I.
Now it’s a barn, a ballroom really
the posts wait,
lit by beams of dust

II.
She pushes me against
the wall, holding me
up entirely

III.
On the phone the faces hang,
mouths open, talking
I cannot hear anything through the window

IV.
the shadow of me
pushes back against my shoes
no matter how fast I walk

V.
the night windows
spill yellow light
I step around

VI.
the lines of some sidewalks
make deep sense
constantly saying something

VII.
the bridge
wider than it seems
when I walk over it

VIII
Nothing I now know
looks the same
from the river

Friday Fictioneers

 

My sponsor says that times like this I need to run through my gratitude list.

1. I’m sober, which is ironic considering how many drunken spills I’ve taken and never hurt myself
2. I’m wearing my winter coat and snowpants.
3. Though they hurt like hell, I can’t actually see any bones sticking out of my leg or arm.
4. It’s Sunday, so the mailman won’t come, but it’s not a holiday weekend
5. The ice storm stopped before I fell so I at least I’m dry
6. They say dying of cold is the most painless
7. I don’t have any kids
8. Probably nobody’ll miss me

It started with the Bible. She hid it in her room like porn, read it secretly at night. She stopped hanging out with the girls she’d known since pre-school, instead preferring the company of people she would name but never introduce.

Only full names, which was odd. Joshua. Stephen. Bethany. No Jeff or Steph or Liz.

We confronted her when the attendance office called to report she’d not been to school all semester. She sat there, placid as a marble bust, staring through us as though we were apparitions.

We woke next morning to find she was gone.

Friday Fictioneers

“What’s with that concrete trough?”

“They used to fill it during the winter and use it as an ice rink.”

“Doesn’t it melt?”

“No it doesn’t melt, Arizona boy. Come December, this place hardly ever breaks twenty degrees, let alone thirty-two.”

“Damn. How did you deal?”

“Bundle up. You get used to it. Ice on the sidewalks is tricky, but you learn.”

“God. I’ll take shorts and flipflops over long-johns any day.”

“Summers in Arizona aren’t exactly a picnic.”

“A/C baby. It’s how we do.”

“My dad taught me to ice-skate here. I still hate this place. Let’s go.”

 

Friday Fictioneers

His life had been depicted as an utter failure of self-will, an utter collapse of self-respect, even of essential humanity.

Of course they hadn’t told him before he signed the contract.

“We want to share stories of medically obese for our viewers,” were the exact words they’d used.

“We’ll be extremely respectful.”

And they had been while they filmed him recumbent in the extra-duty recliner that served as his bed, his chair, his platform for viewing the world through his laptop and television.

When the show had aired, he was appalled.

The low-angle shots of his face particularly grieved him.

Friday Fictioneers

Briggs stepped out from the sally-port and released the pressure valve of his already-fogging helmet. It came off with a little hiss and he breathed in the moist and verdant air. He peered around, speechless.

Colonel Wright smiled. “Pretty amazing, eh?”

“How does all this stuff stay alive?” Briggs asked.

“I keep forgetting you’re not another scientist. Put simply, it’s a biosphere. It maintains itself. The original idea was to make the whole planet like this, but you know. Politicians.”

Briggs peered through the glass at the blackened rubble of the once-great city. “Too bad they couldn’t figure it out.”

Friday Fictioneers

At first it was OK. The FBI provided me with a little house and a job working nights in the mall. “Keep to yourself and it should be fine,” they told me. “In a few years, they’ll forget all about you. Statute of limitations.”

Right. No such thing with a 100k contract on your head.

Thing was I couldn’t stand the boredom. I had to get out. I took my paycheck to the Horseshoe and parlayed it into enough to buy the RV.

Now I move around, never staying too long. “My name’s Frank,” I say.

No last names ever.

Friday Fictioneers

“I don’t get why it has to be a full seven days.”

“Read the Book of Job. That’s where sitting Shiva comes from.”

“I’ll get right on that.”

“I don’t appreciate your tone.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

“I just don’t understand why. It’s not like you’re orthodox. And who was she to you anyway, that you need to sit by her body for a week?”

“She was my mother’s oldest sister. You never met her.”

“I haven’t met anyone in your family aside from your mom.”

“I know you haven’t.”

“You think they won’t approve of me. Is that it?”

“No.”

Friday Fictioneers

 

 

 

 

My numb feet swelled in my boots as I squatted with the others in the frozen mud.

McCombs had scrounged some charcoal somewhere and made a fire in a 305mm Skoda shell the Germans left behind when they retreated.

We crowded around its scant heat, holding over the flames our tins of bully-beef skewered on bayonets.

Everybody had snipers deployed all along the lines, so our chief amusement was putting a helmet atop a stick and waving it above the trench wall.

We’d take bets on how long before it was shot through.

This seldom took longer than a half-minute.

 

Friday Fictioneers

 

They rowed by the sprawling house with floor-to-ceiling windows facing the lake.

“Pretty deluxe,” he said, resting his oars as they drifted. “Place like that set you back two million at least.”

“I’ve never seen anyone in it,” she said, shading her eyes. “Just the caretaker mowing the lawn.”

“Must be nice,” he said.

Over the months they kept an eye on it, even made a bet about when they might see the owners. They never did.

It was she who first noticed the windows. “All that fantastic view, yet the shades are drawn tight.”

“Must be a story there.”

 

Friday Fictioneers