This one’s for you, Skink, this solid and remarkable dream I had one night, just last week, still haunting me in this, my 88th year on the planet. It was so real I believe it really happened in a place so near us, we can’t see it, or so far away from us, we’ll never get to see it for ourselves, even though we know it inside and out, upside and down, from left to right, and all the in-betweens, the hereabouts that may occupy more than one place in this universe.
Brandt Colson silently watched his frenetic daughter as she flitted from room to room in her usual style, talking about ten different things at once and fussing over details and generally majoring in the minor. Brandt noticed the bored and frowning, mostly grown boy, his grandson, as he stood at the front door leaning against the wall. The boy took no pains to hide his sullen, brooding, teenage impatience.
She stopped flying around the room and paused in front of the chair. Brandt looked up. “Plenty to eat and all laid out. Your list is on the counter. Sure you feel up to it, Dad?”
“Feel fine.” He replied. The stroke was jumbled memory now.
I low gear the Mazda pickup down the dirt road to the floodplain. The headlights help me find my way as the sun peaks over the horizon. I park by a small pond with stunted trees and knee-high shrubbery.
I grin at Mac, my big Airedale, rub his neck; he shakes his head, eager for the hunt. I grab the thermos of coffee. Mac and I move to the back of the truck. I open the top of the camper shell. Shaft and Dart, the brindle and the white greyhounds, greet me with muzzles and tongues and an eager trembling.
Mrs. Pascal’s first rule, no sweets in the parlor.
My fingers dig into the folds of my gloomy clothes, clawing at the satin that piles under my fingertips. It does not do to indulge yourself in front of the grieving, Genevieve. Her voice scratches against the walls of my head. Not when there is work to be done.
Perhaps not, Mrs. Pascal, but to deny one their sweets in time of such pain does not do as well.
Continue reading “Mr. Pascal’s Funeral Parlor by Nikki Macahon”
Zayde died last Saturday. This afternoon we gathered to attend a service over a plain pine coffin and to remember him over cold cuts on rye. I remembered my grandfather chiefly as a madman.
“He died happy,” said my mother. “That’s all that matters.”
Continue reading “The Man Who Lost Everything by Erica Verillo”
He hadn’t meant to do it. As his muscles strained against their tendons, sweat pouring from his brow, reality blurred like the trees standing behind rain-covered windows. Adrenaline coursed though his veins, filled his mouth with a metallic taste- He wondered if she’d tasted it too, in those few brief moments of chaos.
He hadn’t meant to do it. Really. But, in the moment, it was the only choice he had.
~
Jason Mattis was old. Not in the physical sense — though a few gray hairs had begun to work their way into his shadow of a beard — but in what he’d experienced over his 26 years of life. Growing up, Jason had watched his mother deteriorate in a mess of tubes and needles and medication, the whirring machines sucking the life from her as fuel for their colorful blinking lights. Sunken eyes, sagging skin, and the shadowy shapes of bones resting just beneath the surface. Smaller and smaller upon that white bed, until one day, she simply wasn’t there anymore.
I stop explaining aloud to my children that I am not lonely.
I used to tell them these things as if they would understand automatically. I’m not lonely when I lie down at night and fall asleep with five fluffy pillows surrounding my head. Or when I wake up, make my way to the kitchen—the red and white tile floor cold under my feet—and stare out across the green lawn and watch the birds eat from the feeder and sing into the morning light. Even when I eat almost every meal alone, I do not yearn for someone to sit beside me. Instead, I enjoy my breakfast, lunch and dinner outside on the patio and throw the remains of my meals in the lawn and look forward to watching the deer find the hidden treasures.
I give my children the simple answer now when they ponder and poke. “You know what the doctors said. I should spend this time how I want and that’s exactly what I’m doing.”
Got the news straight from the horse’s ass. No fucking around at all. Dr. pull-no-punches, straight arrow motherfucker.
“The cancer done got you, boy. Got you good from asshole to elbows. Not much we can do, but wave to you as you go.”
“How about, chemo, radiation, experimental—“
“How about six to eight weeks to go? How about that?”
Continue reading “Goodbye Blues by Frederick K Foote – Adult Content.”
The ice will wake you. You’ll hear it dropping in the plastic cup, sense it being passed in front of you to the woman in the window seat you haven’t spoken to since the flight began. You’ll drift, then you’ll open your eyes and stare into a face that would be prettier with less make-up. Her strip-light smile won’t fade as she asks you, patiently, for the third time if you’d like something to drink. You’ll order a gin and tonic even though you don’t want one because that’s what you do on flights. While she rummages for the gin needle in the haystack of unwanted brandy you’ll wonder if you’ll get peanuts or mini pretzels.
You’ll bet on pretzels.
And you’ll be right.
The room felt cold, the curtains around each bed swaying slightly in a draft that seemed to come from nowhere. Dennis walked down the centre aisle, the soles of his work boots sucking at the floor. He stopped at his mother’s bed, stood at the end of it, waiting.
His mother eventually opened her eyes, the act seeming to take some effort. The skin of her face was slack and grey, seeming to have shrunk since the last time he visited. ‘Dennis…’
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