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Short stories: A little suspense STILLNESS AND LIGHT
For September in Seattle, it was an unusually cool afternoon. Things had just wrapped up at the cemetery. My wife, Gwen, hadn’t really wanted a service or burial at all. She’d already walked down the hill to our car. I stayed behind looking at the little mound of earth beneath which our son, Ben, lay. He’d passed away the day after his fifth birthday. A bird called in the tree behind me: a raven, perhaps, or a crow.The next morning, I arose ahead of Gwen, as usual. By the rise and fall of her back, I knew she was awake, too, and like me, had been for some time. I dressed quietly, then went into Ben’s bedroom. I picked up his stuffed elephant from the head of his bed; its right ear was worn bare from where he’d always held it. I replaced it, left the house through the back door, and started along the cracked sidewalk. The rain that had fallen throughout the night had stopped, but the streets were wet, the sidewalk was wet, the grass was wet, the leaves on the trees were wet.I walked
Short stories: A little suspense Flirting with reality
It has been three days since I was taken by the agents of NASCORP. Every Citizen dreads the day they come for the Quarterly Collection. When they arrived at my front door, they came with a team of medics and armed guards. “We’re taking you for processing.” They said. Before I had time to react, they quickly escorted me into an ambulance with flashing red lights.So many seasons passed by without me ever being chosen. So many seasons came and went that I finally began to believe I was immune. But no one is immune. In fact, I was asked for specifically. They were especially interested in me because my blood type was the most conducive for hosting the Parasites–microscopic computer chips they inject into your bloodstream to erase your memory. The Parasites replace all of your thoughts with new ones so NASCORP can work with a clean slate. Most people go mad otherwise.I sit, alone and nervous on the edge of a not-so-comfortable bed.I’ve already tried escaping once, and that didn’t go so
Short stories: A little suspense Mother and child
In the end, I only have what slips through my fingers, the stuff of dreams, fading. My feverish brain drugged up and loopy, held together only by flashbacks, of a pelvis cracking open, all fissures and splits. I couldn’t sleep in case the contractions exploded, even though my child slept beside me. The birth over, my brain determined to stay awake and watch for more danger.No rest, only the bits of panic jumping off the hot skillet of my brain. An exquisite manic madness, agile, deft, quick.I wake and dip, wake and dip surfacing under the moonglow of a large black tv, alien mother of this ward, spewing silent colors that splash and swallow. Gloved mummies come and go, pressing my uterus for leftover blood. I don’t know where they’ve put the placenta, medical waste in a biohazard bag at the bottom of a plastic bin? I didn’t opt for a lotus birth, carrying the placenta around in a bowl, still attached to the baby, salting it for freshness. I wasn’t among those in my yoga class that vi
Short stories: A little suspense RESIDUUM
For three nights now I have heard the gnawing at my front door. Each time, I choose to ignore this and fall back asleep. If a mouse or squirrel is seeking access, let it try. Come morning, when I open the door to inspect the wood, nothing is there. No scratches, no gnawing. When it happens a fourth night, at two a.m., I grab my 34” maple Rawlings and crack open the door. Nothing again. But as I turn back around, the old man is sitting at my computer playing backgammon, his left leg dangling over the arm of the desk chair, his bare foot bobbing while he charts his moves.“Avis?”He turns. My God, it’s him. Looking just as he did when he died last year: ancient, a monk’s pate with a hula skirt of white hair, thick black frames port-holing genteel eyes.“Where’s my bulldog.”He clears his throat to repeat, minus the rasp, my bulldog.My butt puckers. The dog is elsewhere. Given up. I retrieve a statue from a nearby shelf, a white, palm-sized replica with bovine spots parked on its haunch
Short stories: A little suspense THE KEYS
THE BLACK BUS pulls to the stop at 30th Street splashing the water from the gutter and stops before you in an oily haze. The door opens and you step across and up the well-worn steps. The driver’s there on his perch in a white shirt and tie and black pants, and he glares down at you as though thinking—how dare you be here. You ignore his stare and your hand goes down in your pocket and there’s no change there, but no keys again either—and you try the other pocket and it’s empty too and you panic— you just had your keys but they’re gone again, where could they have gone to, you try the pockets again but nothing’s there.You’ve lost the keys again. Your house key. Your car keys. You just had them again but you’ve lost them again—Get off my bus, snaps the bus driver. Get off now. And the bus driver’s eyes push you back down the steps as you’re thinking the driver doesn’t have to be so rude why was he so rude—and you step back onto the curb and the bus door slides shut and the roar rises
Short stories: A little suspense DEEP FRY
Barnes read intently from the book in his lap—remove the neck and giblets from the turkey cavity. Discard or use for giblet gravy or stuffing—Wilson interrupted him again.Why do you want to toy with death like this? said Wilson.Barnes looked up from his magazine.I’m not toying with death, he said. I’m reading about deep frying a turkey.It’s a sin to toy with death, answered Wilson, pointing. You know that? It’s a sin just like playing Russian roulette would be a sin.Russian roulette?Right. Russian roulette. If the turkey’s even the least bit still frozen, it’ll explode when you put it in the fryer. These turkeys are like big bombs.Oh, and how do you know that?That’s what I read on the Internet.Why were you reading about deep frying a turkey on the Internet?Oh, I don’t know.Thinking of deep frying a turkey, Wilson?No. Of course not.Then why read about it?I read about a lot of things.Hum.Barnes let his feet down from the table and sat upright with the magazine spre
Short stories: A little suspense THE GHOUL AND THE GUNSLINGER
It was 1978. Rachel showed up at the Tudor-style house in Palo Alto for the party. A ghoul opened the front door. He leaned casually against the door jamb and, crossing one ankle, said, “Why, hello, Your Grace.”“That’s Duchess to you,” she said, without missing a beat. “You’re thinking about something and that makes you forget to talk. I can’t tell you just now what the moral of that is, but I shall remember it in a bit.”The Ghoul, replied, just as easily, “And the moral of that is — Oh, ’tis love,’ tis love, that makes the world go round!”Rachel was enchanted. She and Ghoul were quoting lines from her role as The Duchess in the multi-media production of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass put on by her slightly misfit company of players, The Antediluvian Repertory Company.It was Halloween. Rachel was twenty-six and she was all done up like a forties vamp in worn velvet. Her frizzy, long brown hair was piled high on her head and fastened with a rhinestone clasp. She
Short stories: A little suspense BAD PAPER
Leap year, winter of ‘84. Make a deposit at the local blood bank and get twelve dollars. If late, it’s ten. I hang out and drink all their orange juice.“Thank you, Sergeant Robinson, for your donation and service. Can’t stay here, all day.”This happens every time.“Just Willie, please.”I turn and hit the streets. Cash twelve-dollar check around the corner at a multi-purpose Package Store in West Roxbury. Get a sawbuck back. Bloody usury. This is bullshit. Young gypsy girl with sad eyes reminds me I have a daughter somewhere. Touches my hand, turns it over, scans the lines, frowns, and shakes her head. Gypsy girl knows. Never charges me for coffee at the Packy. Never says thank you for your service. Half Asian…maybe, “Have a nice day, Willie.”“If I were younger….”She laughs, smiles, hands over my coffee and paper sack. Good kid. Packy owner would fire her ass in a Boston minute if he knew about the coffee. Fran from the shelter and me, we loiter outside the Packy sipping coffee.
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- Short stories: A little suspense
WITHDRAWALS
I became a magicians dream. I could disappear. Gone. I found comfort feeling invisible to the outside world. Maybe somewhere, someone wondered where I was. Or maybe someone was looking for me. Or wanted to save me. I couldn't save myself, that's for sure. I didn't know who I was anymore, nor did I notice that I was slowly killing my soul and breaking my father's heart. There was always someone that could aid my escape. With a snap of my fingers or a text message, I was so far gone that no one could get me. I was unstoppable. Out of control; out of my body. I was a new person killing all that remained of my spirit. Losing consciousness was such a relief. Regaining it was not nearly as fun. My heavy head is being shaken by hands. They definitely aren't mine. My mouth feels open. The first thing my exhausted eyes find is his worried face. His brown eyes look like they are going to pop off and roll onto the bathroom floor next to my sprawled-out body. He's yelling at me. He'
- Short stories: A little suspense
THE LOGISTICS
As many reasons as there are to kill yourself, there are just as many reasons to fake your own death. The reason is the easiest part. Pick one. Losing your job, losing your lover, losing the cap to the toothpaste; they’re all extremely valid reasons to disappear. The why isn't the hard part, the hard part is the where, when, and how. Truly, planning how to kill yourself is certainly more difficult than actually killing yourself. Whether you’re preparing for a wedding or a suicide; the logistics will always be the death of you.For Celeste the where had already been decided. The pristine and fully- furnished beach house she purchased on impulse with her first series check had been vacant for years and was just begging for a little drama. An hour drive in her cherry-red convertible brought Celeste to the main entrance where she casually entered the gate code and coasted to the semi-circle driveway. The exterior had been repainted twice since she had bought the property. The
- Short stories: A little suspense
LEILANI
I still remember the first day I saw her. It was in English. She had positioned herself at the front of the classroom and I took the seat directly behind her. My friend Rebecca walked in a few moments later and noticing that there was no empty seat next to me, looked confused.Sitting behind Leilani had not been my choice. Natural desire had pushed me that way and it would have burned within me had a decided to sit anywhere else. It might have been the darkness of her skin, compared to the paleness of all of ours that pulled me in. Her lips were stained coral and she smelled like candy. I assumed she did not know perfume and make-up were not allowed. Her hair was a thick sheet of black and it hung over the back of her chair, taunting me. I wanted so badly to stroke it and that longing scared me. “Excuse me,” she said, turning around. “How much is the Shakespeare collection for this class?” “I…I don’t know.” Syllabi for all of our c
- Short stories: A little suspense
TALK OF THE TOWN
There’s a town on Florida’s west coast that you’ve never heard of. The people that grow up there never escape. The ones that arrive there, do so to die. You might mistake it for a nursing home gone wrong, heaven’s waiting room if you will.So it shouldn’t be a surprise that after Jason managed to escape this place four years ago, he hadn’t returned. When he meets someone new in Chicago and they ask the obligatory “where're you from,” he gives them the name of the closest city. If it wasn’t for the death of his grandmother, he never would have come back.Admittedly his life in the city wasn’t perfect. His job as a secretary to an unscrupulous attorney was unfulfilling at best. He had hoped it would be a temporary job to pay the bills until an improv troupe discovered him; but he hadn’t been on stage in over a year, his confidence was shaken. Still on those nights when he laid in bed, fretting over a failed audition, one fact managed to soothe his bruised ego, “At least I’m not back hom
- Short stories: A little suspense
TOPPING
The children were gone. Lila, the youngest, had just moved out three months before. Marilyn reached up for the branch of the cherry tree, and the stepladder beneath her fell backwards as she did. Flattening out as it hit the lawn. Marilyn cursed and pulled herself up with one hand. In the other she held a small saw; she needed to prune, top off the branches of the tree, and the tree was too high now to do it from the lawn.She sneezed twice, and cursed again. She had never had allergies until the year she turned forty, and now they hit her every single spring and every fall. It was late April, everything turning bright green, and the tree was covered in blossoms. There once had been several cherry trees in the yard. Jay had practically planted an orchard lining their side road when their daughter Allie was a toddler. He had told Allie it was the Cherry Lane from the song Puff the Magic Dragon, and he used to sing the song to her nightly while rocking her, over and over, and it used to
- Short stories: A little suspense
ELAINE'S IDYLL
I put on my makeup in a cracked mirror, and purse my lips: a web of rose-red lipstick against fair skin. Skinny jeans, cold shoulders, a pearl clip, and – a soupçon of Chanel No. 5. The last breath in Nana’s old bottle.I set the perfume bottle down – amidst the salves and rolling change and the unfinished scarf I’ve been working on for what seems like forever – and flit fitfully about the room, looking for my ballet pumps. There! – I took them off when I remembered it had been three days since I’d watered my lilies, and their lugubrious scent was dissipating.I’m sick of shadows.Tonight, I’m going.They’ll all be there. The old gang. Two by two. Andy and Jen, who will be holding court as always – Kit and Joseph and Hector, Morgan bringing along whichever one she’s recently bewitched – Benny and Rob, ambiguously – And he! Finally – finally – on Facebook, with a new photo – and still as bold and handsome and marvelous as a knight springing from the pages of a pop-up storybook.Just li
- Short stories: A little suspense
LIFE DRAWING
Determined not to look, Samantha strode past the tall mirrors that covered an entire sidewall in the studio. Her third-year college drawing class would arrive in a half hour and she hustled to set up the easels, arrange the model stand lighting, and select a cassette to play on her ancient boom box.But the mirrors drew her in and Sam stopped to stare. Jeez, I look like a scarecrow…I should be planted in some farmer’s cornfield…and my hair looks like gray straw.The door at the back of the studio rattled open and that night’s model sauntered in: pale, well-padded, wide hips, big breasts, with red hair worn in a French braid.“You’re early, Lucy. What’s the rush?”“Ah, ya know…boyfriend problems. His jock buddies keep razzing him about me posing nude. I told him it’s my body and ta fuck off.”“That doesn’t sound good. He should come by sometime. I’ll pay good money for a male model who can hold still for forty minutes.”Lucy grinned. “Yeah, that would teach ’im. Whatcha got planned for
- Short stories: A little suspense
THE LAST ORIGINAL THOUGHT
“Oh my god, Dave! Did you hear that, the television? Dave, you have to get a load of this!”Dave had not heard the television, or Jennifer, for that matter. He was in the couple’s study, head wrapped in enormous noise-canceling headphones, eyes dancing across the lines of text displayed on his laptop monitor. A nightly habit of late, he was writing at the large oak desk he had inherited from his father.He was absorbed in reworking a particularly dense section of dialogue when Jennifer burst into the study, backlit by the television in the adjoining room, a silhouetted specter portending the death of his productivity. With arms spread wide in mock dramatic fashion, she descended upon her bemused husband.“Come on, you know I’m working — ” he started.“On your novel, allegedly. You’ve never even let me look at it, so for all I know you’re watching porn in here. What’s your poison? Guy-girl? Girl-girl? Girl-girl-girl-girl-” she was counting them off on her fingers, “girl-girl … guy?”“Y
- Short stories: A little suspense
TIE-DYE
Peter and Sonja slouched in the audio-visual room of the vasectomy clinic, giggling like sixth graders. Sonja wished there was a sink with paper towels, so she could make spitballs. The movie featured a barbecuing man in a red-checkered apron who had had a vasectomy on Friday and was well enough to grill a T-Bone that very night.“This is incredibly stupid,” Sonja’s lips tickled Peter’s ear. He swatted at it as though a mosquito had been nibbling on it.“What?”“Are you actually taking this seriously?” she yelled above the volume. “Don’t you get how ludicrous this is?”Decades later, whenever Sonja saw a man barbecuing—at a church picnic or at a county fair—the grainy footage came flooding back, along with the jowly face of the man in the red-checkered apron, jousting with the sinewy steak.Sonja’s biological clock had starteding going haywire around her thirty-sixth birthday. It seemed to change its mind every week. Some days she fantasized that she was pulling out its springs with h
