"Jumping In" - A Friday Freebie

Creepy Freebies is in full swing at Milo James Fowler's website. Drop in and see what's available from Simon Kewin, Roland Yeomans, Christine Rains, and Cate Gardner. Good stuff. 

Today, I'd like to share "Jumping In," a story originally published in Slices of Flesh. Happy reading and even happier weekend. 

"Jumping In"

by Aaron Polson

Nick skips out on the game during the third quarter and heads for the shadowed trees on the other side of the parking lot. He goes because the older boys, the cool kids Derek Hullinger, Smack Willits, and B-rad Tibbits are there, smoking GPC cigarettes and lacing every sentence with superfluous “fucks” and “shits” like a bunch of Marine Corps jarheads on leave. Nick braves the shadows and trees because he wants to be something. Derek told Nick to come, promising a chance to show his stuff. A chance to be somebody and join the team.

Who gives a shit if B-rad and Smack are nineteen and still in high school? And nobody mentions Derek Hullinger’s name without a little bit of fear. Nick wants that. He wants to be something the other kinds at Jefferson East fear, especially those testosterone amped jock-assholes on the football team.

The shadows and tall trees on the other side of the stadium scared Nick when he was a kid, but not now. Hell no. This is his chance to roll with Derek, to get some genuine respect. It’s quiet at the edge of the woods, strangely so less than a hundred yards from the stadium and jeering fans, less than a football field from the actual field with its lights and sprayed on-lines.

The little kid in Nick holds his breath. He was afraid of monsters ten years ago, now he wants to be one. The too-pissed-off-to-care teenage Nick stomps on dead leaves and snaps twigs under his feet. When he feels like it’s all over, like the blackness of the trees have eaten the world, a little orange glow shows him the way.

B-rad flips his Zippo open and shut, lighting the flame in one motion. Click, click, click.

“Nicky. What’s the good word?” Derek smells of cigarettes and whiskey and day-old sex.

Nick squints. The shadows work magic with the others’ faces. Nick imagines a spare—four instead of the three he’d expected.

“I’m here.”

“Yes,” Derek says, his voice thick and heavy and laced with more years than he’s earned. “Yes, you are. You want to roll with us, little man?”

Nick sets his jaw. “Fuck yeah.”

Derek tilts his head over a shoulder. “Hear that, Smack? He’s hungry already. Give him a treat.”

The fourth face staggers into the space between Nick and the others. It belongs to a thin kid, a freshman. Nick has seen him around before. The only light comes from B-rad’s Zippo held aloft and sliver-blue starlight filtered through the black branches above.

Nick swallows.

The skinny kid’s face is pale and moony and lost. His arms look about as big as the twigs Nick crunched on the way into the woods. The funny thing though, the kid doesn’t flinch or shake or anything.

“You want in, Nicky, you give this bit of fresh meat here a good stomp down. You give him a good stomp down, and you’re one of us.” Derek crosses his arms. The shadows play with a scar on his face, splitting his mouth in two.

Nick’s hands ball together in a pair of fists. He doesn’t really want this, to beat this scrawny kid bloody, but he doesn’t want to be nobody, either. He wants to slash tires, drink whiskey, and kick ass with Derek and Smack and B-rad. Respect waits. He teeters on the balls of his feet. A memory of himself as a freshman tumbles through his brain like a bit of trash blown by the wind. He doesn’t think about the first punch.

The scrawny kid crumbles, clutching his stomach.

Power. Nick feels it, now. Blood thrums through his head. Smack and B-rad are cheering. Derek laughs like a machine gun. Nick brings his knee into the kid’s face. The kid’s neck jerks back, shiny black blood glistening under his nose.

“Fuck yeah, Nicky.”

“Kick his ass.”

Nick trips the kid, sending him over backwards. The thin body hits the ground and “oof” pops from his mouth. He’s down, and Nick pulls back his foot and kicks, hard. He kicks again, and again, each contact followed by the same, tiny “oof.” Panting, Nick steps back after five or six good kicks—he’s lost count—and brushes sweat from his forehead.

The scrawny kid, the freshman, whoever, doesn’t even whimper. No, he pulls himself to his feet while Nick takes a breather.

“You fucker,” Nick says. The kid’s blank eyes find Nick’s. They’re blank and black and tranquil almost, like a quiet night in the woods out beyond the stadium.  Nick growls and swings a fist—he can feel it now, all the rage and old hate and venom. His eyes glaze over with red. He can feel the power of his memories, the hate for his dirty bastard of an uncle, the sons-of-bitches in uniform on the other side of the lot, and his mother for letting his father walk out four years ago. He puts all that swill in one punishing cross. The crack is audible. Nick feels it in his arm. The scrawny kid reels and spits teeth and blood.

“That’s good,” Derek says.

No, it’s not. Nick punches the kid again, this time in the side. He falls. Nick kicks him one final time, one time too many as a sickening, wet crack signals a broken rib. Nick leans on his knees, huffing and puffing, while the boy on the ground curls into a ball.

“I said that’s good.” Derek frowns slightly.

Nick flexes his sore fingers. He wipes sweat again, this time pulling his shirt to his face. When he’s done, he studies the others.

“So?”

Derek’s cheek flinches. “So?”

“Am I… In?”

There’s a noise on the ground. The others watch as the scrawny kid pulls himself up one more time. As before, there is no sound, no groan, no moan of pain. Not even a dry sob. The scrawny kid stoops and picks his bloody teeth—two of them—from the ground. He pops them in his mouth and swishes them around.

Nick’s guts go cold. There’s a snake in his stomach made of ice.

“What the fuck…”

The scrawny kid—but it’s not really a kid, Nick knows that now—smiles. All the teeth are there in neat rows. All of them.

“My turn,” it says.

Nick looks at Derek, but Derek is looking at the thing. He nods and takes a step back. The snake in Nick’s stomach coils and uncoils. He feels his bowels go loose.  Somewhere behind him, B-rad flicks his Zippo, click, click, click.

In the distance, across the lot, a cheer rises in the big stadium, but the trees and shadows have swallowed everything.

Flashback Friday, with Bonus Fiction #fridayflash

I did a little house cleaning this week. Exciting times. From a September 1986 Weekly Reader...Giant Sharks, Soviet Circus Couples, and a Rambo reference...

Man, how time flies. I was eleven when I read those articles for the first time. My students weren't alive when the Soviet Union was a country. But giant sharks...giant sharks are still scary as hell. (click the picture to enlarge and read if you're so inclined)

And a tiny bit o' fiction (a once-upon-a-time accepted story who lost its market):

"Busted"

Victor arrived home from the adult learning center with a sculpted bust.

“What’s that supposed to be?” His wife pointed and sneered.

“Frankenstein’s Monster.”

She laughed. His face blushed red, and he thought of cracking her with the sculpture.

Later, when he learned of her infidelity with the UPS man, she laughed louder.

He blushed again, but this time, he smashed her skull with the bust of Frankenstein’s Monster.

She lay on floor, arms splayed, lifeless. To hide the body, he thought, I’ll do like Frankenstein with the monster, only backwards. He shuffled to his shop for a saw.

Have a lovely weekend.

#fridayflash Chaos and the Creative Process

Chaos rumbles into the bar with a hammer in one hand. He roars. He kicks over a chair or two. The patrons tremble and cower.

All except one. The Creative Process sits alone in a corner booth, sipping a Madori Sour.

Chaos turns to a window and hurls his hammer. It tumbles end over end toward the glass, strikes it dead center, and sends spiderweb cracks skittering to the corners. He roars again.

"Always breakin' stuff." The Creative Process leaves her booth and ambles over to Chaos. "Always breakin' stuff and making it look so pretty. Just look at those lines. Such a focal point...such raw energy." She points at the broken glass.

Chaos's lower lip quivers. His eyes droop.

"There, there," The Creative Process pats him on the back, "I'll buy you a drink. You'll feel better."

#fridayflash Special Collections

First and foremost, Alan W. Davidson is the winner of The Devil's Food. Mr. Davidson, if you'd be so kind as to send your mail address to aaron_polson(at)hotmail(dot)com, I'll send the book your way. Enjoy.

For the Friday Flash today, I cheat. You'll have to head to Yellow Mama to read "Special Collections". As usual, I love the art Cindy Rosmus has chosen to go along with the story. Thanks Cindy, for taking on Mr. Harper's story.

Enjoy.

#fridayflash Bad Poetry

A young officer drops a plastic evidence bag on Detective Talbot’s desk. The detective flinches and scoots back.

“Jeezus, Pendergast. What’s that?”

“Vegetable peeler.”

Talbot nods. “I can see that, but the dark stuff—is that blood?”

“Yes.”

“Found this at the Gardner house, didn’t they?”

“Yes. Looks like this sicko used it to scrape the skin off her body.”

“Her name was Rose, wasn’t it?” Talbot pulls at his lip. “Roses are red…” He jumps up from the desk. “Get a phonebook.”

“What?”

“I need to know the location of all the women named Violet in town. Find out which one’s have freezers big enough for to hold a body. I think I know where he's going next...”

#fridayflash Luck

"There's a couple of things you're going to have to understand about this job."

Jerry nods.

"First of all," Franz speaks slowly, like he's explaining the why the sky's blue to a five-year-old, "the job has some drawbacks."

"Drawbacks. Check." A pen wiggles against a notebad in Jerry's hand.

"The temperature in here for one. Get yourself a nice coat. A jacket. Light and flexible but enough to keep the chill off."

"Jacket, check."

Franz grips a handle and walks the drawer out to full extension. A body lays bewteen them, covered with a sheet. "Second of all, these poor sons-of-bitches smell pretty bad."

"Bad smell, check."

Franz grips the sheet at one end and pulls back enough to reveal a pair of bluish feet. A toe tag dangles on the left big toe. He bends forward, squinting at the tag. "92 years old, well..."

Jerry's pencil is motionless. "I don't get it."

Franz produces a pair of snips and slides one of the dead man's toes between its blades. He squeezes the handles together. A click echoes through the morgue, and the toe drops into Franz's waiting palm. "There's some benefits, too."

Jerry scribbles. "Benefits..."

"For one, nobody ever checks too closely after we're done with them."

"Right." Jerry pauses for a moment and frowns. "I don't get it."

"Toes, man." Franz draws the sheet over the corpse's feet and slides the drawer home with a resonate thunk. "I figure they're better than rabbits' feet, especially on some SOB that lives this long. Lot of luck in making it to 92, Jerry."

#fridayflash Barrel 2

Today's podcast, "Barrel 2", is dedicated to Jarron, Ken, and Mike. Where the hell are you guys, anyway?

This one's "not quite horror" but received a handwritten note on the rejection from Cemetery Dance (that and $5 will get you a coffee at Starbucks).

Listen to "Barrel 2" or download for later.

Yes, this wasn't what I had "scheduled".

Patience.

Have a great weekend.

#fridayflash Poe's Basement

"Damn, Jack. I told you we should have rolled him up in the carpet first."

"We still can. You have no imagination."

I step away from the spreading pool of blood. "No, dumbass. If you wrap him first and shoot through the rug, it doesn't splatter so much. Easier clean up."

Jack runs a hand through his hair."Oh. Right. Sorry."

"Look, we gotta do something with this mess." I wave the gun toward the kitchen. "What's in there?"

A smile crawls across his lips. "Oh, I get it. Stairway to the basement." Jack nods. "Like that Poe story, right?"

"Not Poe again."

"The basement...we can hide the body down there. Poe used that one, too. 'The Black Cat' I think." Jack grabs Mr. Body's feet and pulls him across the hardwood, leaving a thick streak in his path.

"For fuck's sake, you're making it worse."

Jack pauses. "What?"

"The blood, dumbass. We gotta clean up."

His stare shifts from the blood to the body to me. "That's what the fire is for."

"Fire? Jeeee-sus."

Jack shakes his head. "Don't you read anything?"

__________

Remember, remember why they used the blender?

#fridayflash Inheritance

When Magomu reaches the platform, he hurries to his brother’s rope. His hands ache, raw and strained from the climb, but he works quickly, struggling against the dullness of his knife. It is an old knife, but not as old as his father's. Not as valuable.

He closes his eyes as the last strands fray and pop. With his eyes closed, he sees his brother's body, broken on the packed earth below, and imagines holding his inheritance to the sun, the blade glittering, while the crowd cheers his name.

#fridayflash Unchecked Expansion

This bit o' flash has a purpose. More on Monday...

The sound of breaking glass yanks Curt from his sleep. Bolting upright in bed, he turns to face Gail, her eyes also blown wide with surprise.

"Downstairs," he mutters.

She nods.

"A burglar?"

"Maybe," she whispers. Without taking her eyes from her husband, she fumbles for the cell phone on the nightstand beside her. "911..."

Curt hops out of bed.

"Curt," she pleads.

"I have to check." His scowl says too much: Three tours in Iraq and I come home to some scumbag in my own home. There's your freedom. He ignores her voice chattering into the phone. At the top of the stairs he pauses and listens for another sound. Nothing. The house is cold.

Too cold.

Curt takes the stairs one at a time, his ears ready the whole time. He wishes for the 9mm in his nightstand drawer, the one Gail isn't fond of, especially loaded with a four-year-old in the house.

He hears the other sound when he reaches the first floor. Wind?

The thing is on the kitchen floor, swollen and blue, stretching across the room. The small table they'd inherited from her parents is clearly broken, smashed under the thing's weight. One leg juts out at a strange angle. The kitchen window above the sink is broken, and chill breeze cuts through the opening.

Curt spies a slip of cardboard on the floor, approaches carefully and picks it up. The blue thing undulates like jelly after someone taps the side of the jar. He can almost hear it breathe.

The slip of cardboard is from the package. They'd bought the Magic Growth Sponge at the checkstand earlier that day to keep Sophia quiet. She'd begged; he'd given in. It was supposed to grow into a cow after soaking in water. A fucking cow.

Curt read the label in the dim moonlight: Continuous Growth.

The thing swells...

"Bring the gun, Gail."

Henry Barlow's Ghosts

I met Maggie Farnsworth before I left for the war. She was a few years younger than me, fifteen at the time, and a beautiful girl—her hair always held waves, her eyes a powerful green like the darkest buds in spring. She had a laugh that some might have seen as too bold in a girl, a great, romping laugh that could break through the most serious façade. Sometimes, she fell down laughing so hard. We met at a barn dance the summer I left for the army; she’d just moved to town with her folks.

I stole a kiss the last night, hungry for more. Maggie said she’d wait.

Perryville happened. Tim died in front of me, possibly killed by my own bullet. Another hot bit of lead tore my face apart, and I lay in the hellish forest with other dying men for days. When I could sit up, when I could write a letter, I sent one to Maggie. She replied that “the grace of providence” spared me, for her. Those words squeezed my heart.

But it wasn’t the grace of providence. No, hell played a cold joke by sparing me.

I came home after the war, scarred and much older. Maggie had grown, too, blossomed into a vibrant, beautiful woman of eighteen. Her eyes still cooled like a summer pond, her hair still invited me in with its dusky folds. We married and headed west, away from home and memories of dead friends.

We pushed on to Nebraska, outside of Omaha. I purchased a stake of land, a mule. We carved a dugout from the prairie, and lived underground like rabbits. The dugout always reeked of the earth, but when I held Maggie close, when I felt her smooth skin, pressed my face into her waves of hair, and slipped inside those green eyes, I forgot myself.

After a few years, we built a small house. I bought a few more acres and hired a short, angular man named Stephan Wolzyck to help out. Times were still hard, but it was an honest struggle.

The prairie had its own beauty—rolling grass in every direction, few trees, and few reminders of my hellish week among the dying. The wind would whisper across the vast plain and push waves of green and gold along with it. We worked; we ground our fingers into the soil and prayed for a return. Maggie lost the last traces of the girl I’d met at those barn dances in her face, but her eyes always held magic.

“I’m going to have a baby,” she whispered to me one night.

They came the next week. Stephan’s brothers.

There wasn’t much law out on the frontier then. Indians skirmished with settlers, and some men found it easier to take and destroy than work their own hands in the earth. Rumors burned around our neighbors about a band of outlaws raiding isolated farmsteads. Reluctantly, I bought a gun.

They came when I was in the field. Stephan had headed to the house for water from our pump. I heard Maggie’s scream, and it sliced into my heart like a dagger of ice. I dropped the plow handles and ran over the clods of newly-turned earth. She howled with pain—a mournful, aching sound I hadn’t heard the likes of since the war. My rifle was at the side of the dugout—we still used it for the animals. I grabbed it and crept around.

She lay on the ground with a dark stain between her legs. Blood. Three men stood over her, all rough and dark, spotted with filth and dirt, the last still pulling on his trousers. It was Stephan Wolzyck.

God, what they’d done.

“Get away from her,” I said. My hands shook as they lifted the rifle. Maggie’s head raised a little, and I caught a flicker of green eyes behind the tears. Her hair hung in limp, wet strands on either side of her face. With her lips pinched in a sob, she shook her head slowly.

“Just having fun, buddy.” Stephan stepped closer to me. He smiled, showing his fouled teeth, the yellow wrinkles of his eyes. Pointing his weasel’s nose. “She been wanting it. Making eyes at me. Your whore here screams awfully loud—”

I shot him. The lead jumped from my gun with a deafening crash, a roar of thunder across the empty prairie. The man spun backwards—in my memory, his fall takes a full minute. The birds overhead slowed to watch. The other men lifted their guns. I heard two more shots: the first went through Maggie’s throat, the second tore into my chest. There were more bullets, two more that punctured my body, but I didn’t hear them. One of the men stood over me and spat on my face—I remember the warm spittle sliding down my cheek, working over the grooves of my scar.

I lay for an eternity, surely dead I thought, but then another thought forced me from the ground.

Maggie.

I struggled to my side, burning with pain. My blood mingled with the dust to make an obscene mixture of mud as my hands clutched at the ground and pulled my body forward. God, the smell of that mud. She was dead of course, her housedress blackened around the violation in her white throat. Her eyes lay open, but empty of the vibrant shine they once held. I remember touching her arm, how her skin was still warm.

(from Loathsome, Dark, and Deep)

Thaw

He woke from the dream and immediately rolled over to find her, but she was gone. His hand found damp sheets and a soaked mattress.

"Molly?" His heart thrum-thrummed in his chest, and he feared the silent house would be the only answer.

"In the kitchen," she called.

He hopped from the bed, nearly skidding into the wall when his socks slipped on the hardwood. She was there, standing at the kitchen window, her white arms folded across her chest.

"I had a dream." He reached out and touched her shoulder. His eyes sank to the puddle on the floor at her feet. "I was worried about this."

Her eyes, walnut brown so dark they often looked black, stayed on the window. "Nothing's melting out there."

He pulled his hand back. He'd expected a puff of frost as she spoke, but nothing. His mouth opened and closed while he tried to find the right words. "Look--don't go. I'll turn off the heat. Wear my coat. Just--just don't leave me, okay?"

Ten Years Late

Millie woke to a clacking sound, a rhythmic tic-tic-tic-tic outside her window.

"Jerry?"

The shape next to her mumbles and rolls over. "Mmmmm."

Millie slides out of bed, flinches when her feet touch the cold wooden floor, and goes to the window. She parts the blinds. Sunlight forces her back for a moment, but her eyes adjust. What she sees drives a spike through her already hangover-addled skull.

The street below is devoid of cars. Now covered with ruddy cobblestones, she traces it to the distance and finds the source of the sound: a black carriage, polished to a high gloss, pulled by two horses.

"Jerry. My God. It's happened."

"Mmm...what?"

Millie's mouth hangs open but her tongue can't form around the three little syllables: Y-2-K.

___________

Yeah, lame, but I haven't stayed up until 2 AM in a long, long time. Too bad the kids didn't get the memo to sleep in until noon. Happy New Year! Resolutions forthcoming.

Crenshaw's Gift

Little Ralphie hugs the package to his chest and shakes it back and forth. The contents rattle, a muted clatter-clatter.

"It's so big," he says, smile beaming.

Mom leans over to Dad and lowers her voice to a whisper. "Legos, right?"

Dad shakes his head while Ralphie strips the paper from the large box.

"Well...it's big. Almost as big as the boy." She frowns. "Tinker Toys?"

Head shake.

"Lincoln Logs?"

Head shake.

"All right...I give."

Ralphie yanks open the end of the box. "Whoa..."

Dad smiles. "Remember old man Crenshaw down the street?"

Ralphie tips the box and the contents tumble to the floor in a noisy, off-white pile. The skull, round and empty, falls out last.

Mom frowns and covers her mouth with one hand. "My god..."

"Don't worry honey. I bleached 'em clean." Dad looks at Ralphie. "Careful boy--there's no spare bits in there. A real one-of-a-kind set."

__________

Have a very pulpy Christmas, everyone.

One Up

Two men lock stares across a worn table; both of their faces mottled with stubble and sweat, one wearing a green Pioneer cap. A buck knife sticks from the pocked table top. The crowd circling them, most with sewn-on name tags, grease stains, and breath to kill Satan, press closer to the cone of light offered by a single naked bulb above the table.

"What you got now, Jeb?" The man in the Pioneer hat says.

Jeb let's his left hand drop below the table. His mouth curls open. "Jus' this."

He pulls the tin snips from beneath the table and drops them with a clatter. The knife falls over, tumbles from the wooden surface, and rattles on the floor. Voices rise from the crowd. Bets are exchanged.

Pioneer hat swallows hard, opens the snips, and slides a finger through the blades. His eyes are closed when he presses down, using the table top for leverage with his free hand. He doesn't see the blood spurt across the table, but he hears the crunch as the snips break through the bone. He yanks the bloodied hand away and thrusts it in his lap, his face swollen and red as a boiled beet.

The crowd hoots and claps until Pioneer hat raises his other hand.

"My...turn," he mutters.

Jeb shifts in his chair. The wooden slats of the floor creak.

Pioneer hat points to his mouth and leans forward into the light. For the first time, the crowd gets a good look at his teeth, how sharp and crooked they are like the maw of a shark. Jeb raises a shaking finger, pushing across the table toward the other man's mouth...

Armour-Plated Rooftops

Ralphie peered from a tiny chink in the boarded window with the shotgun in his right hand.

"What'er they doin'?" Nichole asked. Hunkered behind an overturned table across the room, she clutched a Berreta like a lover.

"Dunno. They're all milling around some kind of contraption. Gettin' smart, I guess." His knuckles whitened around the gun. "Wait...oh..." Ralphie crouched and scampered away from the window. "Brace yourself."

A distant, muted thump sounded, followed by a moment of silence, then a thunderous crash above them, the sound of something big and wet--like a bushel bag of cooked oats--hitting a sheet of metal.

"Ha!"

Nichole frowned at Ralphie. "What the hell was that?"

"One of them. They've built some sort of catapult, tryin' to get in the roof. Not too smart, yet..."

__________

Thanks to Cate Gardner for the title (hence the Queen's English spelling, eh?)

Casualties

Two boys with toy rifles crawl through a drainage ditch at the far end of the high school practice field. The fog smudges distant buildings into blots of ink. Both boys stop and gaze out of the ditch.

“They’re coming,” says the taller of the two, a ten-year-old with too much black hair in a curly heap on top of his head. He rolls over, digs into the cargo pocket of his pants, and draws out a roll of black electrical tape.

“All right, Jack. Who is it this time?” The other boy, thin enough to slip between the posts on the guardrail at the zoo, wipes his nose on a shirt sleeve.

Jack peels a section of tape from the roll and starts covering the orange cap at the end of his play gun. “The Germans, Gabe. The Germans.”

Gabe frowns. “I’m tired of playing world war.”

Jack pokes out his tongue. “Who is it then?”

“Maybe we’re protecting the homestead from border ruffians?” Gabe aims his rifle into the fog. A new shape appears as a black scribble against the white backdrop.

“With these rifles? These are M1s, Gabe. They didn’t have M1s in the old west.” Jack tacks one last piece of tape on his gun. “There.”

“What’re you doing?”

A smile splits across Jack’s face. “Covering up that stupid safety tip. Now this looks like a real gun.”

The black shape comes closer and melts into a man. Both boys watch him and fall silent. Jack raises his gun, takes careful aim, and squeezes the trigger as “Crack!” pops from his mouth.

The man tumbles to the ground.

Jack utters a low, almost whispered, laugh.

“Got him.” Jack rises to a crouch and starts toward the prone body. “C’mon!”

Gabe swallows hard and follows, crouching like his friend.

The man lays in an awkward, spread-eagled pose. One arm splays above his head while the other is folded across his chest. His hand clutches at his long, grey coat. Blood smears his fingers.

“Jack…”

The man’s eyes dart between both boys. He opens his mouth. “Meine Frau und Kinder. Sorgfalt für sie, bitte…”

“German. I told you so,” Jack taunts. He raises his gun and “Pow!” fires at the man’s head.

In the distance, the sound of straining diesel engines and the clank of tank treads echo through the fog. Jack and Gabe exchange a look.

“We better find cover,” Jack says. He runs for the ditch.

Gabe is frozen. He looks down at the dead man, staring at the empty eyes.

“C’mon, dummy!” Jack calls.

“You’re an asshole, Jack…” Gabe lowers his head and sprints after his friend, muttering under his breath.

Sometimes, They Don't Come Back

Sometimes they come back on time. We sort them, plop them in place on the cart, and ship them back to the shelves to be handled and picked over. But too often, they’re overdue. Occasionally they show up with a handful of coins. No note. No “sorry”. Others never pay their fines; we just find the books in the outside bin.

After they’ve been gone for a long time, the pages are usually creased and wrinkled, the corners bent—even on sturdy, library bound specimens, and all too often they have water damage. But I like to use the phrase “liquid damage” because you can never be too sure what caused those stains, especially when they’re discolored or dark.

The stains bother me. Total lack of respect.

Once, a young woman with fresh stitches and a black eye brought a self-help book back with some of those dark stains. She handed it to me, offered a weak grin, and shuffled out without a word. The book was only overdue by two days. She never paid the fine.

Sometimes the books come back, but sometimes they don’t.

So yes, we look. We search. We make every effort to find our missing books. I’ve scoured abandoned houses, located volumes tucked in furniture at Goodwill, and tracked down a particularly valuable copy of Alice in Wonderland in a bowling alley bathroom. A few years ago, I found a few volumes of Dickens, torn into strips and shreds and stuffed into a dog kennel behind old man Bernard’s place. He had used early illustrated copies of David Copperfield and Great Expectations with a gilt pressed covers for dog bedding, and he only raised mutts.

Some of those volumes are so battered and stained, even destroyed, recovery becomes a symbolic act.

But even worse than the stains, even those dark smudges which just might be human blood, is when I can’t find the books at all. Sometimes they disappear without any trail, and those…those are the ones that really bother me.

Smoke

When Ernst woke, he smelled the smoke first, even before he felt the rough cord wrapped around his wrists. His eyes began to water, burning from the ash in the air.

"Hallo?" he called.

Shapes shifted in the darkness. Ernst tried to move his head, but stopped as nylon rope scraped his throat. At his back, a square post, the corners digging into his flesh despite his woolen jacket.

The shapes came forward. Books. The cover of each speckled with morphing yellow and orange firelight...each having sprouted arms and legs of black shadow. One volume of dark green leather plucked its cover open with a shadow-hand. On the open page in front of Ernst, words stood out in the flickering light.

He began to cry. The rope at his throat constricted as he gasped for air, cutting into the soft skin. "Ich bin traurig," he gasped and closed his eyes, remembering the bonfires in Berlin, the piles of smoking pages. He understood the heat that began to sting his toes.

__________

Yeah, a little preachy today. Fahrenheit 451 does that to me.

For your viewing pleasure, I present:

All of the Dead

A brilliant blend of zombies and Legos brought to you by Tim Drage and Tony Mines. (no embedding of this video, but you'll be glad you checked it out...you can download if you want)

Finally, I'd be remiss not to mention the release of the special Road Trip edition of the Monsters Next Door. The best thing to come out of my experience running cross country in high school* is within, a little story I call "The Qualifying Run". There's fiction by some good peeps inside, so enjoy.

*What, you thought it was the shin splints or stress fractures?

The Revolution

Janice woke to a loud crack and tinkle of broken glass. Her eyes opened and fell on the shelf above her desk--the shelf on which she kept her words.

One jar was missing.

Janice slipped her legs from under the warm blankets. Her feet pressed against the cold hardwood as she delicately shifted her weight and stood. Outside her window, trees brushed their leaves together. A car moved down the street in front of the house. But something else, a scratching sound, pulled her attention away from the other night whispers.

She moved toward the doorway, stepped on a bit of broken glass, and let out a yelp. Pain danced through her shin, up her thigh, and across her back as she tip-toe danced to the doorway and the light switch, hoping to avoid another shard.

The light flickered. Tiny shadows scurried for shelter under her bed, the desk, anywhere the light wouldn't reach. She looked at the mess on the floor.

"Shit."

The words were gone.

Janice sat down on the floor, pulled her knees to her chest, and grasped the slick piece of glass, wincing as she pried it from the thick callous on her heel. Blood smeared across the bottom of her foot like finger paint.

Then a smell. Ink.

Janice blinked, unsure of her eyes. Like waves of ants, the words came. They mounted an assault, driving their tiny, sans-serifed feet into the soft flesh of her ankles, calves, and the back of one hand as she leaned on the floor. The pain burned, a thousand pinpricks of fire, and she slumped back, cracking her head.

They blotted her eyes, swarming toward her mouth, and she could scarcely hear the other jars as they struck the floor, one after another, as the rest of her words joined the onslaught.