January 26, 2009
· Filed under Fiction
The molten wax was thick and moved sluggishly.
Everything moves slowly in this heat, thought Duarte. He was nauseous from the close, overwhelming heat in his workshop. Only 8am and it was already 34 C. Never in his lifetime could Duarte remember suffering through such a brutal Fall season. All Duarte wanted was to return home and sleep through the heat of the day. Let them come at night, he thought, I can be cheerful and serve them even better at night.
For all of his wishing, Duarte was resigned to sweating in his shop all day. Not only would the shrine stay open all day, access to the holy site had lately been kept open for two extra hours every night to help accommodate the increase in pilgrims. Today was October twelfth, which meant that Fátima would be completely filled with pilgrims by late afternoon. People from around the world had been filling Fátima for days, awaiting tomorrow’s special tours commemorating Our Lady’s final visit to the pastorinhos. Although Fátima was always filled with hundreds of thousands of people visiting the shrine, this year had absolutely seen the most travelers to their small city.
Tens of millions of families had lost children to the pandemic, Read the rest of this entry »
January 26, 2009
· Filed under Stage Scenes
Ron: The two children who brought the family the worst sorrow were Marie and Henry.
Susan: The only child who is still a devout Catholic is Sandy. You know, the retarded one.
Grandpa: Most people can be nice. Just don’t expect too much from them.
Ron: I was looking at the family photo album. Every picture of me as a child, I was thinking: oh yeah, I felt like crying in all of those but I couldn’t because it was Time To Be Happy. Or, oh yeah, she was screaming at me like a crazy woman for about fifteen minutes and then suddenly it was: ‘Smile! It’s picture time!’.
Susan: All I ever do is work, work, work! All you ever do is play, play, play. Why don’t you tell me who is more important here?
Grandpa: The world used to be run by women, you know. Men were nothing. They were drones: the women only used them for sex. But that was a long time ago. Read the rest of this entry »
January 25, 2009
· Filed under Not-Quite-Nonfiction
“Hey! Those two are getting away!” I looked over; Jim was waving frantically to my left. I quickly moved my section of plywood around and closed off the opening the two lemmings had been racing toward. Embarrassed, I glanced over at Will. He shrugged.
“Ready…” the lead wrangler called, “…and: go!“ Immediately, Will and I raced forward with our plywood panels held in front of us. We tightened the wedge that our panels had created around the lemmings and herded them toward the cliff’s edge. Read the rest of this entry »
January 23, 2009
· Filed under Genre Fiction
Agustín stopped – this was a surprise, a wonder. The owl statue was slowly walking out of Beatriz’ office. Novato’s terracotta body creaked alarmingly with every laborious step. The small statue paused when Agustín stepped in front of him and he turned his head up to meet the man’s eye. Novato’s feathers puffed out with a stretched-clay groan and he squinted one eye contemptuously at Agustín. Hunching his wings like an old man, the statue took one step and glared at Agustín again.
“Ai, lo siento,” Agustín cried out, “I didn’t know you had to go through this every night.” He picked Novato up carefully, ignoring the half-hearted spiteful peck he received in return. Agustín muttered indistinct apologies to Novato as he carried him back through the darkened offices. There was a lightness to Agustín’s step and a warmth to his tone that had not been there before.
“I am so sorry, my friend, that I did not realize how you felt,” Agustín said. “Of course you shall stay with me. You will be my inspiration, my alebrije.”
January 22, 2009
· Filed under Fiction
Normally in September the quarry was full of water, and ferns and poison ivy grew in a thick green curtain from the water line to the top of the cliff. This year, it hadn’t rained more than two inches since early Spring. The water line in the quarry had dropped nearly fifteen feet, and the only water remaining was in the deepest pools. Read the rest of this entry »
January 22, 2009
· Filed under Nonfiction
“Excuse me.”
“…”
“Um, waitress? Excuse me.”
“…”
“Um? Eh – excuse me, um, miss?”
“…”
“…oh, come on…Excuse me!”
“Okay, yeah.”
“Can I please get a steak knife for this?”
“Uh. But that’s pork.” Read the rest of this entry »
January 22, 2009
· Filed under Fiction
Rita sneezed the entire time. My friend Tia remembers the bone chart and the little silver instruments we used to pick out the tiny pieces of mouse skeleton; she recalls clearly that she got to wear purple plastic gloves, because she loved purple that year. Tia tells me that there was white butcher paper on the table and that Mrs. Mahoney made us each sweep up our own sections.
I remember Rita sneezing from the dust in the owl pellets. Each time she sneezed, tiny gray filaments Read the rest of this entry »
January 22, 2009
· Filed under Fiction
What remained:
-one stainless steel stapler with a sliver of your fingernail caught under the catch release
-two pillowcases that still smelled like you for almost six months
-a weathered tomcat who clearly resented me
-the grandchildren of the wasps that you never quite managed to eradicate
-a crumpled post-it: pls – skim!! milk, trash bgs, pb
-that uneven patch where they didn’t sand deeply enough over the repair
-small pieces of safety glass sprinkled along the driveway and on the lawn
-a tiny knot just below the ear
January 22, 2009
· Filed under Genre Fiction
Elisha looked closely at the items in the sample case and tried to ignore the unsettling presence of the salesman seated across from her. Head-on, he was clean-cut, clean-shaven and blandly pleasant as any other salesman. Seen out of the corner of her eye, his smiling mouth seemed to gape in toothless hunger and his eyes became tarry smears unevenly spread across a cracked-porcelain face. Read the rest of this entry »
January 22, 2009
· Filed under Fiction
The gas station had been abandoned shortly before my twin sister died and remained empty. I always associated its gradual decay with her loss. Over the months and years following her accident, I became obsessed with finding new evidence of its eventual total dissolution: spray paint and broken windows; the slowly-spreading dusk of mold across the drywall; the collapse of the signs outside and, eventually, the roof. Bicycling and, later, driving past the station on my way to school or work, I was pleased to know that one day the damn thing would just crumble away into nothing. Perhaps my grief would dissolve along with the building.
