Thomm Quackenbush

Stories: Machine of Death (2010)

14 Jun 2013 01:00:00 EST

"Where would you like to begin?"

"I was on a date, like a blind date. Jill set it up. She's also the one who gave me your number."

"Yes, I know Ms. Sinclair. Lovely girl, plays tennis with my daughter."

"Right. So I was on this date with a guy - I think his name was Paul. I'm pretty sure it was Paul. You'd think I'd remember that, right? Anyway, we were on this date. He took me to see that movie starring that guy George Whathisname? From the hospital show? You know the movie, probably, the one where he gets his slip and you spend the whole movie wondering what it says and he hides it even from his wife. He goes through all of these revelations about life and purpose, really heavy-handed crap. Finally, he goes missing because he is on this Native American vision quest thing and his ditzy wife goes into his drawers and all through his stuff. It's seriously like a half hour of her sorting through his boxers and business paper looking for the slip intercut with him sitting on a rock looking all Zen. And it turns out that he is fated to die because of her. It's her name on the slip and he's spent this whole time being around her anyway. I guess it was supposed to be uplifting or something. Like a slip would have a person's name on it. Basic research fail, if you ask me."

He cleared his throat. "We don't use the word 'fated' here."

"What?"

"'Fated'. It is not a term we choose to use. It implies a destiny and some divine credence to the predictions," the doctor replied. "How the machine works has nothing to do with-"

"I know, okay? The machine is infallible. I get it."

"We also don't-"

Karen sighed. "I know, I was making a joke."

"Ah, I see. Would you care to go on?"

She sat for a moment in silence, as though seriously weighing the question. "No, but my insurance will charge the hour anyway, so I will. So we left this movie, Paul and me. Was it Paul? Maybe his name was Pete. I think it was some 'P' name. Anyway, there was one of the machines in the lobby, some kind of tie-in with the movie. Pretty morbid. Pete asks what my slip said, just to make conversation. I think he knew the date wasn't going well and wanted to keep me talking. I was evasive, so he told me that he was fated to..." She heard the doctor inhaling sharply. "I mean going to die in an avalanche. I asked him how that made him feel. I used to be a psych major, before my prediction-" She hesitated when she heard the intake of breath "-diagnosis, I mean, so I asked questions like that a lot. He said he didn't mind, that he wouldn't stop extreme snowboarding just because some paper said it was going to kill him. I think he just said that to impress me, like I would care that he snowboarded. And what the hell is 'extreme' snowboarding? It probably wasn't even his prediction. It's not like people keep their slips on them. Maybe he was really supposed to die in his mom's basement. So he asked what my slip said again and I admitted I didn't have one."

"It is unusual not to have one, don't you think?"

She sneered. "No, I absolutely don't think that. I wish I didn't have one. I think it's sick that people are having their babies done, supposedly for crib death but would you really want to know that about the kid you just popped out?"

"Why do you feel that way?"

"Former psych major!" she chided. "Don't ask stupid psychology questions about how that makes me feel. For what you are charging my insurance, you can actually listen to what I'm saying and not just keywords, okay?"

The doctor seemed about to speak again, but motioned with his pen for Karen to continue, as though he were conducting the orchestra of her angst.

"So he bugged me about not having a slip. Was I some kind of religious nut or something? Did you know there is a whole, like, commune of people who refuse to get slips because God told them it was evil? You heard about them, right?"

"Yes," the doctor admitted neutrally.

"And there are people who get together and party based on their slips. Like all the 'burned to death' people hang out, hopefully away from fires."

"I had heard that as well."

"I just... I didn't see a reason for it. It wasn't about God or anything like that to me. I was agnostic. It just wasn't any of my business how I was going to die."

"You said you were agnostic. Are you agnostic now?"

"Aren't you not supposed to badger me about religion?"

"Some find that it helps them come to terms with the-"

"The death sentence?"

"We don't call it that."

"Well then, screw me that I do, okay? So he annoyed me until I just went in and got a slip. I wasn't even going to look at it, I just wanted to shut him up. I should have told him that I suddenly remembered that I needed to shave my cat. He would have bought it."

"Ms. Hughes, what did the slip say?"

"I thought you knew that already? Isn't that in my medical file?"

"For medical and insurance reasons, as well as privacy, the content of a slip are not revealed unless a patient wishes for them to be, as in the case of cancers and similar conditions."

"So you know not to try to save them if they are dying of something on their slip?"

"Well, yes, it has been used as a sort of living will. That is one of the preferred uses of this diagnostic tool--"

"Mine said 'LOVE'," she interrupted.

"Pardon?"

"Mine. Said. 'LOVE'," she pronounced carefully. Then, eyes closed, she laughed. "You should have seen Pete's face when he saw it. Maybe his slip actually prescribed him 'DEATH BY SLIP READING LOVE.' That date was over, not that I exactly minded. He smelled like corn chips and cheap aftershave."

"You understand that this is a rather unusually prescription?"

"Yeah, and I did go to my regular doctor and had a slip done in his office, in case it was a prank slip. They make those - isn't that just obscene? - and, given the movie we just saw, it seemed possible. I really wanted it to be possible. But the slip came out the same. My doctor, the same woman I saw since I was little, looked at me with total pity, like she wished it said 'cancer'. She told me that there were support groups and therapists, but I didn't really hear her."

"It really does help to speak to others about your condition."

"I don't have a 'condition'. I have a slip. A little stupid piece of paper with the word 'LOVE' on it. There's a world of difference. And I'm here, aren't I?"

"Yes, you certainly are."

"There are like seven words for love in French, did you know that? Familial love, romantic love, love for God... I think there might even be one for pets. Any one of which could kill me. Will kill me."

"We prefer that you consider that it is simply a cause of death, not something that will kill you."

"I prefer not to be killed by love, so I think both of us will just have to be disappointed, okay?"

He scribbled something. "What steps have you taken?"

"I guess I went through the predictable ones. I cut off all my personal relationships, just to forestall death as long as I could. My mom did not like that at all, but maternal love could definitely be smothering. Possibly literally." The doctor coughed, but Karen took it as a disguised laugh. "You like that? I thought of it on the way over here. I didn't date much before this. I mean, I dated, but it was never usually serious. Never love, exactly, which was nicer in retrospect. Fewer ex-flame that were going to come at me with knives."

"That seems rather pessimistic, if you do not mind my saying."

"I don't. I knew it was pessimistic, but I would rather be pessimistic than dead. I guess I don't get much say in that?"

"Everyone dies, Karen, you just have the benefit of-"

She sat up, off the psychiatrist's red leather couch. "It doesn't feel like much of a benefit to know that I'm going to get killed by one of the core parts of the human experience, doc."

"Well, it needn't be so cut and dry. 'Love' could mean many things..."

"I've been over that. I could die because that big Love sculpture in Philly falls on my head. I could die because Courtney Love bites me. I've heard all the ironic twists, lame as they are, but I don't buy it. I'll die because of love, not a pun."

"So you have eschewed romantic relationships entirely?"

"More or less, just to narrow the field. I got drunk the other night - I do that a lot lately, just can't imagine why - and got picked up by some guy, shagged. Trust me though, that wasn't what I'd call romantic. I don't think he'd fall in love with me, I was like a dead fish I was so out of it. That's happened a few times. Maybe a dozen."

"Love could refer to something of the venereal variety..."

"He used a condom - everyone is pretty scared of diseases, even if the slip doesn't say AIDS - and I freaking hate that. That twisting of words, not condoms. No matter how someone dies, you people twist it. You make their death fulfill the freaking slips, because that proves your damned machine is perfect, right?"

"I'm noting a lot of anger."

"I told you, no psych 101 crap! Yes, I have anger. I am entitled to have anger, since I'm not supposed to have love."

"You are supposed to have love, Karen. It is inevitable."

"And that's another thing. You doctors and scientists act like good little atheists, 'oh, the machine has nothing to do with religion or god' and in the next breath using words like 'inevitable'. If I can't be 'fated', you shouldn't be allowed to say it's inevitable. People have free will, nothing is inevitable."

"Death is," he answered simply.

"Do you actually have a doctorate? Really? That's your answer, 'death is'?"

"It is the truth. You will die somehow because of love. No matter how you try to avoid this, it will happen."

She huffed back onto the couch. "No, you'll just say you were right, no matter how I die. It isn't hard to make something up that fulfills your prophesy. It's not like 'BURIED ALIVE', is it? That person damned well be under something or your machine is wrong and then what will you do? If I commit suicide, you'll have the mortician put down that it was because I loved someone too much. If someone murders me, it's because they loved me and couldn't have me or loved my money. If I die of old age, it is because I loved living too much. I can't win." She turned on her side and saw him scribbling in a legal pad. "What are you writing?"

"Notes on your reaction."

"Yes, but what does it say? I'm entitled to know. Pretend I was your colleague, okay?"

He held his pen above the paper for a moment before placing it in his lap. "I wrote that you are shuttling between denial, anger, and bargaining. In time, and with considerable work together, we can help you move past depression and testing until you finally reach acceptance."

"The K�bler-Ross cycle. Cute, like I have a terminal illness. Is that how you doctors see life, as a terminal illness? I don't think I am bargaining, though. How do I bargain? I get that this is going to happen, that the slips always happen eventually."

"I would like to add, though this is yet to be a part of your file, that I believe you try to push people away from you to forestall your death."

"No offense, but duh. I said that."

"That is your bargaining. You sacrifice the life all around you for a death you can't avoid. I see this a lot, but I must admit that I have yet to see a case quite so unfortunate as yours. It is a simple matter to forego a leisure activity in fear of the prediction on one's slip, waterskiing when one is to drown for example. But love is not something you can avoid. Call me a sentimental old fool - I have a Bachelor's in Disembodied Poetics from Naropa, so you would not be the first - but I do not think life is worth living if you deprive yourself of the experience. Yes, you will die. Yes, it will owe to love in some permutation. You'll die, but you really should try living first. Can you be okay with that?"

She reclined silently for a long while, thinking. "Not today, I can't."

He shrugged. "We aren't miracle workers. This is still something of a new field, you understand, though we stand on the shoulders of giants. For now, I believe our time is up. I hope to see you next week."

Karen rose from the couch and shook his proffered hand. "What are you doing with all of your notes? I mean, I had to sign a release before speaking with you."

"I thought I might make them into a book, actually. The machine has caused a lot more problems than it was made to solve. I believe it would do the world good to know what other people experienced."

"I would be a part of this book?"

"I would lo..." he caught himself. "Prefer if you were, yes."

She walked to the door and starts to open it before struck with a thought. "What does your slip say? I mean, if that isn't impinging on the doctor-patient relationship we are building."

He studied her over his bifocals. "PATIENT."

She nodded her head softly and laughed. "I'll see you next week, doc."

Author's Note 2013/06/14: This was originally written for the Machine of Death anthology. It was rejected outright, I assume because it lacks talking dinosaurs and medically trained ninjas. The premise of the anthology, as I touch upon in the story, is that a machine has been invented that tells one exactly how one will die. My assumption was that, among much else, this would inspire both terrible movies and a need for a new branch of psychotherapy.
For the most part, my fiction deals with normal people in unusual situations. I didn't care to get outrageous with the premise, as I have no doubt others did. I believed that the truest explanation of the strangeness of this would occur to individuals. I wanted to see this speculative world through the eyes of a couple of people in a snapshot interaction, rather than over-explaining the world. I feel Karen is an authentic character who was easy to write and the doctor is similar. If I had unlimited time, I could imagine an entire book told exclusively through the therapy sessions, with the readers wondering whether they will end if she heals or if she dies.

Interview: UFOs Out There--please welcome Thomm Quackenbush by Christina St. Clair

13 June 2013 00:00:00 EST

The greatest challenge with this book was not the research - that was rather fun - but wrangling my skeptical main character, Jasmine. I had some ideas for what happened to her and she bucked against me time and again. I�ve had characters be difficult before, but I�d never encountered one who resisted me so strongly. In the end, it turned out that her obstinance was crucial to the plot. When I went back to revise, I was unsurprised to see how well foreshadowed her refusal was and how much stronger it made the story. Without her, this is a book about the mythology of UFOs. With her, it became a book about sisterhood triumphing trauma.

Stories: Tarentella (2002)

12 Jun 2013 01:00:00 EST

Dan feels the gun against his temple. One question rushes through his head: does he have time enough to put down the television in his arms? It is an older model and feels like it is lined with lead. He wonders absently if it actually does contain lead - his mother used to warn him about blindness from sitting too close to the set, maybe it was because of the radiation the lead would block.

"What the hell are you doing in my apartment?" A low, thick voice asks.

"Stealing your television," he offers, not daring to turn his head. Is it better to get a bullet in the temple than one in the face? Somehow that seems more survivable. It doesn't make sense to him to lie to this armed woman. This is all pretty obvious. He doubts she will believe he is the Grinch in Santa's clothes, just borrowing the TV to fix so she can watch Frosty and Rudolph.

She releases the safety. He had never actually heard a gun do that before, at least not in real life and certainly not when held just above his left ear, but there is no mistaking the sound. If he is going to die tonight, he wishes he could do it in a nicer apartment. Aside from a sofa and dresser, the place does not look lived in. Burglary around Christmas is usually far more fruitful because people have decked the halls with expensive electronics wrapped up nicely. This apartment looks to Dan like the set of a living room, rather than the room itself. Soon a props person - do those people have an actual title? - would come in with a coffee table, a few bestsellers to sit idly on it to suggest the residents are casual readers, and maybe a reproduction of a Klimt painting for the bare walls.

"Listen, miss. Just put the gun down and no one will get hurt," Dan soothes. "You don't want anyone to get hurt, do you?"

The girl starts to lower her gun and Dan rests the television against his chest to free his hand so he can reach into his jeans' pocket and retrieve his switchblade. Before he can adjust enough, he feels the gun back at his temple.

"I'll leave quietly, okay? I don't want any trouble. Here, I'll even give you twenty bucks to fix that window I broke. No trouble, right?" Dan reaches into his pocket again, watching her eyes dart to the pile of glass now on the floor.

Her attention and the gun immediately trains back on him. "No one is going anywhere," she insists, "We're just going to sort a few things out first... so, what did you steal?"

Dan lowered the television slowly to the floor. "Nothing yet. I was going to take your TV."

She steps back, lowering her gun, but keeping her grip firm. "Fine. Take it. It barely worked anyway. Go. Please."

Dan lifts the television up again, his eyes never leaving the woman. She stands watching him, but does not move, so he turns to leave through the window.

She takes a folded piece of notebook paper out of the pocket of her black slacks. "Here, take this too."

Dan shifts the television and begins to open the paper. He certainly did not want to vex the woman with the gun, particularly when about going to get out of her apartment without a radical lobotomy by bullet.

"Read it outside!" she shouts. "Not now."

Dan stands for a long moment, looking around the apartment with trepidation.

"Why are you still here?"

"There's glass on the floor. I don't want to step on it."

"Fine," she said, sounding a little disappointed. She flicked a switch on the wall with her free hand and everything illuminates enough that Dan could avoid stepping on an errant shard and having it slice through his shoes. He would have to remember that breaking windows to gain entrance to houses tended to result in broken glass. At the very least, he should case places well in advance of breaking and entering.

He tiptoes over the shards and stops again, placing the television on the floor. He doesn't want to stop, but his conscious won't leave him alone tonight if he doesn't. "Why do you got that gun?"

She levels it at him, but he isn't nearly as frightened this time. "Protection from dirtbags trying to steal my TV."

Dan stepped closer to her, returning the TV to the stand from which he had taken it. He walked up to her and said, "Nah, that's not what I mean. You had the gun when you walked in on me and I don't think it is because you heard some glass breaking."

"Walked in on you? It's my apartment. And I still have the gun. And you're still here!"

"You were gonna kill yourself." He steps even closer - too close, he realizes too late - and looks at it. "There's lipstick on the barrel."

Her hands shake, which Dan takes to be both a sign that he was right and an occupational hazard. Shaky hands were not the sort in which you wanted guns. She glares. "Where do you get off? I was going to kill myself? Where do you get that from?"

He meets her eyes. "Were you?"

She turns her head away from him, steadying herself before seeming to remember herself and squeezing the handle of the gun. "Maybe I was going to, all right?"

Dan nods slowly and walks to the side of the television. "Could you wait until I leave? Give me a five minute head start?"

Her mouth moves like the maw of a suffocating fish. "Wha... what did you say?"

"Give me a few minutes to clear out from here before you try to kill yourself."

"I'm not trying to kill myself. I'm going to kill myself."

Dan picks the television back up. It feels somehow heavier now. The note she had given Dan falls onto the broken glass and he leaves it where it lay. "Right, that's nice. So are you going to give me a few minutes before you fire some shots into the air for attention, attracting all your neighbors?"

"This isn't for attention! I want to die! And if you step outside that window, I'll do it."

Dan adjusts the weight, seeing that he isn't getting out of there quickly. "I thought you were going to do it anyway. Someone breaking into your house shouldn't stop you. That is, if you were actually going to shoot yourself. Which you weren't."

The woman lowers the gun to her side and shifted her weight to one hip. "How can you be so damned sure I'm not?"

The tension leaves him proportional to the height of the gun and is nearly gone now. "Simple fact of life. Chicks don't use guns. Chicks take a bunch of sleeping pills or drink Drano. The braver ones slit their wrists in the bathtub so they don't leave a mess. Guns though? Guys use guns."

She stomps. "Don't you stereotype me! I'm not a 'chick,'."

"Uh-huh. Can I go?"

"Yeah, get the hell out of here!" she exclaims, finding renewed attachment to the weapon in her hand.

He hoists the television in his arms and says, "Just so we are crystal clear here, I step out that window and you...?"

"Die."

Dan lets out a long sigh and lowers the television to the floor. This he sits on and says, "Damn. What is it you actually want?"

"Are you dense? I want to die."

He motions her to come closer and she does, the gun apparently substituting for confidence. "Let me see your wrists."

She thrusts her free hand forward. Dan takes it and slowly examines her wrists, his fingers tracing the delicate lines of scars woven across them. His touch is almost reverential and she shivers.

"These are baby scars," he finally announces, pushing her arm away, "Barely even scrapes. You aren't suicidal. You're just a drama whore."

She pulls her arm back as though physically pained by his words. "Don't you tell me what I am!"

"Why?" Dan asks, surprised to find that he actually wants an answer.

"You have my TV... Why don't you go off and buy drugs or whatever? Have a merry friggin' Christmas. Shoot up. I don't care. I'm sure my TV will buy you some nice crack."

Dan tries with little success to stifle a laugh, which escapes and causes her plain face to sour. "You don't shoot crack," he explains, "And I would go, except some crazy girl is playing with a nasty looking toy. Besides, I'm not into drugs."

"Why are you holding my TV then?"

"You told me to take it. Anyway, never mind what I'm gonna do with it. You gave it to me, it is my property now. Merry Christmas to me."

"No, what? You break into my home and steal from me, you don't get to tell me not to mind."

Dan exhales slowly though his teeth, looking at the floor instead of the gray metal of the woman's gun.

"My brother needs to get into a hospital and-"

"And stealing my stuff is going to be the thing that helps him. Real noble."

"You'd be surprised. You can make a lot of flow in one night - especially around the holidays - if you're not stupid. Which I seem to be, 'cause I am still talking to you."

"That's real nice. I hope you sleep well tonight..." She glares, but softens quickly, anger doing far worse things to her face than relentless self-pity. "Why does your brother need to go into the hospital?"

"I told you that's not your business."

"Let's pretend it is, okay? What's wrong with your brother that my TV can fix?"

"There's this program at Devereux House. Y'know, the 'institution.' Not cheap and, in case you couldn't guess, I'm not the sort of person who has insurance... He needs to get away from Vale for a while. Get away from thinking self-destruction is a cute way to get people to listen to what he has to say."

"Maybe that's the only way he can tell the world how he feels..."

He wets his lips and exhales, almost a laugh. "That's not how I see it. Way I see it, trying to destroy yourself gives a pretty clear message and it's not one I think you'd like. Sounds a bit like, 'I'm too self-centered to be constructive so I have to open a vein to-'"

She smacks his shoulder with her free hand. "Just shut up! You have no idea what this is like..."

"No? I steal televisions and stereos. I live in a ghetto apartment with my jack-off family. That earthquake a month ago cracked the foundation and now the heat doesn't work, so our electric bill tripled 'cause of the space heater we have to keep on and our slumlord super isn't anywhere. But you don't see me pointing weapons at myself."

"But you'd point one at me. That's what you were trying to get to in your pocket, isn't it?"

Dan reaches into his pocket and produces a switchblade. They both stare at it in his palm, still contracted, like a peculiar insect. Dan drops it to the ground after a long moment. The catch releases and the blade flicks out, pointing at the woman. "I wouldn't have used it. Probably. I wouldn't now."

She pulled her lips into a grimace that would almost be mistaken for a smile at a distance. "Wow, that really ruined the Hallmark moment we weren't having. And much as I would like to justify myself to a lowlife, I think it's about time for you to go."

"Finally."

The woman reaches into her own pocket, producing a cell phone which she promptly dials. "Hello? Police? ...Someone broke into my house. I have him at gunpoint... No, he's not armed." She pauses and shoots a contemptuous glance at Dan, who does not return the attention. "Yeah, I think I'm safe... Yeah, Main Street, Apartment 81C. Big brick building across from the coffee shop. Thanks." She hangs up the phone and grins at Dan, triumphant.

"Why the hell did you do that?"

"Guess I'm just too damned self-centered to be constructive."

"And if I just dash for the window?"

"I shoot. You first, then me."

He remained frozen. "You know they have hotlines?"

"I don't want to talk to some screwed-up stranger about how living sucks."

"So I'm just supposed to sit here and wait?"

She shrugs, smile at the gun. "Pretty much, scumbag."

"My name is Dan."

She extends the gun his way as though he were to shake it. "Chris. The pleasure is mine, I'm sure."

Dan stares up at her until Chris retracts the gun. She has a look on her face that he cannot read, somewhere between constipation and regret.

"Do you mind telling me why you are going to kill yourself? I mean, the cops will take a few more minutes to get here since you said you are in no immediate danger and all."

"I gave you my note, read it. You can read, right?"

Dan brushes aside some glass with his shoe and picks the paper up. 'I, Chris... The pain is so great... depths of the void... going to a better world... Better this way...' Fairly standard, that. 'Consign my soul to a god that can't exist... Eternal peace in death...' I've read worse."

"Read worse? These are my last earthly thoughts and all you can say is that you've read worse?"

"What do you expect me to say? That this little scrap of paper justifies what you want to do? It doesn't. It can't."

She yells, "It isn't worth it, don't you get that? This isn't some plea for attention, this is the last night of my life. This is the first time in years I have been in control."

Dan cannot listen to this and sit still. He leaps up from the television wth such force that it slides back. "Don't romanticize death like that! Death isn't Brad Pitt in a tux. Death doesn't give you control over anything. Death ends your control." He regrets the fierceness of is retort she starts crying.

"It's inevitable. I'm going to die. We all are eventually. I am just deciding when. We're all suicides. The tragedy is every day that we don't die. No more tragedy, Dan."

"If you're gonna die anyway, why choose tonight?"

She kicks at the broken glass on the floor and not looking at him. "'Tis the season to be totally miserable."

"I just don't see why you should be dead. My loser brother treats his arms like pin cushions, but I'm not gonna let him die. Even with a gun pointed at my head and cops on the way, you are a lot nicer to be around." This compliment seems to fail to impress Chris in the least, so he adds, "And you want to tell me or we wouldn't be having this little conversation."

Chris starts toward him and, his eyes focused on the gun that is rising with his pulse, he worries that he has gone inches too far in goading this drama queen. The one semester he spent as a psych major at the community college was coming back to bite him in the ass. He looks down at her discarded knife on the floor, a safety net and leverage discarded, but she walks back the way she came, pacing. Her brown eyes glint uneasily as the first of her tears roll down her pasty cheeks.

"You are the first guy I've spoken more than three sentences to in months," Chris confesses.

Dan is quiet, expecting more, but no more comes. That moment that just passed was one where he should have offered some appropriate words, but not it is too late; his silence has been rendered as a reply.

"I can't live so totally alone," she replies as though he offered dissent. "I see people every day and they are bundled up in these little couples. It's not romantic, it's just... they have someone who understands." She stops pacing and looks coldly at him, "Even you have your brother who you are willing to commit crimes for."

"I'm sorry," Dan says, because he knows he should. In a way, he is sorry that he has a brother who needs to be hospitalized. In another family, in another city and another life, Dan could have been sipping hot cider and wearing sweater vests while discussing a T.S. Eliot poem instead of sitting on a soon-to-be-pawned television, listening to a suicidal girl with a gun unfurl all the ways the world has done her wrong.

"I don't really have a family. I mean, I do but I might as well not. It's Christmas nearly and the only communication my mom has had with me was sending me a sweater that is two sizes too big. I haven't had a friend since high school. High school! There isn't a picture on my dresser of a person older than eighteen and not a single one of them cares enough to call me now."

"So you die?"

"Beats the alternative. One squeeze and--"

"You're alone in a box forever. You stop to think about that?"

"I'm already alone in a box. We all are." She seems calmer suddenly, which is more unsettling to Dan than her frenzy. "I want it to end. I choose to die now."

Chris looks down at the gun in her hand and smiles. Dan realizes in that instant that he may have misjudged her. When the cops come, he doesn't want them to find this woman's corpse. They certainly won't believe a word of his story. He rises, slowly, and approaches her. She does not move to stop him. "Life sucks sometimes. You think I want to be breaking windows and stealing televisions? Hell no. But I do because that is my life right now. It's not easy. Killing yourself isn't gonna be easy."

"I'm pretty sure I can put a bullet in my head successfully," she says with serene resignation.

"Because you're lonely? Dying is better? Leaving the party just as it's starting? I don't think so. You still got things to live for. I... I personally don't want you to die because I think... I think the world is a little better with you in it. And I just met you. So I don't think I can be the only one..." And the strange thing is, he knows he means it. There is something in her that he recognizes, not from his brother, but deep inside himself. He moves to embrace and disarm her in every sense of the words. She starts to lower the gun and relax, but recoils when he is about to touch her.

"'The world is better with me in it'? Is that the best you can do? Is this the point where throw down the gun and have this revelation that suicide's wrong and everything'll be okay? I never bought it."

She slides the safety of the gun off again. Dan searches his memory and cannot remember when she slid the safety on, but the sound of it clicking into place now frightens him more than when he heard it up close. That was a threat. This is a promise.

"Nobody buys it."

"Why then?"

The sound of sirens grows louder in Dan's ears. "Up until tonight, I may have been stuck in a rat hole apartment with my family, but I was damned alone. Now? I'm not sure I am anymore. There are people - good people - and I think you are one of them. And maybe the prison will have a few more. I know it's hard - I really do know - but it'll change. You'll change."

"What about right now?"

"Right now, you wait. Take a walk outside. There are so many stars," Dan walks over to the window, stepping over the crunching broken glass. The night is warm for December and he breathes deeply what he expects to be one of his last free breaths.

"Where are you going?" Chris asks.

"To meet the cops. I hear they like it when you turn yourself in."

She sounds almost embarrassed as she admits, "I didn't really call the cops."

The breath he takes next is the sweetest in his life. "Why not?"

"I guess I have a fear of commitment."

"So... let's put off your death for tonight. It's not too late. We could take that walk together."

She walks to a closet and removes a coat. "Fine. But I'll probably shoot myself tomorrow. It'll be a nice Christmas present."

He puts the television back on its stand and sees the reflection of the room in it - the ratty sofa, the discarded gun on the coffee table, the open switchblade glittering among the broken glass - and it doesn't look so dreary. In the reflection, he sees her in the distance, distorted by the glass, and he thinks she looks relieved until he turns back to her and all the pain remains on her face. "Fine with me."

She reaches out for his hand. "Good. Can I meet your brother?"

"I think he is free on New Year's Eve."

"Then it's a date."

Author's Note 2013/06/12: Christmas is depressing, isn't it?
This was originally written as a one act play for a screenwriting class, then revised into the above short story. I intend to go into detail when I get around to posting my scripts, but the play was an embarrassment. The chagrin I felt watching my words mangled was reason enough to turn it into a story, where I controlled to a greater extent the image one gets.
The ending of the story is a bit schmaltzy, I grant, but it is roughly a Christmas story. I am not callous enough for it to end in her suicide. All the same, I didn't want to make it seem as though Chris were going to be fine, that a conversation with a burglar and a walk is enough to stave off suicidal ideation. But I know firsthand that feeling as though you are not alone in your despair is enough to want to try to recover, even if for a little while. I've had people assume that she dies shortly after and others think that this is the rock bottom from which she crawls upward. I don't know the answer, but I appreciate that people can find their own meaning in it.

Stories: A View from the Porch (2000)

12 Jun 2013 01:00:00 EST

"You look lonely."

He glanced up at the woman, who had slithered behind him while he distracted himself counting stars. She seemed familiar, but he couldn't place her. She had a shy face that seemed inclined to blush with little preamble and carefully trimmed blonde hair that gravity held flat despite her attempts at layering. Of course, he had seen her around at the party, but she didn't register as more than that until now. She was just another college student he had seen in the background of this existence without remembering. Somewhere in the recesses of his mind, he thought he knew he name.

Returning his gaze to the stars, he sighed, "I am not lonely, only momentarily alone." Sensing her backing up, he continued, "But I wouldn't mind your company."

She smiled sweetly, drunkenly. "Why are you in the cold, Will? Come be social inside." She sits on the dewy gray bench next to him. The combination of the half-drained glass of red wine in her hand and the autumn chill after the mugginess of the party succeeded in making her light-headed. She took another small sip of the wine once she was confident the world wasn't going to slip out from under her. The warmth of liquor grew her courage, and this was enough to propelling her on.

He gave her a wry half-grin. "I needed a breather before someone started vomiting in there. That always seems to happen at these sorts of parties. And, as you've apparently noticed, it's a spell cooler here." As he said this, a breeze caught him and he hugged his brown vinyl jacket to him tighter. The invitation for the party stated that the guest should dress well, but he had no interest in that. He noticed that his present companion was wearing a fuzzy blue tank top and enticingly tight leopard print jeans. Knowing that she had scorned the invitation's only requirement in such a charming way caused him to warm slightly to her.

His gaze did not go unnoticed or, secretly, unappreciated. She stammered nervously, "Actually, Matt just did. Puke, I mean. All over himself and the living room. His friends made him change out of his clothes, which was good. They put him in a pirate outfit, though. When I saw him hitting himself in the head with a plastic sword over and over again, I decided it was time to get some air." He laughed quietly at this and she grew bolder, "And I noticed that you leave a few minutes ago. Hey, would you like something to drink?" He cheeks flushed with embarrassment. "Damn, I'm blushing, aren't I? Guess I'm earning my name."

A clue, he thought, as to what her name might be. Blush? No, that's ridiculous. Red? No real person is named Red, only truckers and prostitutes. Ruby? No, he reasoned, Rubies are older and wear a great deal of eye-shadow. Scarlet? Yes, that was it. Scarlet Todd. It fit her. She even reminded him of Scarlet O'Hara, something in the way in which she carried herself with both anxiety and confidence.

"No, thank you, Scarlet. I'd rather keep my wits about me." He realized he had somewhat offended her, as she bore the all the earmarks of a social drinker. To make amends, he touched her hand and red Dixie cup in a gesture to asked for a taste of her wine, which she gave. "Mm, this is rather sweet. Still, I think I'll refrain for now."

She nodded without thinking, only stopping when she realized his touch had weakened her resolve, which she promptly restored by sipped heavily from her cup. She liked how it remained warm from where he had sipped from it and rotated the glass to she could drink from the same place. Noticing that he began to look off at the stars again, she tried to reinvigorate the conversation and return his attention to her, where she firmly hoped it belonged.

"Who are you here with?"

"I'm not really here with anyone, in the sense you mean. I came with Liz Bathory, but I haven't the slightest clue where she has gone off too... Probably in the bathroom." He softly laughed to himself, not bothering to explain to Scarlet. "And yourself?"

"Oh, I came here with Covany, but she has left me when her boyfriend showed up. In fact, she was my ride home... Do you think Liz could drive me home?" She didn't actually know who Liz was, probably the brunette girl she saw him around campus with a few weeks ago. Scarlet mused that Liz, if that was indeed who the girl was, looked like a bitch. Still, she would take a sober bitch with a car any day of the week. Scarlet was fairly sure she wasn't in any condition to drive home, given that this was her fourth glass of wine. "Has your friend been drinking, do you think?"

Will smirked. "No. Not alcohol at least. I'm fairly sure she'll be spending the night here, though. Which leaves us both in the same boat. No way back to campus and it is getting late. Would you mind terribly my walking you home? I swear, I'm good company."

She blinked a few times, making sure she had heard him correctly. She took stock of her senses. It certainly sounded like he had asked to walk her home, but it was well over a mile back to campus and the night wasn't getting any warmer. Then again, the mere thought that he took this sort of notice of her warmed her considerably. "I suppose I wouldn't mind. But it's kind of cold..."

Before she could finish her protest, Will had enshrouded her in his jacket. The archaic and cinematic gesture flushed her cheeks anew, the benefits of which was not lost on Will. Without announcing their departure to anyone else, they left the well-lit refuge of the porch and ventured toward the college.

As Will assured her safety, Scarlet agreed to take a more scenic route home. Will said the dying leaves made the trees look like fires reaching toward the moon. When he asked her to sit with him under one of the most colorful trees, she honestly wondered if she was just dreaming all of this. Reality intruded when she stumbled to the ground and cut her hand on a jagged rock. The pain left her as Will gently kissed the blood away. She was stunned at this. He was far more romantic than she had been equipped to believe. When she felt his lips on her neck, she could have simple died. Once his sharp canine teeth penetrated the skin on her neck, she had only a struggling moment to realize that she just had.

Will was grateful, as always, at the relative ease of getting college girls. And the relative ease with which blood wiped off vinyl.

Author's Note 2013/06/12: Really, Former Me? "Liz Bathory" in the bathroom? You thought you were clever, I bet. Vampire fiction is a bit too easy to write, since all the tropes are pounded into Western culture, so one must be careful about it. It is very easy to be lazy about it and I think it is obvious pretty early on that Will is not a savory character.
I remember this story from a creative writing class, though I have no idea what the prompt might have been. It was not well received. The teacher gave it a C, which was perhaps generous. This does demonstrate a technique I remain fond of, starting a story with an unidentified character saying something with might hook the reader and later prove ironic.
Beyond that, I think the best gift a creative writing professor can give their students is detailing exactly why a story doesn't work. This one is dragged down by the head-hopping. Ideally, this should be entirely from Scarlet's (third person, limited omniscient) perspective. After they leave the party, the story switches from showing to telling, which is a shame. The walk home might be a more interesting bit of the story and I may have to revise to add this at some later point.
Editing these stories, it seems like I have a motif of predators giving their victims jackets. This wasn't remotely intentional, but I welcome future biographers to suss out the symbolic value. Obviously, it is meant to be comforting, covering the victim's vulnerability while exposing your own, and dresses the victim in the clothing of the predator, but I don't know why the image stuck me so strongly that it repeated. Even Columbine features a man taking off his coat to protect a woman, though it is notable that he puts it beneath them rather than on her. Thus, she does escape him. Once the coat is on the other character properly, they are trapped.
I think Scarlet and her roommate Covany are real (I did not make up that name, despite this being vampire fiction) and were associates of the woman I then dated, though I can't remember them enough to figure out why I decided to have them star in this story. I vaguely remember the party that spawned this, though no one ended up dead at its close. Someone named Matt did vomit on himself and then end up dressed as a pirate, which ought to count for something.

Stories: Suspension (2000)

11 Jun 2013 01:00:00 EST

All is stale and damp, reeking of marijuana and the sweat of writhing teenagers. Phosphorescent murals of Dante's inferno adorn the walls of the vacant factory where the rave takes place. Above me, a devil the blue of a lighter's flame attempts to rape a particularly comely, earth tone angel.

I preside over this tableau from a ratty velveteen couch, suspended from the staircase above. I relax into my perch to observe the bald depravity of an underage lesbian couple undulating. The latex of their shirts sticks and pulls as they increase their friction, as though to simulate intimacy. Though I lean forward so as to not miss a single moment of their mutual frottage, they exist only for one another and the ecstasy coursing through their blood.

As their embrace threatens to transcend the startling edge where experimentation turns to molestation, a fair-haired woman propels them apart. She moves as though dancing through water. I nod, an amused smirk on my lips, which she takes as invitation.

A stumbling drunk interferes with her glide to my sofa, causing her to tumble onto the cushions with an utter want of grace, nearly spilling the drink she hold. My throne sways for her, almost meeting the beat of the music.

"I am terrible sorry," she gasps into my ear, blushing with her eyes but not cheeks. The scent of her, exquisite and subtle, wafts and I ache to know her better, perhaps Biblically.

"There is no need for apology. If your falling for me is the worst thing that happens tonight, I'll consider myself lucky. What are you doing here?" I pat the cushion beside myself. Dusts wells up in swirling motes, like florid smoke in the light show around us.

She casts a look at the revelers, one laced with sweetness and pity. She tugs at the white sleeve of her lace shirt idly, thoughtlessly. "What are any of us doing here tonight?"

"Rising and falling." She nods slowly, wetting her top lip. "You avoided my question."

Her eyes dart through the crowd. The sour expression etching the corner of her eyes marks that she does not approve of their excess, but there is not an ounce of fear in her. In this decaying world, these moments with her help keep me sane.

Her attention drifts back to me, though I avoid eye contact. Not just yet. The apple must ripen enough to be delicious.

"What am I doing here?" she asks. "Mingling... Partying."

I laugh. Her face betrays no hurt at my outburst, and I explain. "Somehow, I doubt you are the partying type. At least, not this type of party."

She grins like a sleeping baby. "Pardon my saying, but you don't seem to belong here either. That's what drew me to you. You seem... troubled."

Could she know more than I gave her credit? But no, never were we so clever or cruel. That was our virtue and our fault. I close my eyes against the lights, though it is impossible to evade them even were I blind. While not decked out in vinyl like so many, I had practiced due diligence in camouflaging myself for this evening, arrayed as a lost soul in need of release. Are people ever anything else?

Gingerly, I place my hand on her shoulder, more to steady my thoughts than to tests how much contact I would be allowed. "This is one of the few places I imagine I do belong. It reminds me of home." Nothing in this was false. I am not a liar, that being my virtue and fault. I may conceal, but never could I bring myself to lie, no matter what was demanded of me...

Her pity, until now reserved for the dancers, now falls on me, boring into me. Though it is only for a second, it was enough. She turns her attention to an anorexic fop vomiting before us. He glimpses her from behind mascara stained eyes and offers an awkward, apologetic smirk before making haste elsewhere. She returns to me. "Where do you live... I'm sorry, I didn't get your name."

I raise my eyebrows. She knew my name and once tendered it as dearly as any. "My name... is Nicholas. I used to live upstate, but I've been down here for... a long while."

"Nicholas," she repeated, as though testing the flavor of the name. "Nicholas. It's a nice name." She raises her cup to her lips and sips a little. "Nicholas."

"Why are you drinking that?"

"It's not what it looks like, it's a..." In lieu of finishing, she pressed the cup to my lips.

It lacks the nip I anticipate and I smirk. "A Virgin Mary."

"It's my favorite drink." She seems awash in dreams, but my hand on her knee brings her back. "I like helping those who need me."

"Like a social worker?"

She grows lighter at my suggestion, as though I have grasped something she failed to put into words. A wry grin chances itself upon her face. "I have slightly less paperwork."

I remember being like her, so pure of intention. Almost like yesterday and a million years ago, all at once. "I wish to God there were something you could do for me." I place my head in my hand. "You just have to accept when you are damned."

She could not have looked more hurt had I struck her. "Nicholas! Things can't be so bad, can they?"

"They can be quite a bit worse." I want to touch her face, to feel how soft the skin might be and I know she would let me, but it seems too intimate a gesture.

"You are here, alive and well. You are handsome." She lacks the flirtatious glance that ordinarily would accompany such a statement. "Judging by your clothes, you are a man of wealth and taste." With these words she gently strokes the hem of my black shirt, as one might a docile animal. "Things may seem bad now, but they always get better because that is God's plan. He is very forgiving." She smiles placidly skyward. When I join her gaze, all that could be seen was a dangling, horned skull.

When I look back at her to share the irony of this, her gaze is locked on my face. Its probing burns into me and my playfulness with her, this game she does not know we are playing, turns to ashes. "Which God is the forgiving one, exactly? Old Testament, where He was a mean old bastard, getting His rocks off by smiting? Or New Testament, once Our Heavenly Father got Prozac?" She winces away from my onslaught, one I do mean but not as a weapon against her. I lower myself next to her again. "I guess you could call me a recovering Catholic... or Jew... or... I don't even know. I'm just a bit touchy when religion gets brought up."

My apology seems to ease the sting and she gives me a smile, but a tentative one. "The nature of God's plan can be difficult to fathom when you are toiling in some small corner of it, but it is glorious from above, if you allow yourself the perspective. You shouldn't count God out. He is there always, watching you... loving you. God can help you." She places a cool hand on my cheek. "Follow me, I have something to show you."

I know what is to come, what must, but I follow because I have not the heart to disobey now. She leads me through the throng of innocents and unfortunates buzzing around us. An addled and obese man approaches the creature before me and solicits her sex for a pittance. She pats him kindly on the bald of his head. He tumbles backward, buffeted away by the other people swelling and dancing.

She leads me by the hand into the alley between buildings. A cool breeze shocks me after so long in the hot stagnancy of the rave. The alley smells faintly of refuse and urine, though I doubt she is aware. She positions me against the dank back wall of the alley, affording me no escape except through her, though I have no intention of leaving so soon. I remove a clove from the pack in my pocket, lighting it as I wait for her to preach at me. The smoke, like a gingerbread bonfire, chases away some of the stench that clings tenaciously to my clothes.

At least, she begins, "Nicholas, I was sent here to save you." A soft, white light envelopes her, causing her already pale skin to glow. The surrounding atmosphere bent to give the shape of feathered wings at her back. She coos, "Don't be frightened, my child. It's not a hallucination. I am an Angel. God sent me to help you."

"Can you forget the special effects, Arielle? You don't need them."

The illusion of wings falls from her and the glow on her skin returns to the sparse yellow of overhead lights. Despite this, the glare from her wide dawn-tinted eyes was plain. "Didn't you hear me? I am an Angel! God's Divine Servant! God's First Child! The Protector of..."

"I know what you are."

"How can you be so calm?" Her briefing on this particular mission must have been lacking. She demands, snatching the cigarette from my lips and throwing it to the ground, "And how did you know my name?"

My eyes lock onto hers for the first time. Vague recognition creeps across her features. "I am disappointed that I matter so little in Heaven that Angels can no longer feel me; that my own sister does not recognize me when she sees me."

I believe she would have run, but her feet had locked into place out of fear. Angels are not allowed to fly on this plane any longer; they must become corporeal and thus bound be the laws of humanity. "Why aren't you in Hell?"

I hold her hands, attempting to calm her. "You were in that club, Arielle. Isn't watching those beams of pure, sacred potential kill themselves slowly through drugs and lust as good a punishment as eternal fire?" She gazes blankly, staring through me into Heaven-knows-what. "I'm sure that is how televangelists picture it."

After staring intently at my hands on hers, she asks sharply, "Why do you care about those dying souls? You caused their gluttony of drugs and their consuming lust."

Her words explode at me like shrapnel, shredding my hope, but not my resolve. As though just aware I still touched her, she yanks her hands out of mine. She allows herself a swift glance into my eyes, trying to sum up my soul. I use this momentary reprieve to fulfill my function, to argue as I was built to do. "You must know that these vices are built into humanity and were epidemic long before God cast me out. Ask Him." She looks to the sky, but is answered only with a polluted drizzle tracing down her face. "Sins are as much a part of His plan as you. I am as capable of making them lust as I could an Angel."

Her eyes soften toward me. It lasts only a few second before she seems to realize this herself. She turns her back on me, but I cannot let her cast me off. I grasp her shoulder and whisper into her ear in the way of lovers, "They have free will, but you must do as He bids, always. Even corporeal this short while, you must feel this will exerting on you, a certain gravity pulling you. But their free will is their only true sin and it is not born from me."

What conflict brewed within her bleeds outward in rage as she pulls herself from my grip. Had she the flaming sword of her office, I do not doubt she would have cut me in twain. I pull my leather coat off and drape it over her shivering shoulders, as though I can mistake this for the effects of the cold. This enrages her further and she mutters of my presumption, but she does not remove the coat.

While she still may be listening to me, I need to speak on. "My great sin was to question Father about humans, His best loved creation. Why he bestowed upon them free will. This sin He passed onto me, so that he could have someone able to oppose Him. So he would not be so alone among the Angels. This was the purpose He shaped for me and, when I use it as I must, I am deemed arrogant. When I treid to tell other Angels my thoughts on these beings who curse God's name or doubt He even exists, I am condemned along with any who sympathized."

When I pause to gather my thoughts, she gazes directly at me, her eyes inscrutable and violet. I cannot help myself, I place tiny kisses on her brow. Absence may make the heart grow fonder, but eons upon eons outside the presence of the divine could burn the flesh from me.

"Do you know what Hell is? Truly is?" I cry at her. "No fire, no brimstone. Man in his infinite folly invented that to rob from his brothers their will. Hell is existing without Our Father. None of His love touches me."

She frees herself from my touch. "It must be more than that. I won't hear your lies."

"I cannot lie. Even though Father cast me out, I am still His Angel... though my wings are broken."

"You lied to Eve!"

I sit upon the trashcans, my posture insisting defeat. "I did not." Arielle stares in disgust, then turns to walk away. I follow, though at a distance for fear of spooking her. "I told her that the apple would teach her and make her closer to Father. It did. Father thought so much of the humans, favoring them best of all His creations, I thought He would want them closer. Like us. How was I to know that he was trying to test their free will? They performed only as He designed and he ejected them for Paradise."

Arielle futilely covers her ears. She confesses in a near whisper, "I cannot listen to you. There is still a pure soul in that building that I am charged to rescue." Though I grasp her shoulder to stop her, she pivots and propels my hand away.

"Please, stay with me just a little longer. Everyone else has fallen away on my account. Tell me about Home. And Father. Does he know how much I miss Him? Please tell Him how I suffer His lack."

She stares coldly at me for a minute before grimacing. "I will tell Him that I saw that are you are in agony without His Presence. That is all I will tell Him." Before she escapes me, I grab the cuff of her sleeve and fall to my knees before her.

"Is there nothing else you can do? When you thought I was just Nicholas, not your Heavenly Brother, you said you could help. You said God would forgive me! I merely want to come home. Please, if you ever loved me, help me now."

She closes her eyes and seems transported. A narrow beam of celestial light lands on her forehead. With all the grace and pity of God, she soothes, "Father's plan for you will continue. He needs you. Wait." In a flowing gesture, she smoothes back my wild hair and kisses my forehead. For barely a second, I feel God once more.

As the light fades and Arielle begins floating away, one word escapes my lips. "Promise?"

"I pray."

At that, I know I've corrupted another for my legion, another who failed His test.

Author's Note 2013/06/11: This story represents a turning point for me. I had been revising it on occasion for a few years, usually by making the prose more florid. I do not know why I thought beating my readers over the head with my sesquipedalianism equated to "better" - I certainly wouldn't have appreciated reading the story were it written by someone else - but this was my misapprehension. In 2008, I showed it to a girl I was dating and she savaged it, as she should have. (Don't trust any beta reader who has nothing but praise for you, they are too weak to be honest.) After a bit of moping - she was calling the very essence of my being into question! - I realized that she was right and put the story aside until the above revision, which removed around 2000 words from the story without changing the point. That savaging awakened me and guided me down that road that led to my serial publication, so I am rather grateful to the story for catalyzing that.
This is not to say that I think that this is a strong or original story now, simply a less verbose and more readable one. The prompt which spawned this was to create a story where two of the characters have a secret from one another, which I believe I did well enough. I recall people being impressed with my grasp of theology and suggesting that I must be a very devout Christian, which I think misses the point. If anything, this shows more that I was a student of Anne Rice than the Bible.

Stories: A Love Affair with Photography (1999)

06 Jun 2013 01:00:00 EST

She hefted the Nikon to her eye and stepped toward a blond boy, who walked without seeming to notice the world around him. "Can I take your picture?" she chirped.

He shook his head as though startled awake. "Are you talking to me?" He straightened the books he nearly hugged into his chest, seeming more concerned with their falling than this girl or her question. She knew was late to Interpersonal Dynamic and, if he stopped, she would make him later.

Her sheepish eyes met his and she stammered, "Yeah. For my class. Photo. Art 150. With Smulcheski. Fran. I have it tomorrow. I need more pictures. I only have 5. It's 24 exposure film. So, can I take your picture?"

"Okay, sure. It's not like you can steal me soul." He gave a broad, cheesy smile. She squeaked enthusiastically and hopped, which made his smile far more genuine. "Just don't make me your final project, I don't need that pressure," he warned, wagging a finger at her and laughing again.

"I won't..." She turned the lens. Click. Whirr. Readjust. "...I promise..." Click. Whirr. Readjust. "...on my honor..." Click. Whirr. Readjust. "...as a girl scout." Click. Whirr. Readjust.

His eyebrows raised. "Well, Girl Scout, that sounded like several pictures and I only said you could take one. So, I guess you owe me a few pictures..."

Her embarrassment spread over her cheeks. "Oh... well... I... I mean..."

"I understand, I took photo last semester in high school. You have to take a lot of pictures to make sure at least one comes out. You'll have to show me after you develop them."

Relieved, she smiled up at him, which was a feat as they were the same height. "Oh, good, you know..." she began and finishing the rest in the process of a swift escape, "I've... uh... got to go now."

She ran from him, toward Hudson Hall, unable to put any minute part of the encounter out of her mind. She loved this boy with all her heart and soul. She had seen him around campus for the first time this week, and knew from the beginning that he was the one. He was different from these other boys, who just wanted to get in your pants and were obsessed with the size of their... lenses. She could still almost feel their sweaty hands on her body and smell their dank, alcoholic breath. He, on the other hand, would be caring and deep and special and sweet and chivalrous and magical and precious and strong and hot and warm and cool and sensitive and seductive and sensual and sexual and five foot ten inches tall.

This was the only time she had ever spoken to him, but she could tell. She had a sixth sense about these sorts of things. This time she was right, of course. Not like last time with Bill... but that didn't matter. It wouldn't matter to him. Now she had a piece of him, etched by a two hundred and fiftieth of a second of sunlight onto the stiff plastic of the film on the inside of her camera. She carried a part of him with her.

In a few years, they would get married and she could get pregnant and have a part of him within her for nine whole months. This time she would wait to get pregnant. This time it would be romantic. He'd be gentle. He'd stop if she said no, but she would never say no to him. Why refuse perfection?

She rushed off to the dark room, warm and safe. It was the only darkness that didn't panic her now. No one could touch her here. It was just her and her prince. She developed the film almost automatically, shutting off and floating away on fantasies of him.

When the chemicals had taken hold and done their tricks, she had him. Well, she had a very tiny, two-dimensional, inverted version of him. The film was still very soft, so much like him.

She needed to put it in the dryer, but would it be safe there? She would have to guard it so none of those whores would try to steal him away. She patiently sat in front of the door, not allowing anyone to get by her. Sure, the other girls said they only wanted to dry their film, but these could be lies. She couldn't trust anyone, not since it happened. But she could trust him.

She wondered aloud what his name could be. She was sure it was something dramatic and noble. His last name would have to sound perfect with her first name, since they were going to get married. No one could tell her different, not that she ventured to talk to anyone else. They wouldn't understand. He was perfect for her, not for them.

Once the film dried, she could make as many copies of him as she wanted to, just like after they got married. She could create as many tiny versions of him as she wanted and she would love them all as much as she loved him. They would all be perfect. She would be perfect. Seeing his perfect smile inverted in the film made her long for the day - soon - that he would press his lips against hers.

After the light had drawn all of his ideal features upon the glossy paper, she quickly placed him in the photo chemicals. Slowly, ever so slowly, she saw the fluid bring him out of the hidden depths of microscopic crystals in the paper. Oh, he was beautiful. Not handsome or hot. Other boys could be that. No, she was quite sure he was beautiful.

She put the paper through the remaining cleansers and fixers so she could take him out into the light for all to see. They couldn't have him, though. He was going to be hers, forever. She walked him out into the light so she could see his beautiful - not handsome or hot, but beautiful - face.

She beamed as she saw him in the humming lights of the lobby. He was beautiful and smiled only for her. Always.

His forehead, then nose, grew darker. No! She put it through the fixer. It was perfect!

She fell to the floor, weeping and clawing, as the bright light burned her photo to a uniform, glossy black.

Author's Note 2013/06/06: I'm not precisely sure anymore the conditions under which I opted to write this story, though I will warrant it was probably for a creative writing class and not something I wrote for the hell of it. I do see some elements of a few young women I then knew, who tended to project onto boys (some informed by adolescent traumas). I intended at the time to make more of this projection in regards to her use of photo equipment (she is literally projecting to get the picture of him). I recall a section about her burning and dodging to get the picture just right, thereby falsifying and correcting reality, but that version doesn't seem to exist anymore. For the time in which is was written, I don't think it is a bad little story. Like several earlier stories I wrote, they are more snapshots than developed pieces. Neither character gets a name, which was intentional at least when it came to the guy, since she doesn't actually know anything about him. The only name we are given is Bill, a prior entanglement who burned her and, it is implied, impregnated her. There are a few trigger-warning worthy lines in this, which I do not regret in retrospect, but which I think I initially included to attract attention and use emotional shorthand the story may not have earned.

Stories: Escaping Providence (2000)

06 Jun 2013 00:00:00 EST

Keith was nothing special in an age when being unique pushed one from the herd. We all know what happens to those who wander from the herd, don't we? A predator does their species a favor.

A mediocre student, never managing to excel or fail at anything in particular, he was good enough to graduate high school, but possessed neither the grades nor the inclination to attempt college. Had he, he would have been better off financially, but would have died in a car accident one June, swerving away from a woodchuck. Without college, the woodchuck was spared such a sin on its furry soul

A month after he graduated, he married his sweetheart Anne. Seven and a half months later, she bore Keith his only daughter, Marie Lynn Samuels.

Keith was content, as his kind tends to be once they have rutted and spawned. A wife, a child, a house, a job at his father's construction company, what more could a man want?

He showed an unexpected deviancy. He was not drafted, like so many of his former classmates turned co-workers. He chose to join the army and serve his country.

He put in a few good years. Unfortunately for him, fortunately for us, he didn't see much action. Owing to some first aid courses he took at a YMCA back home, he helped patch up wounded soldiers. He kept a great many alive that rightly should have been meat for the beast. He was content. He followed orders, served his country, and had a wife and daughter waiting for him at home. What more could a man want in life?

Anne and Marie were killed and the woodchuck was blameless. A car wreck, a drunk driver who sobered up moments before his head became closer friends with the windshield than with his body, and Keith was alone in the world. Their deaths are nothing of consequence, merely means to an end.

News traveled infamously slowly in the war. Keith did not, as you may expect, take this information well.

Here, dear Keith strayed again from his societal programming and closer to our realm. Rather than grieving, toiling for his father, remarrying in due time, having another child, inheriting the construction company after his father's heart attack at 83, retiring at 60 and eventually dying in his sleep, he rewrote his page with one broad pen stroke. He disappeared from his town, his old life, everything he knew. He thought no one could find him. He expected to start a new life.

He quickly ran out of money and motivation, and who can blame him on the latter count? The transition to vagrancy was seamless. He wandered the streets, surviving winters through some fundamental tenacity to life. By all accounts, this is pretty near where his story should end. Eventually his grip on this mortal coil should weaken during some blizzard and he should end up nothing more than another dash in the city's mortality rate. Should, but doesn't, because this is where we directly intervened.

"Keith, you're late."

He looks more confused than usual, perhaps having forgotten his own name.

"What'd you call me?" he asks in a shaky timbre, looking like he spent the night in a dumpster, though last night was one of the few nights he made it to the shelter and didn't have to sleep among other discarded items. "We called you Keith, as that is your name. Keith Samuels."

"That isn't my name! Hasn't been my name for years! I don't got no name!" he shouts at us. We do try to keep these things quiet and simple and are never much for attracting attention like this. "So you don't have a name? Now that we will have to fix. Are you hungry, No-Man? Come with me. I'm sure we can find a few lotuses for you..."

Inside the diner, docility overcomes Keith. Though at first we must have seemed like Death itself, he now mellows to seeing us as an old friend paying a welcomed visit. An old friend who orders him a cheeseburger with everything - hold the onions - and a strawberry milkshake.

"...Keith, are you listening?"

We knew that he wasn't. We know nearly everything about him. We even know how he escaped his assigned lot in life.

"That's the exact meal my father used to order for me," he blubbers, transitioning from drifter to sentimental old man in record time, as predicted. We could see the tears slithering down his filthy cheek, absorbing into his tangled beard.

"We know a lot about you, as we were trying to tell you."

"But how?" His nervous gaze searches our face, and we can't risk losing him. We slide his plate closer to him, a temptation he wouldn't refuse.

"This, dear friend, is not about us. It is about you. You had a Destiny. After Anne and Marie died, you were supposed to continue your life. You chose not to. What you do not seem to understand, Mr. Samuels, is that you were not given a choice. You slipped out, changed the path you were on. Now we are here because of it. You have a new Destiny. You have earned this choice."

Keith devours his hamburger, the contents spilling out from all sides. He is warm, he has food, someone is talking to him, what more could a man want in life? Our words trickle into his ears and his eyes go wide.

"Before you open your mouth to ask, resign yourself that it is not your lot to know. Depending on your choice, that may change."

A pall came over Keith. "Choice?"

"You can live this life outside of Fate, freeze to death in the dumpster behind this very diner in a little under a month. They will dispose of your carcass discretely, we assure you. No one will mourn you. You can accept the Destiny now being offered. Or we could just kill you now and save you the trouble of deciding. And no, no one here will know we've killed. You will choke to death on your cheeseburger before anyone can help you."

Keith drops food, which hits the plate with a wet thump. Looking as though rigor mortis has already set in, Keith sits mutely as the words sink in. He could freeze, he could choke, or he could...

"...Accept the Destiny you are being handed, yes."

Our finishing his thought aloud frightens him. We can see that his brain ruled out the idea of death by freezing or asphyxiation. He had seen a homeless man frozen to death when he was little. It looked painful. He imagined that choking to death would be even worse, though faster.

Quietly and patiently, like a man who had just read his own obituary, he begs, "What is my destiny?"

"To be again. No age, no pain, just duty."

"What about my life!"

"What life? You sleep in other people's refuse. You have no friends, you turned your back on them when you left. Aside from Anne and Marie, of whom you are painfully aware, your father died a few years ago of a heart attack at 83. Your mother fell soon after, some say of a broken heart, which is technically true as she suffered a myocardial infarction. You have nothing left. You were a soldier once, and you were more than happy to follow the orders of your betters. Be a soldier again. Immortality and honor, or mortality and bathing in a men's room. Which will it be?"

In his relatively short life, he had seen his wife and daughter pass away while he was in a foreign land. He had held soldiers as their wounds took them. He had lost everything in his life. He could not bear the thought of going on this way.

"I'd rather die in a dumpster alone than live remembering," he shouts, walking out of the diner.

We hastily pay for his meal, leaving the change for the waiter who was, after all, still a son of God.

We knew Keith would react this way. Just as well, we knew that nothing we could say would alter him from his course. Once resolved, some people never change.

As he sees us following, he bolts, only to fall. We stand over him as his split chin bled into his crusted beard.

"The die has been cast. Please, at least take our cloak to keep you warm."

This he accepts hesitantly. He pulls the cloak tight over his shoulders and the chill of the winter night falls away. He smiles in spite of himself, then the corners of his mouth fall. The black threads of the cloak penetrate his skin with the speed of bullets. No blood from the wounds reaches the ground before the cloak absorbs it. The threads rip out his hair to violate him from all angles. His skin blanches to a glowing paleness. The irises of his eyes expanded until nothing could be seen but reflecting dark.

We study the fierceness of the conversion, like watching as a tornado uproots the landscape. Before the cloak claims his memory, the weakest and most mortal part, we give one final message to the man who was Keith Samuels.

"You'll have honor, you'll have eternal life, what more could a man want?" The creature at our feet gasps and grabs. We step back and sighed, "You didn't really think you could escape us, did you? Quod me nutrit, me destruit. What nourishes me, destroys me."

Author's Note 2013/06/06: This is one of the earliest elements of We Shadows to be written. I didn't know much about the universe I would be writing, but I was very fond of the idea of this plural agent affecting the destiny of a person who had slipped out of reality. The idea of someone bucking their fate informed the creation of Shane, since I didn't believe Keith could hold a story up by himself.
I submitted a version of this to a creative writing class as an undergrad and earned my favorite criticism ever: "BIG WORDS ARE DUMB." I wanted to have that emblazoned on a t-shirt and kept the paper for years after to show to people. The class seemed a lot more focused on poems about badger skulls and girls infected with acute Maya Angelou-itis - as tends to be the case in creative writing classes - so I didn't get much from my classmates. I recall two other criticisms focused on how vampire stories are stupid (despite the absence of vampires in his story) and that no one reads comic books (which I am almost certain I didn't draw). However, the professor immediately saw the larger picture and described exactly the universe in which this took place, going so far as to label this as a chapter in the middle of a fantasy novel. I can't be certain he wasn't a Time Lord who appeared to cheer me on... Thoth bless those writing teachers who encourage us at the right moment.
Overall, I don't see this as a strong story. Keith has almost no personality before the agent interferes with him, which was intentional given that I was attempting to demonstrate how this imperious character barely saw him as sentient. The reader is not given much reason to care about him as a character, only as an object of pity that is abused by outside, supernatural forces about which the reader knows very little. I prefer my stories character driven.

Stories: Always Darkest (2010)

05 Jun 2013 00:00:00 EST

Dawn rose after noon the day she died. You've known her since kindergarten, when she stole your fire truck during recess and you socked her in the arm. You had been inseparable since, once she contented herself to take no more than most of your time and the only pain you caused her involved pointed questions.

You watched as she side-stepped the homeless woman begging change on the corner. From across the opposite curb, you saw the truck crush her, your arm caught in mid-wave. You rushed to her, but the damage was too severe, too unquestionably fatal. You'd heard that quick deaths are supposed to be a comfort because the deceased didn't suffer.

Dawn disagreed. Once you were home again, after answering the questions from the police, once you were back in your apartment with the tension and fear leaking from your eyes, your phone rang. Dawn asked you to swing by the hospital and pick her up. She hung up and didn't answer when you called back. So you went to pick her up because what else were you to do?

She told you that it had been a mistake. The truck had just shocked her heart, but she'd revived thanks to adrenaline. "Could you not mention this to anyone else?" she asked, almost embarrassed. You were so grateful that you acceded, as strange as you found it. You'd been there. You'd been certain she died. You'd seen the broken bones, the blood, the injuries that no longer existed when she hopped into the passenger's seat of your car. The only heart shocked was yours.

She wouldn't talk about it on the way back to her home, said it felt like sleep. She woke up to doctors calling it a miracle and was discharged. You had joked that she must be a superhero, then amended this to "zombie".

She went to work the next day, selling music at a tiny store on Main Street. She greeted you with a kiss on the cheek--her frustrating custom--when you had come in to check on her. Her dark hair smelled of lilacs and ashes. Her green eyes were crisp as apples. In retrospect, you have tried to remember if her lips were cold, if there had been any indication. Dawn had a way of confusing the subject. You'd try to talk about one thing, tried to pin down definitions, but found yourself in a conversation about the minutia of books without knowing how. She thought it was charming, but you held it as one of the reasons you could never date her. Not for very long, at least.

You had asked her to meet you for dinner, tried to confirm a where and when. You caught the quick look downward before she declined, as she felt for something in her pocket, but couldn't register its meaning. "I have another appointment," she said.

"I'll come," you replied. "I'll drive you and then we'll get a bite to eat after."

"No, I need to go alone. It's a lady issues problem," she replied, the force of her denial startling you.

"I can deal with lady issues," you began to say, having known this as her stock excuses, but then came to the real issue. "You scared the hell out of me yesterday. I don't want you to be alone."

"I want to be alone. You are around me too much."

Maybe it was that look in her eyes, the hard pleading, but you listened.

Though you called her daily, it is a week before you see her again, hobbling down the street, when you are on your way to confront her.

"What's wrong with you?" you begin, the question all accusation, but you catch sight of her face under her hoodie. You repeat the question with sincerity.

"Nothing," she croaks. Her eyes are glassy and stare through you. Her face is blanched and her lips, blue. When you were ten, you walked in on your grandfather dying, his heart giving up the fight. He looked better than Dawn.

"You need to get to the hospital," you insist, pulling on her arm. You feel something sharp underneath the fabric of her shirt. It is only much later that you will realize it was one of her bones, shattered.

"No, they can't help. I screwed up." She gets into your car, but you don't turn the key. The story pours out of her. It didn't take a chess game for her to best death. Dawn woke on the floor of the morgue to her phone buzzing in her pocket. She answered and a voice like an apiary asked if she would rather be dead. Of course she wouldn't, she answered. So it was settled and she found her body amongst the corpses, falling back into it and reviving. But there were conditions.

"Are you saying you kill people?" you say, realizing your proximity in an enclosed space to the undead.

"Ye-no," she corrects. "People die. I happen to be there. I make sure they do. They are supposed to die. I think." She looks at her hands, the blueness of the veins showing through her bloodless skin.

"How do you know they are supposed to? How do you know what to do? How do you know where to be?" you continue, too loudly. You want to poke holes in her story, to make it any less true, but looking at her convinces you that the impossible may be the easiest answer.

In lieu of answering, she fishes her beat up phone from her pocket and flips it open, pushing a few buttons. A text message pops up from a number that is all zeroes, giving a location just outside of town, yesterday's date, and a time. When you reach out for the phone, she jerks it away and hides it in her pocket.

"What happened there?" you ask.

"I don't know. I wasn't there."

"So you don't have to be a part of this, then."

"I wasn't there and now I look like this. He didn't die yesterday, so I died again last night. I can feel myself rotting right now."

"How can we make this better?"

"Only you," she says back, then coughs in a way that rattles in her. "Only you could be concerned about how to make death better."

"You aren't dead," you argue.

"No. I am Death."

The solution comes to you. She missed an "appointment" and began to die again. But, despite her injuries after the accident, she was whole when you picked her up. She had to hit her next appointment.

"But I don't know when-" she began and was cut off by the phone. It was so very like television writer's clich� that you both jump and laugh at your fear. She glances down at the phone and says, "It's in ten minutes. And it's eleven miles away."

So, without further conversation, you drive, well exceeding the speed limit. It isn't a question of the insanity of the act--you wouldn't be Dawn's best friend if you were on the side of sanity--but that this was the only way to be helpful.

You arrive with seconds to spare, Dawn jumping out of the car. A car, attempting to cut you off, swerves into a telephone pole. Dawn searches for her appointment and you see in her ghoulish face that she is ignorant of the danger now listing her way. You honk the horn and fumble with the seatbelt, but the pole smashed down before you can come to the rescue.

You run from your car anyway, to assess the damage. You are shocked to see Dawn standing there, not merely unharmed but looking herself again.

"What?" is all you can manage.

She nods her head toward the pole where a shaggy haired man lies crushed.

"He pushed me out of the way. Because he heard your horn, he ran out of that shop."

You forget the danger of the live wires and try to push the pole off him, but Dawn puts a hand to your shoulder.

"Stop. I wouldn't be here if he could be saved, would I?"

"But... he died because we rushed here."

She slowly nods. "Yeah, he did."

By now, the crowd is gathering, looking at you two.

"We should get out of here. I don't need to attract attention, being involved with two fatal accidents, you know?"

She leads you back to your car but you can do no more than sit and process. "Either drive or give me the keys," she says. You opt for the former.

"So you were right," she says when you get her to the driveway of her apartment. She offers a tiny laugh, barely more than a breath.

"And because I was right, we caused the death of some stranger."

"You knew we would. I was unsubtle about what would happen. I cause death. Now I am okay. Just like that." She spreads her tan fingers before your face, the stale perfume of her skin echoing after. "Poof!"

"Are you okay with what happened?" you ask.

She pushes you, enough to cause impact with the driver's side door but not pain. "I'm not a monster. Jeez, why would you ask me that?"

"You aren't acting very upset."

She shrugs and spins a ring--a present from you for her last birthday--around her finger. "I didn't know him. I'm sure he was plenty nice, but I guess it was his time."

"Because we interfered."

She looks up from her hands, scowling. "You didn't have to."

"I did. You were all sorts of jacked up."

"You didn't have to," she reiterates, "but you did. So thank you."

"Yeah, well, what was I supposed to do?"

"What you did." She leans over and gives you a kiss on the cheek, exiting your car.

As far as you know, things return to some version of normal. If she has any more appointments, you don't hear about them. You find articles about the man who died. He was in his twenties and, from what you could tell, he lead a blameless life that should have lasted another sixty years. There was never any mention of Dawn or you, which does not slake your guilt.

You visit her to hang out, to get your friendship back on track, but you end up telling her about the man.

"I don't want to know," she says.

"I figured, since I helped-"

"Why are you so adamant about always being the one to help me?" she shouts.

"Maybe because you are always the one who needs help," you retort before you can stop yourself.

The remark doesn't register on her face. You know this means she is now running through stacked reasoning. You just have to play your part until she is satisfied enough to let it drop.

"You have to agree that your life would be a lot easier without the albatross of Dawnie dangling from your neck," she says.

"I don't want easier and you aren't an albatross." You see her open her mouth to explain. "And yes, I get the reference."

"You should want easier."

You shake your head. "How about we work on easier once you finish being Death?" "I don't think I--"

"I know," you say.

The next day, she calls you for an appointment. You drive her to Breakneck Ridge hours early. She brings a picnic lunch, all the foods you love most and a bottle of good champagne. You can almost enjoy this for what it is without remembering how it has to end. You can watch the tide of the Hudson lap at the shore until the sunset dyes the water in pinks and oranges, and she rests her head against your chest, listening to your heart.

You check your watch and, seeing the time is nearly up, scan for Dawn's target. No sooner have done this than you realize. That bond, that connection you've always shared with her, shows itself reciprocal now.

"I'm sorry, so sorry," she says. You feel the breeze against the wet spot on your t-shirt. She looks at her hands, as she did the fetal pig she made you dissect in biology, disgusting work she couldn't do. Is she waiting for you to do this for her too?

"Why me?"

She looks away, to hide the tears, but they saturate her voice. "It's always been you. You were the appointment I missed. Everyone I killed, I killed instead of you. I tried to stay away..."

She reaches her hand toward you and you don't retreat.

Author's Note 2013/06/05: Always Darkest was first published in Paragon 3 in 2010 and takes place in the fantasy universe of the Night's Dream series. It has been occasionally reprinted elsewhere, with permission. I have intentions of expanding this into another entry into the series, though not for a few years. Yet again, love doesn't end happily, though I am intentionally cagey as to the nature of the narrator's relationship with Dawn. It was my first experiment with a second person story, which I think contributes to its intimacy and the shock at the end.

Stories: Columbine (2001)

04 Jun 2013 00:00:00 EST

He pulls back the wooden chair from the table. It moans as its legs scrape the linoleum floor causing him to wince as he sits. He piles his large, black coat on the chair beside him - too big for the chair and much too big for him - releasing a breeze of leather and incense. Nervously, he looks across the table at the raven haired girl. When her lips break into a coy smile, he returns the expression, and graces her soft cheek with the backs of his fingertips.

"Been waiting long?"

She smiles at his trite word choice and thinks for a moment of saying, "I've been waiting 17 years." She decides against this because she cannot manage to get those words out, her throat constricts at the mere thought. She wasn't sure if that was true or such sentiments would go over well. Sometimes - not often, but sometimes - in these few weeks of getting to know him through long conversations on her parents' phone, he seemed like a trapped animal looking for a way to escape. Other times, he seemed placid, caged or no. Instead, she chirps the lie that she only just got to the diner. She had been waiting at least half an hour, but she wanted to be early to miss nothing, not even anticipation. She hardly wanted to burden him. "Long" was relative, so she wasn't really lying. She could never lie to Luke. He seems so accepting, as though she could pour her entire life in his ear and he wouldn't miss a drop. She did not feel she had much of a life to pour. Not compared to him. He was in college; he had done so much, seen so much.

He looks at her, wondering if this constitutes a first date and, if it does, how he should behave. He wishes he could tell her that he was never good on first dates, but he is not exactly sure if this is a date and knows he is probably very good at first dates, not that he wants to become an expert on this topic.

He didn't mean to start falling for Eileen. She served as a better confessor and sympathizer than any of his friend these last few weeks and, predictably, his feelings for her shifted from appreciative to romantic. She is surprisingly deep for her age. For any age, actually. He was annoyed with himself every time he mentioned that she was younger. It was society's problem, not his. He bites his lip, wondering silently if he should even be planning these arguments yet. This certainly wasn't in his hands.

The waitress came by and asks for drink orders. Eileen orders a diet cherry cola. For some reason, he finds this deeply significant and becomes achingly aware of her lips forming the words, her bubblegum tongue against her teeth as she pronounces "la." When the waitress looks toward him, she sees that his eyes have remained locked on the girl across from him. She does not have time for silly romantics and clears her throat violently. He looks up and, embarrassed with his transparency, coughs out, "The same," though he does not like diet soda, finding it too cloyingly artificial.

When the waitress leaves, slightly disgruntled, he puts his hand lightly upon Eileen's. She looks down at his ashen pink fingers on her own, the promise ring he still wears. She feels an electric blue charge from his fingers as they trace her own, though they look for a moment like inhuman appendages. The very idea of fingers connected to hands connected to wrists and arms and shoulders and torsos and... The electricity reaches her face and she sharply gasps. She didn't know boys could do that. He lifts her hand to his lips and kisses it. He really has a hundred and two things to say to her, but these small affections overtake his mind. They are what count. He cannot bear to say anything insignificant to her. If he is going to have a fresh start - is this a fresh start? - it is going to be nothing less than beauty and poetry. "Aesthetically Epicurean" jumps to his mind, though he is sure that is not the intended coupling of the words.

Likely if he were to voice this longing to her, she would echo. But he is afraid of changing the distance between them.

Eileen catches his gaze and locks on with an intensity she had read about in Pablo Neruda sonnets in English class. There is so much in his eyes, so much for her alone. So much pain and confusion too, but the vulnerability is sexy to her. She can make a boy, a college boy, swoon for her. She could swallow him whole and have not dented her appetite. In fact, she muses, she may if she gets half a chance. But even sitting so near to her, touching her, fanning a white flame within the secret crevices of her mind and body, he is still far away. "Do you think we are too different, Luke?"

He cranes his head back and breaks physical contact with her, startled. "What? No, I don't at all think that. We are, at our cores, very similar when you think about it. The same things matter to us. And that is all that matters to me. I was wooed by your words, not your clothes. And pardon my saying, but I am terribly interested in all that goes on beneath your clothes. Metaphorically speaking." Though he isn't, not totally.

Her cheeks blush like a ripening peach upon hearing these words. Surprisingly innocent for words so potentially charged. She purrs, "You kill me, you know. You say these things that create the most sublime happiness within me. But I worry..." She gazes into his liquid gray eyes and his conflict is palpable and endearing, if slightly uncomfortable to watch. He is trying so hard for her. Not wholly for her, for himself too. A moment to make things real, rather than covered in a faint yellow mist that distorts and clings to ones ankles and fingers.

"I wish I could have clarity for you." He lifts her hand to his lips again for a grazing kiss by way of example. Over the hills and valleys of her fingers, he gives her a piercing glance and looks down. "I can't prove to you how I feel, except with big words and small gestures. I would never want to lose you as a friend... as more than a friend."

He envelops her hands in his, warming the flesh. Every breath she takes is statically charged velvet, caressing her throat and lungs requiring ever-larger doses not to swoon. She would melt if he would lean across the table and place his almost feminine lips on hers. But she would have to wait to become a puddle at his feet. She can see how much he wants her, but he restrains himself. She understands why he does and actually hates him just a little bit for caring so much. She's too young to understand patience, she thinks. She is about to say this, but the waitress sets their drinks down.

"Ready?"

Luke looks at Eileen and she nods demurely. She had studied the menu before he arrived, nearly memorizing the entrees in her nervousness. She had given each one careful consideration in their turn. She certainly didn't want to order anything messy, for fear that it would stain her clothing. Definitely nothing with garlic or onions, as she had remained in a constant state of readiness to be kissed since they had set a date one week ago. Nothing that she would have to eat with her hands, save French fries and sandwiches. Nothing too expensive either, because she didn't have much money on her and would be chagrined if he offered to pay. Finally she had settled on the chicken club deluxe.

Luke thinks about her order for a moment and asks for fried calamari. He quickly looks at Eileen and is relieved to see that she doesn't wince at his order. He ate fried calamari because it made him feel vaguely worldly, though he had never had it except in local restaurants, which he had never been far from.

Taking a long sip of her soda, Eileen searches for something to say to him. He has just ordered squid, which normally seemed unpleasant. She had never actually met anyone who ate it and remembered faintly that they are supposed to have the rough intellect of dogs. The squid, not those who eat them. Well, whichever little cephalopods had died to afford Luke a meal should consider themselves posthumously lucky. At this stage, it seemed they would be reaching his mouth long before she did.

She had hoped that the soda would subdue the burning. It simply made her slightly less thirsty. The bubbles tickle her nose, causing her to wriggle it like a cartoon bunny. This, Luke quickly became aware, weakens his resolve not to kiss her just yet. Shaking his tousled brown hair, he sighs, "This is not working."

It felt to Eileen as though her brain had liquefied and now sought to escape through her eyes. She thought all of this was working wonderfully. He was touching her and he was sweet and caring and sensitive and unlike the boys she knew at school. And he said it wasn't working. She felt thousands of fissures appear in her heart. As her eyes began to tear, her enormous blue gaze connected full force with his.

The rain about to fall from her eyes confuses and dismays him. A sudden comprehension overtakes him and he babbles out, "No, you misunderstand. The talking in the greasy spoon, three and a half very large feet from one another is not working. Everything else is... indescribably great. I can't know you how I want to here." He wipes her eyes dry with his sleeves. Overwhelmed by having both hands on her face, he leans in and gently kisses her brow.

Smiling once more, though his words have a definite intimate edge, she coos, "Where is it that you could know me... how you want to?" Her eyes look like that of an angel or child. Luke is struck guilty over how much more he wants her.

Glancing skyward, he sighs again. It occurs to Eileen that he has been sighing a lot. With a dramatic flourish, he offers her his hand. "Do you trust me?"

She takes his hand in hers, in the moment and too willing to lie to see how far this could go. "Totally."

"Then come with me."

Objectively, she is aware that going with an older boy to some unknown destination at his insistence is what very silly girls do a few days before they turn up in pieces in a dog food factory. Subjectively, this was Luke asking her. Luke who had eyes that were green-blue-gray with flecks of hazel. Luke with hair that smells of spring. She honestly did trust him, even after not really talking to him face to face in three years. The last time he could touch her, she was fourteen and picking up toys at the children's museum where he worked. The world was a different flavor now, doused with cinnamon. So, she threw caution to the wind and possibly let herself be swept off her feet. Her shoes were not comfortable anyway, it would be very nice to be swept off of them. "But... what about our food?"

This statement throws him off for a moment, but no longer than a moment. "We will simply ask the very nice waitress to make it to go."

As though answering her cue in this private play, the waitress walks toward the table with their plates. Luke smiles ingratiatingly at her and she groans, "What?"

"Could you please, Miss Waitress, whose hair is as golden as fields of wheat and who brings us the riches of the sea and land, please give us two take out boxes?" The waitress tries to be frustrated with him, but Luke can tell that he has won her over. Nonetheless, she adopts the hard exterior that is standard issue with the stained apron and grumbles, "You just ordered it. Why did you order it at your table if you were just going to leave?"

Eileen assumes a part in the play, much to his enjoyment, explaining, "We just figured it out ourselves. I mean... he got a call and has to take me home. My parents might get upset otherwise. Ma'am. Miss?"

"Fine, I'll go get you the Styrofoam boxes." Before she stomps off, Luke grabs the corner of her greasy apron. When she focuses her at him, he pulls out three ten-dollar bills, grins madly, and hands them to her. She takes hold of the bills, experimentally, as though Luke may pull them away. When he lets go, she gives him a wry grin and walks away with the monosyllabic admonition of "Kids."

Two Styrofoam boxes later, they are in Luke's car. Eileen sits passively. On her lap rests the food, of which she is too scared to partake. She still does not know where he is going and secretly believes he will be just as surprised at the destination when the car stops. Perhaps the car knows Luke better than her and can guess where he would take a young prospect. The oily diner food smells foreign outside of its Formica context and causes the butterflies in her stomach to try to escape for a moment.

"We're here."

"Here" was the locked front gate of a local park. He takes the food from her and exits the car. She unfastens her seatbelt and calls out to him.

"The park is closed."

"Yes. I know that. All the better."

She can't actually argue with this reasoning, though she has trouble placing if this were a reason. "Your car though?"

"It will be perfectly safe. It has yet to disappear under cover of night. I don't see why it should start now." He is not nearly as confident as this statement suggests and hopes that the fog enveloping them hides the quaver in his voice. Tonight is to be amazing and every shocking gesture that implied he was daring and clever was worth the potential walk back to civilization should his car be towed.

He leads her past the gate and she watches the car melt into the fog. They walk for several minutes, long enough that she loses equilibrium and realizes that she will be dependent on him to right her. She regrets that her afterthought is that no one knows where she is. It doesn't matter, she thinks, and she is old enough to take care of herself if it does matter. But it won't.

A rock catches her foot, which is not clad in shoes befitting one who is going to be tramping about a foggy park after closing. She stumbles into him, though not quite as romance novels suggest. Not that she reads romance novels anymore. He catches her before she can become more acquainted with the earth beneath her. As his arm lifts her, she sees that it was at the expense of his squid.

"I'm so sorry!"

"Not to worry, I guess the squids just wanted to be free." He nudges one with the toe of his boot. Eileen cocks her head to the side by means of questioning this action. "Run, my little friend, run and be free."

They stop at a small gazebo. Luke decides that this must have always been the destination, unbeknownst to him, for it seems to repel the fog. The air is no less damp and he notes with amusement that Eileen's hair is home to thousands of droplets of dew. He wants to tell her this and that she is the most beautiful girl he has ever seen. He wants to tell her that this is perfect. Instead he asks for a French fry.

She opens the box by way of answer and the foam clamshell emits a squeak. She giggles despite herself and suddenly feels very immature to have found this quite so funny, but the image of an excited mollusk is still too strange to stop the laughter.

Sitting on a damp bench, Luke's duster beneath them absorbing the brunt of the seeking moisture, he turns to her. Until his mouth opens, he doesn't know what he will say. "Is this how you expected the night to be?"

"Yes."

Her answer is simple and she feels no need to explain further. She spreads his duster wide under her and rests her head on his lap. She knows how bold a move this is when one has yet to claim the prize of a kiss, but she is in a mood for bold gestures. Rather, she is in a mood to commit boldness upon him, if only to provoke reaction. Had he done something this forward she... might have melted. Or maybe froze. There would be a change in physical state to be sure.

He shuts his eyes, if only to take stock of the night up until this point. She has set chemicals flowing in his blood he had forgotten. His mind gives him a refresher course in high school biology, invoking the name of serotonin and adrenaline. He bites his lip to stem the lesson and ground some part of his body in pain.

He strokes her hair, pleased by the sensation of it turning to liquid beneath his fingers. He doesn't know what comes next and he finally doesn't care. There is no specter of an ex in the back of his mind. Eileen no longer has parents who would disapprove. He was no longer in college and she in high school. All that was and should be for him was her head in his lap.

She looks up at him and sees the first completely honesty smile cross his lips. The butterflies abandon their gastric home and catch fire. She awaits the feel of his lips as he leans down to her and closes her eyes to prolong the expectation of the inevitable.

She opens her eyes again and notes with consternation that he has still yet to kiss her. She catches his sideways, almost remorseful, glance. "I love you."

She sits quickly upright. "Repeat that?"

"I said... that I love you."

He looks at her and knows. She doesn't love him. Maybe he doesn't really love her either, but it is too late to backpedal. The words mix with the moisture in the air and set the scene in concrete. She opens her mouth to speak, to explain all of this. To work damage control. "Luke... Luke... I..."

"Shh... I know. Please, let's stop pretending."

She kisses him on the lips, but the kiss is one of defeat and remorse. A thank you and they lose one another to the fog.

Author's Note, 2013/06/04: I wrote the first half of this story (pretty nearly everything that happened in the diner) in early 2001, in lieu of a first date with a young woman named Eileen. I was fresh out of a relationship and pretty confused, as you can read here. As in the story, the largely chaste and verbal affair ended when I whispered to her (on the phone instead of in person) that I was falling in love with her, as it should have. After a bit of consideration, I decided this would make a better ending than the two getting happily together.
I deeply regret that some of the things Luke says in this story are nearly verbatim what I wrote to her. This alone may give a fine example for why one should not insert oneself as a character, as I now find Luke to be frustrating and annoying, if a bit more realistic for that. Still, one can see a leitmotif of my work to come: romances are not easy and rarely resolve themselves the way media suggests, especially for delusional romantics. All this talk of stomach butterflies made its way into the beginning of We Shadows, too.

Event: Artists, Authors, and Photographers Weekend at the Rhinebeck Aerodrome 2013/06/29-30

03 Jun 2013 00:00:00 EST

Thomm will be selling and signing his books while vintage airplanes pretend to shoot one another. There is a $15-$20 entrance fee for the Aerodrome.

Xenology: A Room of One's Own

03 Jun 2013 01:00:00 EST

"You're wonderful," Amber says, looking up from her bracelets.

"I'm not. We have long arguments in my head, only I think better of including you in them. It's like playing chess, thinking a dozen moves ahead and not seeing any positive outcomes."

"Oh," she says brightly. "You can say whatever you want to me."

I raise an eyebrow, ceasing for a moment the task of trying to clean and organize our apartment two weeks after we've moved in. "No. I really cannot if you are going to persist in liking me and living here."

I want for this to be our apartment, to exploit the artistic talent of my girlfriend for decorative purposes, but she is too busy. I haven't missed her more than I have these last few weeks, when all of her time is given to making bracelets. I go to bed without her and she stumbles in at three or four to get a few hours sleep before returning to the pins, thread, and denim. I don't fault her, I would work hard to meet a deadline with such a seductive pay out, but it is nevertheless inconvenient for me to work full time, make our apartment livable, and try to pull together the first draft of Flies to Wanton Boys (the latter of which has suffered in the move, as I am only about a tenth of the way through and have literally hundreds of notes of changes that will need to be made). I cannot leave the apartment full of boxes and clutter, not when the whole point of this move for us is to finally have space. This sets the precedent for how our home will be henceforth and I cannot allow it to be squalor ever again. Amber has already dedicated a portion of the down payment given to her for the bracelets on getting us a portable dishwasher, since she feels she lost hundreds of hours in our old apartment making the glassware usable again.

Our prior apartment, only half a mile down the street, always felt a bit cheap to me and never really ours. Above a stationary shop and directly next to one of the main thoroughfares in Red Hook, there was little that occurred on the street below that wasn't transmitted to our living room and bedroom, most notably the weekly 5am delivery to the hardware store next door. Even a week of sleeping in my new bedroom, so quiet as to be almost disturbing, I find myself more lucid, happy, and energetic.

This sort of sleep deprivation is sneaky, because you don't realize how much its grayness colors your daily life. After a few night without being interrupted by drag-racers, freight trucks, or midnight Bard lushes mistaking themselves for Journey, my brain and body seems to reach a new sort of cooperation. My mood markedly improves, I become far more loving to Amber, I am in fuller possession of my vocabulary (which is, obviously, one of my favorite mental toys). I no longer need to rely on melatonin to fall asleep and stay asleep. For these benefits alone, the apartment might be worth the added cost.

The room designated as the studio is a mess, of course. Aside from a few dozen seedlings she has sprouted for her community garden plot, there is no real work space for Amber. It seems unlikely this will change before July, when Amber has her first solo show. The moment she finishes the bracelets, she will dive into drawing and painting without real consideration for making her studio at all spacious. Instead, as she has done with the bracelets, clear patches of floor upstairs will be her impromptu workspaces.

The stated plan was for this room to be a mutual workspace, but my brain rapidly excises it from the floor plan for the apartment, so much so that I have occasionally wandered around the apartment looking for Amber for a minute before thinking to peek into the studio. I love the idea of a place we create art together, but I quickly adopt a corner of the bedroom, since I need no more than area enough to sit with my collapsible desk, Kindle, and mini-notebook computer. I hope there will come a time where we tackle the disorder beast, but I don't plan my writing schedule around it.

I do not mean to imply that I am fastidious. When I lived alone for years, there would be a mad dash every Friday afternoon to make it seem I was a civilized human being, before company could learn what a lie this was. I can't deny, however, that I don't enjoy a certain order. Growing up with two brothers, I internalized that I would dwell in slovenliness unless I took it upon myself to clean communal spaces and fight back the demons of filth on a near daily basis. I was the clean one by default, but it was not a descriptor I wanted for myself, this sort of Felix Unger obsession with everything being in its proper place. I was still a boy after all and "proper place" for my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was little more than a drawer under my bed absent its original dresser, where they mingled with Legos and vending machine baubles. I just wanted not to step on broken toys, sticky patches that never dried, and moldy plates.

This new apartment seems to me an extension of my relationship with Amber more so than our prior one, which we more or less occupied to give ourselves a place to be and not because we cared for it. Set far back on a road that has been resigned to admitted disrepair, we are surrounded by verdure. Outside our high bedroom window is a garden, there is a faded wooden porch beyond the doors of the studio, a massive flowering bush all but engulfs the windows of the next building over. There are trees everywhere and a small stream that separates the property from that of Central Hudson. On the other side of the hill on which out apartment is set lies a basketball court that must have once been loved, there is remains only one hoop. Our realtor detailed that another building on the property used to be a speakeasy and that there had been a pool before the landlord decided that would be a liability. When we were checking out the apartment, one of our neighbors informed us that there is a pond through the forest, which we found and trespassed by in favor of an orchard. Beside us in the apartment is the unofficial repair and maintenance man, who is jovial to a fault. Across from us, two couples of Bard grad students. Above our front door light is a bird's nest with three baby birds who seem to have been edited out of a Disney movie judging by how cutely they peep at me every morning. Even the well water makes me feel better, my hair slightly more manageable and my body feeling cleaner after a shower.

It's not perfect. The water heater needed replacing and two of our faucets could use aerators. The rustic world outside occasionally intrudes with stinkbugs and ants walking over our dirty dishes. Still, these seem to be small prices to pay for a home that can welcome the people I love, rather than cramming them in as sardines in a can. I feel for the first time that I am living somewhere, not merely occupying a space until the next step in my life occurs.

Xenology: Success in the Arts

25 May 2013 00:00:00 EST

In the last month, Amber and I have done The Pine Bush UFO Festival and Parade and the Berkshire Anime and Manga Convention. I can see how people would presume that these events are cake walks. After all, we just sit there, not doing much of anything, while fun things occur all around us (n.b., usually when you are having transcendent amounts of fun, there is someone nearby being paid minimum wage to sweep up after you or help you stay hydrated at a premium).

For the UFO Festival, we woke up at five in the morning on a Saturday, drove over an hour, set up a tent and a half dozen displays, unloaded thousands of dollars worth of Amber�s art and my books that I bought from my publisher months ago at no small expense, all while sitting outside ten feet from terrible DJs who put on a mix of the worst songs in history, turned up to level that genuinely caused my body to shake, and then left it on random for the next six hours while pollen from the trees attempted to make sweet, nonconsensual love to my every mucus membrane. I did a free reading and then took questions at the library, but was initially met with nervous stares. My parents came and tried to prime the pump, but the only succeeded in arousing the attention of an elderly man in a suit, who took it upon himself to try to debunk my fiction. I restated that I am not out to prove or disprove anything, simply to use the mythology to tell a good story. At the end of the talk, he shook my hand and said, "Look me up. I�m the last entry in the phone book. You�ll laugh when you see it. The government made me take myself out of all books, but I�m allowed to put myself back again. I expect to hear from you." The only things that seemed to sell at the fair were vastly overpriced alien balloons. We did not get back home until eleven that night, at which point I could barely do more than croak. For this, Amber did not sell enough to cover the cost of her table and I sold a solitary book, the proceeds of which went immediately to buying Amber lunch because I left my wallet at home. With materials and mileage figured in, we likely ended up paying over a hundred dollars to be there.

BAMCon wasn't better. The positive was that it was indoors and the pollen couldn�t booty call me. The negatives were that we spent three day at a convention where we were ignored by the convention-goers, who numbered in the dozens rather than the hundreds we expected. I did a single panel - though I informed the organizers that I was game for at least three if I were made an official guest - that did not seem to be nearly as well-received as it was during No Such Convention. For want of a comped hotel room by virtue of my being a guest, Amber and I commuted three hours a day and subsisted on beef jerky, popcorn, and whatever fast food we could stomach for dinner. I sold a single issue of Beside the Still Waters to a man who had no real interest in who I am or what the book may be about. Ours was simply the first table he came to. Amber again barely made the cost of her table and didn�t come close to making this worth her while. As we packed up on Sunday, I overheard one of the officials of the convention blaming the poor turnout on the artists and vendors and saying he would charge them 15% more next year to make up for it.

These are far from glamorous. However, they are a form of success. While Amber sat bored, she busily made denim bracelets to meet an order. An advertising firm initially wanted three and five thousand. Amber said that she could make five hundred and suggested some other Etsy sellers who would make up the difference. They asked for a thousand and increased their offer 50% on each bracelet, which is one hell of a way to negotiate. While I didn�t sign proper books, I came very close to finishing my fourth novel. I need only give it a thorough read before I can send it off to my beta readers for their input. Flies to Wanton Boys could be out by the end of the year.

These are not the only forms of success in our lives. Not only did my day job not shut down, I was guaranteed at least another year of employment with the state and given a contractually mandated raise, meaning I am now making significantly more than I was at this same time last year. Owing to this, Amber and I are moving to a bigger place so she can have a studio, though we had to put off for half a month to preparing for Pine Bush and BAMCon. Two years ago, I had never done a solitary signing and lived in a studio apartment alone, where I barely managed to substitute teach enough to keep myself fed and out of debt. Now, I have the privilege of exhausting my weekends watching people not buy things I've slaved over, which is honestly a wonderful step up.

There is a misapprehension that success is when the work becomes easy. While I love the anecdote about Douglas Adams being kidnapped by his publisher and kept in a hotel room until he finished his promised sequel, that is not my life. Very likely, I will have dozens more signing events where I do little more than read other people�s books and pester Amber with hypothetical questions in order to provoke conversations. Things will not be easy for a long while yet, but this does not mean we are not sowing the seeds for further successes.

At BAMCon, I told Amber, "I wish these people understood how great we actually are. You are being solicited by an ad firm to make a thousand bracelets, I have three books out. They don�t know because they have no reason to. Short of shouting a resume at them, they can�t know."

It is all about perpetuating the myth of myself at this point. (At least, this is what I try to tell myself after I fail to sell anything.) What if this is a good event, as NonCon was in February? What if just the right person gets her hands on one of my books, someone who would otherwise never hear my name except I was sitting in the right place at the right time? I have heard dozens of stories of authors whose big break came simply because some teen shoved their book at daddy and said, "This is good. Have your publisher acquire it/turn it into a movie." These events are the price of admission to being a real writer and, I am pleased to note, several newspapers mentioned my presence at the UFO Fair.

I don�t expect that it is a closely guarded secret that signings are not always pleasant experiences. I can sit for four hours and deal with nothing more than people looking at the back of my books and then walking away or, as was the case in Pine Bush, pointing at the cover of Artificial Gods and pronouncing that they witnessed that very ship before ambling away. Several people walked up to my books, on which my name is emblazoned, and ask if these are all by local authors. I pointed out that they are all written by me, so yes. Then I get that look, one that seems to say, "I was about to fake an interest and buy nothing, but now I feel pressured by the fact that you are sitting there and do not match my assumption for what the author of these books should look like, so I am going to awkwardly shuffle and walk away." (It is a loquacious look, no doubt.)

I don't know how often beginning writers hear from struggling, though arguably successful, ones. I think I nursed the mistaken belief that authors at events sold well because I know I gravitated toward them and have several signed books by authors I happened to run into. I found the very concept exciting and heartening. However, I did not then spend six hours watching people not buy their books, so it is possible there was some sampling bias.

Still, I remind myself that all this hard work means I am growing more successful. How many writers never get published, let alone three novels in a series with no clear end? How many published writers don't acquire readers because they sit at home and do nothing more than hope? I am in the minority if just because I am proactive in making myself so, even if it feels as though I am very far from it when people with robotic cat ears pass by my books in favor of stale Pocky and Ramune.

Interview with Thomm Quackenbush by Kara Leigh Miller

11 May 2013 02:00:00 EST

When I first submitted We Shadows to publishers, I received so many rejection letters that I started putting them on the refrigerator. The woman I lived with at the time found this morbid, but I figured each letter was one step closer to my fated acceptance letter.