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Short stories: A little suspense GOOD EATING
Outside the portacabin the prostitutes sit around; once the men have finished with them and the girls have made enough money for the day they just stick around, some on the shaded stoop, some on the oil cans that wash up here, their slick skin glimmering in the sun, their exposed legs smelling of sex.Men come and go from this place. Sometimes is it said they just disappear. The ocean is a dark land and those who want to hide something can count on her as an ally. Up above us, high on the bank, the village children are out in the playground, their happiness drowned out by the scalded shrieks of seagulls hovering over the little fishing boats, waiting like the rest of us for a morsel to be thrown. Lately I miss my home. The sounds I crave are those of a calm breeze caressing the vines; the leaves of the olive groves, of my mother’s voice calling me, my father and my brothers to the house to eat; sounds of peace. I long to go back to my father’s farm, to my mother’s house, but everybody
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
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