Sway

A stagecoach was parked not far from where he stood, his left hand shadowing squinted eyes against the midday sun and the sharp desert sand riding a constant gale. He looked over at it every few minutes, regarding with somehow removed fascination the two women who sat just inside the shade on the driver's box, talking. The whole time, talking, never looking up.

He wondered if he could do it; just stand in attendance as all decent folks did, but not watch the man being led to the noose, to simply not look as his legs went rigid, tossed abruptly, then swung whichever way the wind may will.

"You just have to look at the family of his victims," he'd heard in whispers when the bottle had brought him to admit his uneasiness, and so now he did. He could understand their satisfaction, and hell he could completely accept their delight, but be that as it may, jubilation at death just made his stomach do a strange little dance, each and every time.

It Was Not a Fart

"Forty-eight years is a life time, and this company, Mr. Holderman, will forever be reflective of that life you gave it." I had been petrified when they asked me to conduct Mr. Holderman's retirement presentation, but I was the only one with any real media editing knowledge, and not a body in the firm had ever been the stand-up-in-front-of -people type; that's why we lived in cubicles.

I wish so many things, given the advantage of retrospect, but chief among those is the simplest: pick any other moment in my entire life to turn around to face the screen instead of the audience.

I had stepped beside him and placed my hand on his shoulder. Suddenly, possessed by the feeling that this was going so much better than anticipated -- a terrible, terrible mistake, every single time -- I paused after a solemn, crowd hushing remark, and faced the video montage projected on the wall.

Then a horrific little creature I remember vividly from my grade school days, bunched up behind my belly button and gave me a catastrophically resonant inner-raspberry, as my backside stared, dormant yet guilty looking, right over dear Mr. Holderman's shoulder.

To Remember the Truth

Curtis stopped typing, much to his own surprise. Every other set of fingers around him, cubicle by cubicle, proceeded in the cacophony of clicking, bounding noisily from key to key so that the song reverberated against the concrete walls like a heavy hailstorm as the letters and numbers dropped onto their screens, etched into an intangible slate, existing nowhere but in the lights before them.

He rubbed his fingers, moist enough to squeak softly, against the polyurethane coat of his narrow desk space, reminding himself of actuality. His tie felt tight around his collar and the room began to shrink around him as his chest grew with anxiety until he burst, ripped free; from his clothes, from the room, from the whole damn performance.

So, I always stop for a few when Curtis asks me for change, not just because his stories are interesting or because he manages a certain intelligibility atypical of underpass dwellers, but because every now and then when he whispers wildly about the Machine and the Trap and the System, backward as it may be, I start to feel a little less crazy.

Bummer

Liliana’s eyelashes beat together like a feathered gavel before her mahogany eyes, sentencing me to “Piss off, Heremy…”--I loved how she said Heremy instead of Jeremy and the way she rolled the r, so of course it made me smile, which she acknowledged with a displeased tilt of one eyebrow, but steady as a dancer kept stride--“…because I got two good waitresses, a sussessful res’rant, an’ I don’ wanna loose none ‘ose tings porque uno pinche cabrón can’ keep his nassy lil’ hans to 'imself.”

I’ll bet she was twice my age, but like any twenty-year-old beach bum worth his saltwater, I was all about the ladies and if there was any reason I shouldn’t be with them--perhaps a generational gap--then, mo’ betta’, I figured.

Like the kind of guy I’d punch nowadays, I leaned over the counter with a smile they might picture next to “cocky ass” in Webster’s, and said, “Or maybe, you should forget what you know about my involvement with said waitresses, and find out for yourself what all the fuss is about.”

She craned down toward me, her intensity pressing me back nearly off the stool, and she reached down to my crotch, encircling the area with her fingertips, whispering, “But then, I’d wanchu never to leave, an’ you know how to keep a dog from runnin’ away? Shop off ‘is lil’ balls.”

I miss that place--missed it ever since that afternoon--but not nearly as much as I miss that woman.

Where You Lie

A breathy mumble came from her lips; a name. She tried again, after a few crackling inhales, “Where is… where’s…”

He looked all around, wreckage in each direction, then back at the stranger. “Fine… he’s… she's... they’re fine. Everybody’s fine,” he lied.

She smiled, and then was gone.

Originally posted at 6S

The Mysterious Dr. Ramsey

Ramsey Michelle Helton wore matching ruffled pigtails which looked as though they might have come prepackaged with the galaxies of freckles on her tiny cheeks. Her smile revealed two front teeth as absent as the shoes I assumed she wore, at least on occasion. A frog chirp from her overalls pocket convinced me that if I looked hard enough I would find a hidden camera somewhere in the double-wide trailer.

She skipped across the small room and looked in my eyes curiously for several moments before whispering, "You don't wanna hear them voices no more, huh?"

I'd driven nineteen-hundred miles to witness the "Mysterious Doctor Ramsey", as the tabloids had dubbed her, but not even that leap of faith could prepare me for the chill that her words issued to my tired, crazy soul, eager once more to surrender to what a wiser man might call "blind faith." Then, she kissed my head, freed me from my hell, and proved to me at last that there is no faith a man can ever have which may fairly be ruled unjustified.

How to Reply to the Nigerian Prince -- A 6S Challenge

Deer Prints Narmeen,
I to have looking for to put into my money some place safe for getting later and to share with my new friends, like have you done hear. I tell so much new friends with the emails to please can have some of my very much money, my father have dies and I will be kings inheritance but must not make the money in a bank heer in Namibia.

Why the friends do not want to have some moenys like for them I have offered? You certain have a big talent on the emails, Narmeen, and I no your very good with what you due. Please extablish an account in the bank nearest your heart, and I like your new friend will give access to my money as you will me yours to also as well, my friend!1!!`

His Royal Majesty,
Dukuv Erl

The above is my reply to the challenge: How to Reply to the Nigerian Prince
From Gita Smith
After being contacted by an email scammer claiming to be (or represent) a Nigerian Prince, you respond with six well chosen sentences.
Do you scam him back? Slam him or Scram him? How clever will your answer be? Which of us will fall for YOUR email and send money to you? Let's see....
Sign up and enter your 6 sentence response: here

Carpe Damned

With the sort of self-propagation normally found only in lengthily-Latin-named creatures my Biology teacher used to hum about, the strata of irony frolic before my mind’s disbelieving eye, webbed together like a Mobius strip.

Some of the best years of my life were sipped away alongside a procrastinating posse of fellow ne’er-do-well would-be artists, on the back porch of a coffee shop named Carpe Diem; or if you’ve not seen Dead Poets’ Society: "seize the day." And, while we played chess or cards or did anything else to distract ourselves from the craving to create, we debated over what we considered life’s great ironies.

Yes, take it all in: at “Seize the Day” coffee shop my friends and I would distract each other from developing the abilities we were afraid we might actually have, as we bitched and moaned about the lack of opportunities available, and how ironic it was to have the passion and drive but no outlet.

And eight years later, as I grasped about for inspiration to help me write something during this tiny window of solitude I have today, I found it right where I left it. I can see the lot of us now, as if walking upon our ghosts: everyone’s tilting back in those plastic green chairs, wearing cigarettes as surely as arms, and as I pass by I see pride in their ear-to-ear smiles, as if they’re all thankful to finally see proof that the door can be opened--even if it wasn't large enough for us to all go through together.

Also posted at: http://sixsentences.ning.com/profiles/blogs/carpe-damned?xg_source=activity

And Sin No More

“Forgive me Father, for I have sinned.” The man sat across from me his arms on his knees and head dropped so that I could see the barest spot of his head like a bulls’ eye.

Eight years since his last Confession--I rolled that nugget around, testing it in the flame of my mind, and finally decided, there was promise here.

An affair some time back, impure thoughts of course, lying, stealing, and then he started to cry, but only for a moment.

“It’s like… like a doctor, right,” he collected himself, “you can’t repeat this?”

I smiled and suggested he come to the font with me, that the church was empty and perhaps the sensation of the water washing over him would serve as a catalyst in seeking true, penitent reconciliation.

I could see he was scared and so I said, “You’re not the only one who makes mistakes, there is always a second chance.”

“I killed a girl,” he sobbed, “six years ago.”

“Shhh,” I comforted him and helped him to the water, “I know, I know, now shhhh.” His nose touched the water and I said, “But you forgot her boyfriend, huh, dipshit?”

Delusion that Beauty is Goodness

I remember the shoddy little house with chipping white paint, its rear half hiding a dingy rainbow of embedded mud specks, a lighter ambiguously brown elemental congress, and grass stains from an unwieldy lawn which must have attempted a takeover some time before. Somewhere close by there was a cemetery, or at least a field with lots of concrete that my brother and cousin could convince five-year-old-me was a cemetery.

Between the two eerily equipped locales was a hiccup of forest; to my adult eyes it would most likely be a cluster of trees, which I could perhaps penetrate from both sides with my outstretched arms while standing at its center. The shadowy secret beneath the ever-brown canopy was a godforsaken, one-man boat, half digested by the soggy black earth.

Though he must have only visited us for a few days, I remember my cousin joining my brother and me for a lifetime of adventures in that dark realm. We snapped "clubs" from trees for safety when exploring the abandoned pirate ship and we prepared for battle with the vampires who had trapped my father in his own trunk, dragging him into the undead.

Well, we didn't see him go back in; what's your explanation? And, in case you're ever in the same predicament, here's how we made it out alive: we recited Grace--Bless us, oh Lord--over the stagnant pool in the hull of the ship, thus producing enough Holy Water for an army of darkness.

I also remember the gorgeous, big-ass a-frame with the lawn-care crew, pool guy, and fully stocked bar; respectively, where I got my cigarettes, where I bought my weed, and how at thirteen-years-old I made much older friends. By the time we fled that a-frame for a split-level in a bigger city, I could aspire for nothing greater than to break out and conquer my own shoddy wonderland, baptizing myself in its waters and shedding the iniquities of far too much beauty.

Every Heart Challenge: Waiting at Home

“Will you marry me?” In the rearview mirror the whites of his eyes only just slipped out from the night's veil. The street lamp dripped its light like a broken waterspout around his parked coupe, all else was darkness. He stared back at the porch continuing his hour-long cycle; door, mirror, door.

After a few minutes he asked the mirror again, “Will you marry… Will you mar… Will you marry me?” That was the one, he realized. His eyes broke course finally, falling into the pit of black at the floorboard.

The world traveled past him like a subway tunnel as he rode his body helplessly into the bedroom. The light from the fixture, clanging below the wild ceiling fan, seemed to have gained wattage tenfold when he dropped it
onto the hushed disaster of a room; a cacophony of clothes, garbage, dishes, and what can delicately be referred to as “other.”

It wouldn’t have kept her, he thought, even if he had been able to say it when he still had the chance, so very, very long ago.

The Darkest of Our Flock

"Y'know what the difference is between us?" he asked me, blasted to the hilt but somehow wearing it expertly.

For one thing, at least eighteen beers by that point, and I'm no slouch. With such a broad category, I didn't know where to start, or more importantly where to stop my smart-ass parade. But he was in the midst of recounting his glory days of prison, how he got there, and why he would probably be going back before too long, so I wasn't really expected to answer.

He continued after a beer--not a sip... well it was a sip for him, but a whole beer, "If it came down to it, you probably don't have what it takes to lop off a man's fingers with a pair of gardening shears."

"I just can't really picture the scenario where that's my only option," I answered but I could see he was disappointed in my reply.

Game On

"Freakin' Scalaxar, thanks for the ride," Steven grumbled as he pinched beneath his glasses and wrinkled his forehead so that his bushy eyebrows blended into his oily black mop of hair.

"What'd you say?" Rod spit out, his voice barely shy of angry.

Steven popped his head up, frightened from instinct. Rod hadn't been a jock at his high school, hadn't roughed up any of the local geeks, but from his physique and the way he strutted around with his Assistant Manager's badge brilliantly gleaming, Steven knew who he was dealing with... mostly.

"Oh, it's some uh... just a weird thing," he said, dropping his head and staring into the pavement once more as he pretended to wait for his ride, on whom he'd given up hope half an hour ago.

"Scalaxar," Rod said, proper intonation and everything, "the Realm Keeper."

Steven's lips flapped confusedly until he found, "You play Guardians and Guildmasters?" Steven was brilliant, so of course knew the answer to be affirmative; you're average Joe can't name characters from a role playing game as obscure as G and G. Still, he expected the answer to be no.

Rod shook his head and clicked his car unlocked from across the parking lot, gesturing as he said, "Where we're going, buddy, we don't play G and G."

Song and Dance

The soulful licks of the electric guitar’s howl peeled layer after layer from him with each sonorous spank. The refrain had become cliché rhetoric—If lovin’ you is wrong, I don’t wanna be right—but tonight it had been rewritten and plucked from the airwaves by the hand of the Divine.

His insides sizzled as he poured whiskey over the coals of guilt that had grilled hand-squoze patties of self-loath into scorched stones even the dog would turn away.

He rolled down the driver-side window and the slope of angry rain avalanched into his face. The window to her bedroom was the only one with even a whisper of light sneaking around in the great big house. He chanted in his head that her husband would be on another trip in a few days and it would be his own shadow brushing across the curtains, and that was enough; he didn’t
want to be right.

Places

The set doesn't brag; it's not proud enough to lie. The wash of faint light crawls over it with my fingers, X1 through 9 sliding up as if riding a wave to safety.

Lights One is "Black to House," but I always bring up the cue for Places when I first reach the booth. That's why I get to the theatre early, just so I can do it, without one of the actors sullying my moment of Zen.

In an hour it will be ruined by life, born into a world of iniquity, but now--in my moment--the stage and I share a secret, swearing to each other that we will protect this sanctuary no matter what egos threaten to impurify.

A door creaks open below me--a door I haven't exactly "forgotten" to oil--and the stage goes dark; a secretive wink hush-hushing our pact.

Natural Selection

Originally posted at my 6 Sentences account, a social network for writers.

"They kill the ducks," hissed the scrawny young woman, leaning into the garbage can behind me, so that at first I could only see the forest green bandanna hugging her sweaty, dirt-blond hair.

I faced her with my trademark inadvertently-indignant eyebrow scrunch, which I never intend to come off as malicious as it always does. She squeezed her eyelids to retaliate my superficial intensity, latching onto my eyes as she mechanically ripped open the rings of my freshly discarded six pack, staring me down like a fighter, pristine blue icebergs beaming within.

She smelled like really good weed or very bad body odor, perhaps both, which was perfect because she was that unwashed, save-the-world hippie type that really cranks my engine. Sure, they like to pretend they want all of us Suits gone from "their city," the hipness of which my people--and our evil, icky money--allegedly diminish tenfold. But I knew upon first contact with my little eco-heroine, hours before we took turns burrowing one another's perspiring backs into the muddying forest floor, that all she really wanted was to set me right; make me see the light.

Swing and a Miss

In my dream, it was someone cheering at a baseball game while I was trying to have a conversation with my cat (if you think that part’s weird, you should also know I fucking hate baseball).

My first thought, as I awoke to hear his final cries for mercy, was of the last thing he had said to me before leaving camp that night: “If there’s grass on the field, play ball.” Now, if there’s one thing I hate as much as a twenty-something pedophile who hides behind the anatomical similarities between an impressionable teenage girl and a grown woman, it’s a slob who takes sports metaphors in vain.

I wasn’t sure when his screams had ended as I was too focused on walking silently toward their fire. Around it, the raucous group--who were very clearly not, as she had said, a group of friends on spring break--lauded the girl’s performance in trapping their dinner, as they passed portions of my buddy from grubby hand to grubby hand.

For hours, until they were all asleep, I hung as soundly as moss to the bark of that tree watching them with dumb, cold reason; a two-hundred-pound man, I calculated, couldn't satisfy a dozen haggard mountainfolk and I’ve never really been a “dessert” kind of guy.

Hallowed be What's-His-Name

The Almighty sulked ascetically in his throne, while the angels and saints tried not to acknowledge such, even though he would instantly forgive them.

Michael, in all his haughty glory, voiced without fear, "Oh God, what's
you're problem?"

Omniscient and thereby patient, He tolerated the irreverence--He'd tamed a bit since the fall-out with Luci--and reminded Himself of the promise not to "bottle it up" anymore.

The cork flew and He bubbled quickly, stung by the reminder of His own words, "Why don't they say 'please' in any of their prayers? And when they improvise, it's always 'Lord we
just ask...'; 'We just wish...'; 'We just!'"

Then as any good father would, He laughed it off and soldiered on, grateful to be beloved enough to be taken for granted.

Originally posted at my 6 Sentences account, a social network for writers.

Unhinged

One more from my 6s account,http://sixsentences.ning.com/profile/Jared

I wondered if maybe the doorway was warped, once I replaced the heavy old cracked door with a new lighter one and it continued to swing open and closed at its convenience (or more precisely my inconvenience).

I woke one night, to hear “s” and “p” sounds cracking from below the hum of the wee-hour darkness that painted my room. I couldn’t make out the words, though the quiet conversation--or at least half of a conversation--was occurring not more than three feet from my ear.

My voice resisted for several hyperventilated attempts before it finally mustered, in a cowardly faux baritone, “Hello?”

The whisperer ceased in mid-sentence, then a drumroll of what sounded like very small feet trilled against the floor and out the doorway, the door opening itself as usual.

As my heart swung back-and-forth from chest to shoulder blade, my darker half joked, “At least I don’t need to buy another door.”

My Amber Eyed Monster

I didn’t want to know, but I’d kept count: thirty-four tries. The hateful amber light which should have glowed green still blinked uncooperatively as the computer refused my order to come to life.

I felt beaten and betrayed as if one of my arms had leaped from my body and slapped me before running off with my wife.

In a move born from the marriage of my stung vulnerability and inherent refusal to be dominated by a machine, I found myself standing over the disemboweled hard drive tower which was sprawled across my dinner table like a poor geek’s Frankenstein’s Monster. The caveman inside me marveled at the fragile components, crisply green and silver, exposing themselves as if a potential mate coyly revealing her flesh “accidentally” to catch my attention. I approached it with the same nervous meticulousness of a rookie lover, following step-by-preordained-step, and escaped the encounter similarly, relieved to have made it out alive and strutting like a peacock.