Saturday - Short Story Excerpt Two

There we so many phone calls after the news spread.

When he first got sick, people came in droves. They were all so willing to give advice, to tell them it would be okay. Like every great tragedy, this one’s first act was crowded with supporting players. But then, when he got sicker, the court jesters and kinsmen silently slipped away, without phone calls and without visits. As the curtain fell, only Meryl and Joe were left standing.

People scatter like cockroaches in the light when death gets too close. Anyone will come to your funeral. Not everyone will sit with you when you’re on the way out.

Meryl didn't remember having many long conversations with old friends. She remembered the absence. The loneliness.

She had come to realize that death and dying are silent. 

Tragic Hero - Short Story Excerpt Two

“You have to start sticking up for yourself, Maggie. You’re better than that asshole.”

“But I still love him.”

“Jesus, Maggie, you shouldn’t. He’s a worthless shit. What you need to do is stop showing people how you feel.”

“But I’m not real good at hiding how I feel.”

“Well, you got to get better at hiding it, kid. You can’t go around showing every asshole how much they upset you. Then they think they won.”

“What am I supposed to do?”

“Show them that you won. You have to act like you don’t care. You can’t ever let people know they got you. Not ever, hear me?”

“Really?”

“Yes, kid. Really. That’s the only way they know not to fuck with you anymore. You can never show people you care.”

“But why? What’s the point of lying, if you do care?”

“Because people prey on weakness. You can’t show them that you’re weak. You can only show them that you’re strong. You do that by showing them that you don’t care.”

“You aren’t always going to be strong, though.”

"Nobody needs to know that.”

She sighed after I said that, and she looked up at me. She looked so small on my couch. Then a wash of tears came to her eyes, but I could tell she was trying to fight them. I put my arm around her then, just instinctively. I just wanted to put my arm around her. I don’t know why.

“Why are men so mean?” she asked me.

“Listen, every asshole that isn’t good enough for you is going to be mean to you. Because you scare them. You are beautiful and smart and you have a lot going for you, kid. You don’t need to wear a dress like that to look beautiful. You look beautiful right now, just normal.”

“You think I’m beautiful?”

“Yes. I do.”

“Really?”

“Truly.”

She smiled after I said that. I think it meant a lot to her. And she was beautiful. Well, once you really got looking at her anyway. I thought it was real nice of me to be building up her confidence.   

“You need to know how much you got going for you, Maggie. Until then, nobody else is going to know.”

She moved in closer after I said that. She rested her head on my shoulder.

“Yeah.”

Then she went quiet for a bit. I thought maybe she’d fallen asleep.

“Are you mean to women?” she asked me in a real quiet voice.

“No. I tell them what I’m like up front. They know what they’re getting into.”

“They probably fall in love with you anyway, though.”

“No. I don’t let that happen.”

“You don’t let love happen. It happens, whether you want it or not.”

She was always coming at me with corny shit like that. And she said like she just knew it to be true, like there was no convincing her otherwise.

“Oh, the ignorance of youth,” I said.

“It’s true! I bet they all fall in love with you even though they don’t want to.”

“Well, if they are falling in love with me it’ s because they really want to, trust me. I make it real hard for them to think I’d ever love them back.”

“You don’t think that’s mean?”

The Falling Action - Short Story Excerpt Two

There's a joke we tell up here, and it gets us all pissin' laughing 'cause it's so brutally true.

"Wha's tha difference between a terrorist and a freedom fighter? The side you're on."

I'm sittin up here with men with fucking turbans on their heads, the lads that starved themselves and painted their jail cells with their own shite, and we are all crying with laughter because we did no fuckin' good.

I think we all missed the flamin' point, to tell ya the truth.

Catholic, Prod, God doesn' give a flyin’. He's na even sure He's right, He was just thrown inta this position and now people are dyin' for Him all over the place. He doesn' even exist, not how they told me growin' up. He's more just real because we all collectively live life believing in him. It's hard ta explain unless ya see it, like, but is na what ya think. It's really a lot more abstract than ya think.

And the laugh that He's havin' on us is that life isn't what ya think either. Life is the most precious fuckin' gift because things can change. It's tha worst part of life, too, but it's also tha best.

Things are changin' every day and nothin' can be predicted for certain, and about a million things will happen in your lifetime that'll shock the Jesus outta ya, but that's the really cool bit. Up here, everythin's always the same, and nothin' changes, not really, because nothin' has any weight now that it's all over. And surprising change, tha’s what makes life bigger than us, and that's what makes us all small, but small together.

Up here, it's like you only got the same ten records to play all the time, and let me tell ya, even if they're great records, you are left bustin' for a radio station. Even a shite one, because the great thrill in life is not knowin' what's coming next. Even if it is shite.

And I think His only point, that I well missed, is to love the shite out of everythin' ya can, because that's what you think of when you're up here, alone but not really alone, if ya get my drift.

There are some perks, like. I get ta meet famous people. I met Elvis. I met John Lennon. I met Jesus, he's got gross hair in person. But ya know what they all said?

"I wish I wasn't fuckin' dead."

Difficulties With Intimacy

“It must be exhausting being you. You spend your whole life looking out. You watch how people look at you. You are so concerned with what people think. You don’t live your life. All you do is wonder if you’re crazy, if anyone is thinking that. You're not crazy. Or you are, but not in the way that you think.”

The loneliness is palpable.

Like Father Part Two

"To have a love affair, a true love affair, it has to be with someone that holds apart of you. They have to get inside you. They have to matter," he tells me.

How did we start talking about love?

"Why do you think people who are the most talented are the most crazy?" I know I asked him that.

"Writing is painful work. It costs you. And there's the desire to create your whole world, to change it and have things work out how you want to, and therein lies inherent danger. If your time in the real world drives you to create your own, that's mystical and so all encompassing that you have to live within it, that's very dangerous, if you ask me. It is exhausting and if it's not tiring, you aren't doing it right. You become whole other beings. You are not who you're living inside. That'll make you crazy. There is nothing so lonely as being a writer. Every writer is crazy."

Did he say it like that? There's always more poetry than I remember.

But that's life isn't it?

Monster - Short Story Excerpt Two

The new moon rode high over the modest golden fields and bruised skyline. It is too hot for sleep. Tangled in sheets and sweating, I left the bed frustrated, wanting for sleep but unable to find it. I have decided to take a long walk. The space I create cutting through the thick air is cooling, and when I am far enough from James I can breathe again.

Since he proposed marriage, my hair has been falling out. All around the house I see it, like small golden chains, littering the floor. No matter how much I sweep I cannot clear them away. The strands seem to multiply each day. They are little lightning bolts made of my dead skin that mock me and remind me there's a reason that actresses wear wigs. I wonder if a bald bride is still a beautiful one.

My mother died last year, bald. I believe that we were very much alike, but due to our sameness, could never relate. But we understood each other, silently. I miss her much. I think now that she was faced with this same decision. She chose to marry my father.

I wonder if it cost her her life; the cancer sprouting everywhere it could, seeping into her bones, punishing her for lying. If she were still here and not underground, I do think I would ask her what to do. I am not the type to stand at her grave and ask advice. It is ridiculous to believe a dead person can hear you when their ears have long rotted off their face. She wouldn’t tell me anyway.

When I was a small child she would leave for hours at a time to visit with friends that I knew did not exist. There was Mary her friend from church, who never attended when I did, forever busy with ‘Obligations!’ as my mother would say. There was her doctor Mr. Green, whose office I tried to look up in the phonebook when I was fifteen to no avail. And there was Mrs. Merriweather, the sick old widow that mother would bring dinner every Saturday night, to an address that did not exist anywhere in Texas.

I don't think my father knew she was lying. He was not a monster like she was, and could not smell the dishonesty. But I am her kind, born with a keen nose, always aware of her indiscretions.

I now lie to James. I tell him I am seeing a psychiatrist when really I cannot think of anything more pitiful. For three hours every week I drive as far away as I can before I have to turn back, giving my face a break from it's metaled mask.

I walk home through such blackness that I cannot see two paces in front of me. I dread each step closer to the cabin knowing I will not sleep tonight. There is no extra blanket for my wooden mattress.

Allow me to reintroduce myself.