutral and sober. Inside he shrugged, or tried to.

“What does a girl who looks ready for roller derby want with a stiff like me?”

He felt a hand on his arm and jumped. He looked at her smile again, and his heart thumped again.

He noticed a tiny star tattooed on the back of the hand that rested on his sleeve.

“I have to go,” she said. “But it was really nice talking to you.”

She presented a tiny piece of paper, inscribed with purple ink.

On the paper, her name and . . . a little star.

“Violet,” he said.

She smiled — “Bye” — and then lost herself in the crowd.

He looked at the paper with a trace of a smile, but then he frowned. What now?

He turned the paper over.

On the back, her number.

Photo by Amy Palko.

“I always think you start at the stupid end of the book,
and if you’re lucky you finish at the smart end.
When you start out, you feel inadequate to the task.
You don’t even understand the task.”

–Salman Rushdie, The Art of Fiction No. 186, The Paris Review

More stories that fit in a single tweet.

She had the debilitating habit of never — never — saying her real opinions out loud. Her mother had taught her that.

~ ~ ~

He wished for fame, money, & a playboy’s lifestyle. But he had all the wrong short-term appetites for achieving them.

~ ~ ~

Abe was tempted to see himself as a magnet for problems. For starters, his mother had named him “Abraham.”

~ ~ ~

He had been a drinker, he had tried psychoanalysis. Now he found his therapy under a barbell.

~ ~ ~

Sure, he would have taken more — as much as she wanted to give him. But in that moment, all he wanted was to dance with her.

~ ~ ~

Her upbringing tried hard to teach her never to expect anything — but it was a lesson she desperately wanted to avoid learning.

~ ~ ~

They worked in the same building, but wouldn’t have met without the fire drill.
“Where are all the good men?”
“On another floor.”

~ ~ ~

He couldn’t make sense of it — hadn’t she loved him? — even through a sleepless week. He gave up & put The Black Keys on repeat.

~ ~ ~

He thought she wasn’t his type, until he found out she loved Tar Heel basketball. That was the beginning.

~ ~ ~

He had always taken it seriously, being a dad. But some things were more serious than others. E.g, explaining The Ramones.

~

Previously:

• Tiny Stories, part 5.

Image by JD Hancock.