LATE AFTERNOON LIGHT

Her heels clacked on the stone walkway, as she made her way home, her soft-cotton summer dress, a fading lemon in the late afternoon light, swishing against her bare legs. The fabrics caress reminded her of Antonio's hand, sliding over her knee as they watched the black and white movie in the park.

She smiled, wishing she were still with him, but she had to leave, get up early for work. His eyes lingered in her mind, the way they enveloped her, looked inside her, so deep.

She shook her head, grinning, trailing her index finger across her red-tinted lips, and then she felt as if she was there with him: the smell of honeysuckle so close, as they leaned against the mid-high brick wall, covered in purple and pink flowers, to better see the movie. And the kiss that Antonio stole when she'd left, his lips touching hers, and the taste of red wine on his tongue.

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An earthen chill permeated her skin as she entered the stone tunnel. She shivered and pulled her knitted champagne-colored sweater closer about her.

Her mind's eye swept Antonio's shape, his lean frame, his thick wavy hair hugging his ears, and his strength as he pulled her in so close she thought she could crawl inside him to stay forever safe and loved.

She cinched her sweater tighter about her neck as she walked, the tunnel's chill burrowing its way under her skin, unaware of the ever darkening shadows that collected around her.

She was so distracted with Antonio's vibrant green eyes, like emeralds immersed in clear spring water, that she didn't hear the footsteps following her. Or the metal click of a pistol's hammer being pulled back.

The End of the Dock

     Water lapped against the dock's sides, as if individual gloved hands played patty cake in the distance. Nothing else sounded except the occasional bird, a seagull he thought, but he wasn't sure. His mind was frozen inside his skull, sullen, as if the earth had slipped from under him. The wooden boards creaked beneath his weight as he walked the dock, a reminder of his existence in the world. He flinched at his own breath and wished they had taken all of him—not just his career and his family.   

    A soft breeze, smelling of salt and dead fish, cooled the tear tracks that streamed down his face. He shivered and pulled his jacket closer about him, forcing his hands to leave the warm sanctuary of his pockets. When he stepped to the end of the dock's surface, he paused for a few seconds, listening, remembering. Then he jumped, letting out all breath before hitting the cold, black water.

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The Unknown How of the Ash: Beckoned

Rachael jolted awake. Sweat soaked her sheets and pajamas. She clutched her chest and scanned her barely furnished room with quick, cat-like eyes.

What had she dreamed? She couldn't remember, except the trailings of an urgency to get away, a need to run. Had something or someone been chasing her? She swam the trenches of her memory, trying to recall, but the darkness of nothingness blocked her view.

Moonlight streamed in from the un-curtained window next to her bed. The window slats created boxes on her wooden floor. From this height, as her room resided in the musty attic, she could see the Ash in the far meadow; its leaves shimmied in the breeze, highlighted by the light of the moon.

"You must come, girl," the voice whispered.

Her breath caught in her throat. Angst surfaced, trembling her bones, but she moved to the window, drawn to the Ash.

"You must come tomorrow."

She nodded and returned to bed, her feet cold from the floor's chill. Once her head rested on her pillow, she closed her eyes and slept, the worry of who whispered leaving her. 

BENEATH

Charlotte clambered from the two-door sedan, stumbled alongside the car until she reached the front, then propped herself with one hand on the car's hood. Her vision blurred the longer she stood, and her head swam. Too much alcohol, she thought and repositioned herself.

Her boyfriend, Morris, chatted with the police officer who had pulled them over. How he could look normal and appear put together was beyond her. Their muffled voices sounded distant, like she stood several feet from them, but she didn't--less than a foot.

She watched and swayed, repositioning herself every few seconds, while she wondered if she needed to throw up. She should have stayed home, watched a movie with her roommate, and went to bed early. Now she'd be hung over for class. What did she have tomorrow? It was on the tip of her tongue, but the closer she got to remembering it the further it moved from her grasp.

Movement flashed at her peripheral. She jerked and saw Morris step back from the police officer with his hands up.

What was he saying? She couldn't make it out, but he looked scared. Panic bristled the hair on her arms.

Then the ground vibrated and split the pavement open into a monstrous hole. The police officer disappeared, swallowed by the black earth that now flared bright red.

Charlotte screamed and scrambled backward, which meant going no where, her hands slippery on the car's hood. The ground heaved and buckled. She fell sideways onto to the gravel, flailing.

She saw Morris stumble and fall. Half his body hung into the gaping whole.

"Charlotte! Help me!" he said and reached for her. Fright widened his eyes. He grunted and clawed the ground to get a grip.

She crawled on her knees toward him, reached her hand out, and brushed his fingertips with hers. The ground rocked and rumbled, and the hole swallowed Morris further. Only his head and arms showed now.

"Charlotte! Help me!"

Hesitation and fear grappled with her mind . . . her decency. She reached out, but her fingers were further away from his than before. She would have scoot forward, closer to the hole, to help him. I can't do it.

Bile rose. She vomited in the space between her and Morris. She shook her head and inched backward instead of forward.

"Charlotte! Don't leave me!" Morris's eyes panicked, mixed with anger and fear.

"I can't," she said. "I'm so sorry." Morris plunged below the threshold of the broken earth, gone into fiery flames. Charlotte screamed.

What's wrong with you? You should have helped him? Despair, regret, and relief bomb dived her system, and she pushed herself up, crying, hyperventilating.

Before she could run, the ground gave way beneath her. Her long, blonde hair raised to the sky, and she plummeted into the red, molten glow of Mother Earth.

The Great Persuasive Lie

She cornered me at the front door.  Her words slithered over my skin and into my mind, but the alcohol fumbled their intent, and she stormed off.  I stumbled down the hall, my shoulders absorbing the walls’ sturdiness with each wayward step, until I reached the bedroom door.  Hands on hips, she yelled at me to take the couch.  My body trembled at the idea of walking a few steps more then I collapsed face first onto the embroidered, couch pillows, blackness descended.

Kitchen cupboards slammed again and again, and for a moment I knew not what sounded, only that my head pounded with every bang. 

“Stop all that goddamn noise,” I said and pulled a pillow over my head.

The banging continued and then the clang of pots and pans joined the symphony of anger I knew was my wife's, another morning of hate and reproach.  I rolled off the couch and worked my way to the kitchen.  I poured hot coffee in a mug and two fingers of whiskey and leaned against the counter’s edge for my inevitable talking to.

She watched me, so intent I thought if she could manifest fire I’d be a goner.  I almost wished she could.

 “I’m leaving you.”

“What?” I said.

“I’m leaving you.”

“I’ve heard it before, and you never left.”

“This time is different.”

“How’s that?”

“I’m already packed and loaded, Dan.  This is just me saying good-bye.”

“Good-bye then,” I said.  I swiped the whiskey bottle from the counter and headed to the couch.

Time slowed.  The whiskey bottle sat on the coffee table; I watched it watching me.  My mind struggled over her leaving, so silent in the house now, and her anger and why she left.

I loved her.  I hated her.  I wanted her.

 

The bottle felt cool in my hand and smooth to the touch.  I set it back on the coffee table, pushed it further from me.  When was it going to end?  Lost my job, my wife, my family, no one would have anything to do with me.

“What the hell happened to me?” I yelled.  Desperation filled my gut, my heart.  My head lolled on my chest and the house's silence darkened and tangled its tentacles around my limbs.  I felt hopeless.

The bottle shimmered with light like it held its own inner source.  I didn’t need any of them anyway, right?  But I wanted them.  I felt lonely, at a loss.  My eyes edged back to the bottle, so inviting.  Naw, I'm better off without them.  My hand wrapped around the glass, and I tilted the brown liquid back and swallowed.

 

Yeah, I didn’t need any of them or that stupid job.  I was fine.  I was good.

 

Another swallow.  Complete oblivion.

 

SYNCHRONICITY

The library held silence, like miniature snow globes hold fake winter snowstorms. People moved through vast book shelves that extended from ceiling to floor with hundreds upon hundreds of books.  Joseph lounged at a wooden table, which faced the main entryway into the building and stared at his book, some mystery or other, though his eyes flitted from page to door every few seconds.

A woman with short brunette hair and skinny pants that hugged every curve, with a long grey-green shoulder bag that slapped her left thigh, walked in.  Joseph caught the glint of her movement, and his eyes fastened on her.  His spine stiffened straight, and his book lulled, half-hazard, in his hands.  The woman dropped two books in the return book chute and sauntered off to the historical section.

Joseph tracked her with his eyes until she disappeared then with discreet and deliberate movement pushed his metal chair back and stood.  He maneuvered down a parallel aisle, scanning each intersection of shelving, and located her two rows from the end in a desolate part of the library, where scholars and hard-core researchers only dared to frequent.

She stood, with her shoulders somewhat hunched and her hip slanted out, as her left foot rested on tiptoe.  She perused a large black book and hummed a tune under her breath.  He remained quiet at the end of the row, studying her, and fingered something in his right jacket pocket.

"Excuse me.  Can I help you find something?"

Joseph swiveled round to where a young boy of seventeen stared at him, with arched eyebrows and an open expression on his face.

"No thanks," Joseph said and turned his back to the boy.  He moved into the row where the woman still lingered, uninterrupted, and picked up a book at random.  "I've found what I'm looking for," he said and flashed his inquirer a grin laden with white teeth.

The boy's eyes squinted and glanced toward the woman at the far end and then back to Joseph.  "Well, let me know if you need any help."

"Sure will," Joseph said.  He shifted his feet under the boy's gaze and bored his nose further into the book he held.

The boy resumed his delivery of the returned books residing on his library cart, and Joseph set his eyes on the woman again, though she no longer stood where he left her.  He cursed and slammed the book back into its slot.

Giant's Hammering Nails

Miss Lily woke with sunlight in her eyes and rain drops on her fingertips.  Bladed grass grazed her temples and a lump of dirt lodged itself between her second and third rib on her backside.  She sputtered a moment with the rain filling her mouth as she tried to breath, and she rolled on to her side and coughed.  The grass was a light green, fresh and new with spring, and a small, black beetle scurried up one grass blade toward the sunlight that shimmered in the rain.  She coughed again and then breath came sweet and with ease and she wondered why she laid on this grass with the sun-rain coming down.

She last remembered her home, with the windows wide open where a rustling breeze had blown in and stirred her papers on her desk.  She had been writing a story for her sister who laid still in bed.  A story about a girl who had long yellow pigtails and ate butterflies with toothpicks and liked to call angels fart-mouths.  The little girl wore purple and brown with pink polka-dots and had a dog named Larry.

The rain stopped now and the sun shone brighter and more heat radiated from its rays.  She rolled on her back and closed her eyes.  For some reason she wasn't eager to rise, to find out why she laid on spring grass with beetles walking. 

Miss Mary, her sister, wore a frown and played no more.  No, Miss Mary didn't have a chance of coming home or laying on grass with beetles.  But Miss Lily could lay here for her and sing tiny songs like fairies and pretend she had wings and could fly.  Fly, fly, fly away from here.


"Miss Lily, where are you?"

She opened her eyes and laid still like a fallen stick.  She knew the voice that called her, a kind voice from an evil woman.  The woman who hurt Miss Mary and wanted to hurt her.  Is that why she laid here, out of the house, far into the woods in a hidden meadow?

"Lily!  You show yourself right now!"  The woman shrieked and screamed, guttural like a wild wolf.

Miss Lily shivered and curled into a ball like the rollie-pollies her and Miss Mary liked to find in the dirt.  I could be a rollie-pollie, she thought.  I could scamper away on all my legs and live in the dirt and be free.  Miss Mary would want me to be free.

"Rollie-Pollie, Rollie-Pollie, I am you, you are me, we are free.  Rollie-Pollie, Rollie-Pollie, I am you, you are me, we are free," she said under her breath with her lips against the ground, again and again.

The evil woman's footsteps came louder and louder like giant's hammering nails and then she stood above her with hands on hips and cheeks red from movement.

"Lily, where are you?"

Miss Lily stayed ever so quiet.  She held her breath and knew the woman would see her at any moment, had to, for she laid at her feet, inches from the woman's boots.

But she didn't see her. 

The woman left, huffy and puffy, with hands still on her hips, shaking her head and yelling.  Why hadn't she seen her?  She was right here, in the bright sun.

She stared at her own hands which weren't hands any longer.  Rollie-Pollie she was and would be and so she was free.

Chopper

Chopper is a funny cat, an alien really.  He comes from else where with an extra long tail that fluffs wide when it's cold.

At night, he pokes his bony paws into our chests and licks our fingers and palms.  Skin samples, we found.  That's what he was licking off our fingers and palms.  He sends them up through his tail that sticks straight up like an antenna, transmits to the mother ship.  He watches us with dark eyes, not evil, not contriving at all, just sweet and kind, luring us in to pet him, to cradle him with love as he licks our fingers and palms.

Silly cat, I say.

My husband laughs and tells me he glimpsed the mother ship the other night, when he stood out on the rotting, wood deck, as he looked up at the stars.  There it was above our home, half invisible but there nonetheless, hovering, collecting Chopper's samples.  We don't feel angry by it or deceived.  We find it funny, though we don't know what they do with all our saliva-stained samples.

Chopper went missing once, for two weeks.

We looked everywhere, wandered up and down the streets with "Missing Kitty" fliers under our arms.  We cried, or at least I did, and called his name.  And then one morning, after we had already accepted the fact that he was gone, I woke to a loud meow outside my window.  At first, I thought it was just me dreaming a dream of Chopper talking to me like he used to, so I fell back asleep but was woken shortly by another meow.

I gathered my sleepy limbs and managed to the backdoor and who stood under the window but Chopper himself, all skinny and sad looking.  I brought him into the house and cuddled with him in bed.  His hair felt dirty and oily, not soft and smooth, and he wouldn't stop licking and meowing and rubbing against me so eager to get his love he had missed for two weeks.

We figured the mother ship took him for a while.  I'm sure he stood up for us humans down here, and they didn't stand for his subordinate behavior and fired him.

His still an alien, jobless now, but that's okay.  We like him all the same.