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Yearly Archives: 2013
The Waiting Room
Anna pushed open the door and stepped into the waiting room. The buzz and chatter died down while those assembled inside turned their heads towards her, the newcomer. Their curiosity satisfied, they resumed their mumblings and moaning, and Anna was able to creep to an empty seat, where she shrunk down, hugging her knees to her body, trying to become invisible.
She hadn’t wanted to come. Somehow it was like admitting defeat to come here, to wait in this room, hoping. She looked around her and wondered if she looked like the other people: they had a sort of desperate air about them, as if they had nothing to lose.
In the corner an old lady sat, mumbling to herself. Her head was nodding, like one of those plastic dogs people used to put in the back of their cars. Anna watched, fascinated, while the old lady’s head nodded around all the way to the right, until she was staring at the wall. The head paused, then began the journey back again, nod, nod, nod, all the way. Anna caught the lady’s eye on the return journey, and smiled, in what she hoped was a reassuring way but the woman just stared right through her with barely a pause in the nodding.
The chair next to Anna was unoccupied, but there was a newspaper lying across it. Anna reached out a hand to move the newspaper and a man in a chair on the other side of it frowned at her.
“Do you mind?” he said, in a voice that showed he minded very much, “I am reading that.” Anna pulled her hand back.
At the far end of the room a door opened and a woman in a white coat came through, carrying a clipboard. She looked around the waiting room and called loudly, “Mrs Pierce?”
Opposite Anna a lady stood up. Anna could tell from her clothes that she was quite wealthy, and she moved with an air of disdain, as though everyone else in the room were beneath her. Anna wondered what she was doing there: she did not look as if she belonged.
The designer clothes were swallowed up by the door and the room sunk into torpor again. A small baby mewled and its mother tried to hush it but the baby cried even louder and the mother looked around the room, apologizing silently for the disturbance. An older girl took some toys from a chest and banged them noisily on the floor. A couple of women deep in conversation looked over at the toddler and frowned, then resumed their discussion.
Anna wanted to jump up and scream, she was so nervous, but she knew she should not. Maybe, if she were lucky…. She wondered how the lady with the fancy clothes was getting on behind the closed door. People with money always got what they wanted, but maybe money did not count here. Anna watched a young boy of about her own age sitting with his mother who was fussing about his appearance. She fixed his collar, wiped some flecks off his jacket, then produced a comb and tried to comb his hair; the boy pushed her away irritably.
Anna hugged her knees again and stared at the clock on the wall. The jerky movements of the thinnest hand marked out the passage of seconds that stretched into minutes. Anna was able to shut out the murmurings of the waiting room as she focused on the moving pointer. Tick, tick, tick. It seemed an eternity. Nod, nod, nod; in the corner the old lady’s head moved in time to the clock.
The door at the far end of the room opened again, and this time it was the young boy’s turn. His mother followed him to the door, straightening his clothes all the way.
“I’m sorry, but you can’t come in,” said the woman in the white coat. The boy’s mother looked as if she would have a fit on the spot.
“But I’m his mother,” she spluttered, “I have to be there!”
“I’m sorry,” clipboard lady repeated, “but it’s not allowed.” She turned, propelling the boy before her and shut the door, leaving the boy’s mother gaping.
Rejected, the mother shut her mouth and looked around the waiting room, as if looking for somebody to blame. Her eyes settled on the young mother, who had just succeeded in getting her baby to sleep.
“Don’t think you’ll be allowed in, just because your children are babies,” hissed the boy’s mother. The little girl, who had been playing with the pots from the toy chest looked up indignantly.
“I’m not a baby,” she said loudly. The real baby woke up and began to cry. Its mother hushed it and looked daggers at the other woman.
Anna wondered if it would be better to have somebody with you. At least they would be a comforting presence. Still, the boy can’t have had too many problems as the clipboard lady was back again, this time taking one of the talking ladies with her. The hubbub that had started up when the baby cried died down now that the remaining gossiper had nobody left to talk to. The clock ticked, the old woman nodded and Mr Newspaper Man folded and unfolded his paper, hitting it occasionally to keep it straight, all the time making sure that some pages were left on the chairs at each side of him, warding off strangers.
A young lady entered the waiting room and once again the noise died down, while the occupants appraised the new arrival. She looked nervous and avoided looking anybody in the eye. This meant she did not get a seat, as Mr Newspaper Man did not offer to remove his papers and there were no other seats left. Anna wondered whether she should give up her seat, then decided everybody would look at her if she did and she would die of shame, so she wrapped her hands even more tightly around her knees and tried again to become invisible.
Anna must have dozed off, for she jumped when she heard her name being called.
“Annabella,” the lady with the clipboard repeated it, louder.
Anna uncoiled herself and stood up. Mr Newspaper Man was gone, and Timid Lady was sitting in one of the vacated chairs. The only other person still in the room was the nodding crone, still keeping time with the clock.
Anna followed the lady with the clipboard down a long dark passageway until they came to a large well lit room with a long table down the centre. On one side of the table were four people, three men and a lady, all wearing identical white coats while on the other side was a single chair. Anna was directed to this chair and told to sit down. “Why are you here?” asked one of the men in the white coats.
Anna took a deep breath to study her nerves then spoke.
“I want to be an angel,” she said. “I drowned in my Dad’s swimming pool and the person who brought me here said I could have one wish before I move into the eternity room.” She looked down at her feet and spoke very quietly. “I want to become a guardian angel and look after my little brother so that my mother doesn’t lose him too: she thinks it’s her fault that I am here, because she let me go to my Dad’s house, but it’s really my fault. I didn’t listen when Dad told me not to dive in the shallow end, then I hit my head and everything went black.”
The three men scribbled on paper in front of them. The lady just stared at Anna, without any emotion on her face. Anna waited to hear the verdict, but could not take her eyes off the lady’s face. She stared and stared, as if trying to bore a hole through Anna’s eyes. Anna squirmed and tried to hug her legs again but could not move her arms. She felt as if a great weight were bearing down on her, crushing her mind.
“I’m sorry!” shouted Anna, “I didn’t mean to!”
She hugged her knees, rolled into a ball and rocked herself, trying to avoid the penetrating stare. Her head hurt, and she could hardly breathe. The three men finished writing and tapped their pencils on the table. Tap, tap, tap, louder and louder, until it became a pounding that reverberated through her chest. Anna wished desperately that one of them would say something, anything.
She felt herself slide off the chair, and the room swam before her eyes. Now the three men were staring at her and the lady was holding the pencil, only it was not a pencil, it was a light, and she was shining it in Anna’s eyes.
Anna blinked and the men began to speak excitedly. She could not understand what they were saying, but she could recognise one of the voices. It was her father’s.
“It’s a miracle,” he said, “she’s alive!”
A Shimmering Image
It was the smell that did it. Just a faint hint of grass and heathers, but it was enough to trigger the memories; memories she did not even know she had. She had felt restless for the past few days. Something was urging her to go, to leave this place and travel north. Now she knew she must find that smell once more; it was important.
She turned her head northwards and began the journey. Others around her were moving too. Perhaps they had remembered a smell of a grass or a rock or maybe they were imagining the days of their youth. Gentle, carefree days spent splashing in ponds and streams, with no worries of the future. She wondered idly how far she would have to travel. It would not matter; she was strong and had stored up plenty of food. Winter was coming and it would be good to be away before the temperature dropped.
Day after day she ploughed on. She fell into a rhythm and no longer thought about the effort. Her companions changed over the weeks but a few stayed constant. She had memories of one or two of them from games long ago when they were young and carefree, but she was shy and did not catch their eyes, although from time to time she was conscious of a large shape following her like a shadow. He did not come too close and after a while she began to think of him as her protector.
And they did need protection. They were attacked more than once and had to scurry for cover and hurry to get away from their assailants. After a while she realized that it was safer to travel with company so she kept close to her one time playmates and accepted the attention of her shadow.
It was tiring. Day after day, night after night, moving ever northwards. She felt herself grow weary and more than once caught herself thinking how easy it would be to sink into a gentle sleep; to just slip away and drift into oblivion. But then she remembered the smell and thought if she could just smell that heather and play in that rock pool one more time she would be content.
The journey became tougher. At first the way had been flat but after a while she found herself struggling uphill, making her way round obstacles, leaping over rocks and even backtracking on occasion. All the time her companion kept pace with her, encouraging her silently. It became harder to breathe; it felt different somehow. She slowed down, to adjust, and as she slowly breathed in the smell came back to her again. Even the light was familiar. She could remember the sunlight flickering through the heathers, the glinting of the water rippling over the stones. She was nearly home.
Would it have changed after so much time, she wondered, would she recognize it? She herself had changed. She was bigger now and different somehow. She looked across at her companion, struggling to keep up; he was different too, and the strain of the journey was showing. She must not give up, not now that she was so close.
At last she saw it. The pool she remembered from so long ago. And the smell; it was just as she had imagined. She stopped, taking time to savour the scene. The old tree was still there, its branches drooping down to the ground. She remembered hiding among the roots during a game of chase. The stepping stones had moved, but then they moved often. They seemed smaller, in fact the whole pool seemed smaller, or maybe it was she that was bigger. It was all so confusing and she was so tired.
Slowly she sank down onto the stones. With the last of her energy she dug a small hole and deposited her precious burden that she had carried all the way, back to her home. She was vaguely aware of her companion moving back and forth over her treasure. He must be helping to keep it safe.
And there was that smell again. Now she knew she was truly home, back where she belonged. She felt weak. She knew she did not have long to live, but at least she had made it home to her family, to the place she had been born. She did not move much more. She was content to watch the sunlight rippling upon the water and smell the heathers and the rocks. It was so very beautiful. One day her children would learn to love this place too and they would know the smell of home, as had her mother in her time.
The salmon gave one last flutter and was still. Her journey was over.
100 word sentence
An assignment from a lecture series I watched a while ago was to create a 100 word sentence, to demonstrate that long sentences can build tension and be interesting. So here are my first three attempts.
With a cigarette clamped firmly between his teeth, a red scarf tied around his neck and his blue and white striped shirt, the gondolier, an image from the classic Italian tourist postcard, poled effortlessly along the winding waterways of the Grand Canal, pausing between each stroke to shout some historical, or, more often, anecdotal fact about the houses or glass factories slipping past on either side, all the time deftly maneuvering the gondola past barges laden with industrial goods and over the wake of faster craft buzzing about their business, slipping silently under the endless succession of bridges or pontes, which link the many piazzas and churches of Venice.
(109 words)
With his cutlass clamped tightly between his teeth and two primed pistols tucked into his waist the pirate vaulted from the forecastle, avoiding the sword fight that was engaging most of the crew and scaled the rigging like a monkey, hand over hand, pulling himself up to the topmost spar and heaving the terrified lookout from the crow’s nest, barely pausing before launching himself on a rope across the deck, swinging like a pendulum over the heads of the struggling soldiers, from where he was able to pick off the ringleaders, one by one, with a few carefully aimed shots.
(100 words)
The sun rose slowly, majestically, almost unnoticed, sending out fingers of light, tentative at first, soft pink hues as if testing the terrain and then longer, more definite rays, broken only by puffs of clouds, which reached to the farthest corner of the meadow, turning each blade of grass and each leaf a brilliant green, where once they had appeared black and sombre, and dispatching the morning dew into a gentle mist that rose to the heavens in the endless cycle of water and cloud.
(85 words)
The Coach
Julie parked the car and walked slowly over to the field where a dozen little girls were practicing swings and pitches. At the side of the field a group of parents were chatting, while a dog sniffed enthusiastically at their feet.
“Mum, watch!”
A young white clad figure threw a ball across the field then turned and beamed at Julie.
“Great work, Megan!” The coach’s deep voice carried on the warm evening air. Julie unfolded her chair and sat in a patch of sunlight, grateful to relax after a busy day. She did not feel like making conversation with the other parents, and in any case, she knew nothing about baseball. She closed her eyes and listened to the evening sounds.
The thwack of the bat as it hit the ball. The shouts of the girls, exhorting their team mates to run. The hum of the traffic in the distance. The murmuring of the other parents. And above it all the instructions from the coach: seemingly meaningless phrases, which lulled her off to sleep.
“Here’s a list of the game times.”
“Huh?” Julie sat up with a start and opened her eyes. The coach was standing in front of her, holding out a piece of paper.
“Sorry I woke you; you looked comfortable there,” he smiled and handed her the paper.
Julie’s heart did a flip and an unexpected tingle of excitement pulsed inside her.
“Oh, yes, sorry, ah, thank you!” she stammered all at once. What had happened? She felt breathless, and she had not even moved. She glanced at the coach, who was distributing the schedule to the other parents, and felt her chest tense.
Not again. Not another crush. And surely not her daughter’s coach!
Julie sighed and looked away. This was the third time in as many years that she had developed a sudden infatuation for a person she barely knew. She must be craving attention, or a relationship, or something.
She had had several crushes before Megan was born: flighty imaginings, but then parenthood had struck, and she found herself thrown into the world of small children, play groups and other parents. At first she had missed her job, and tried to imagine she was not really part of the group, but after a few years and another child, she had accepted the situation and settled to a routine life of her children’s school and activities.
Then, three years ago, the flutterings had started again, taking her completely by surprise.
The first time, it had been the assistant at the liquor store. He had not even said anything, merely smiled as Julie paid for her purchase, and she was hooked. She had begun browsing the wine shelves, taking up to half an hour at times to select a single bottle, watching the man out of the corner of her eye, sometimes summoning the courage to ask for a recommendation. Once she had collected a dozen empties to return, as another excuse for a visit, but then she decided this gave the wrong impression.
That craze had lasted almost four months. Then one day, she noticed her idol had pierced his ears and was wearing large metal rings in his lobes. Julie didn’t have anything against earrings, but her image had been shattered. In a peevish way she felt she should have been consulted, even though she had never spoken to the man, other than to discuss the merits of one red wine versus another. In the end, she had been relieved to get that craze over with, although she still had nineteen unopened bottles of various wines at home.
Then she had met Jenny.
Jenny was a volunteer at the Thrift store. She was highly efficient and perpetually cheerful. Julie began volunteering at the Thrift store too. She had not minded the work; in fact, she had actually rather enjoyed sorting through the clothes and other bric-a-brac. She had followed Jenny around for five weeks, hanging on her every word, admiring her efficiency, basking in her smile. Julie had worn similar skirts, hummed the same tunes, emulating her hero in every action.
It was not a sexual attraction; Julie was not that sort of person. She and Mike had been married now for almost twelve years and there had never been anybody else; and certainly not a woman. No, it was more an aspiration, to be a perfect person, as she believed Jenny to be.
The Jenny phase ended one day after Julie had put in an extra long shift at the store, pricing kitchenware, and had been forgotten at the staff party held at the end of the day; abandoned amongst the boxes in the back room, whilst Jenny and the other volunteers drank punch and ate cookies in the front.
Julie sighed, stood up and looked over at the coach who had finished handing out the schedules and was talking to the last parent. What was his name? Brendan?
Me, me! Come and talk to me! Julie felt the irrational thought process grip her, as her eyes willed the coach to turn around and look at her again. She felt like a teenager, crazed with hormones, and took a deep breath.
“Come on, Mum, the practice is over!”
A little hand tugging at her arm brought her back to earth. Perhaps these crazes were a longing, for what might have been, or just an escape from her daily chores. With a last wistful look at the coach’s broad back, Julie folded her chair and walked with her daughter to the car.
It was going to be an interesting baseball season.
A Gift As Yet Unopened
Tracy helped her mother into the car and wrapped a blanket around her legs, placing the worn brown purse where her mother could see it.
“Where are we going?” asked the old lady, looking out the window.
“We’re going to visit Bob and his family.”
“Oh, that’s nice. Who’s Bob?”
“Bob is my brother,” Tracy said.
She could have added ‘and your son, whom you raised and looked after for twenty-three years; who was the favourite, blue-eyed boy,’ but she did not. She was beyond that stage now.
At first, Tracy and Bob had teased their mother about her memory. The car keys were always going missing and she could never find her glasses, but nor can most people over 50. But then it began to get worse. One day, her mother walked to the post box without shoes on and could not remember why she had gone out in the first place. Another day, Tracy came to visit to find her mother making tea; half the packet lay strewn all over the floor and the kettle was nearly boiled dry, but it was the sight of her mother counting out sugar lumps into the sink that made her realise that something was not right.
“Alzheimer’s disease,” they said. Nothing to be done.
“I’m not putting Mum into one of those homes,” Tracy said, “I’ll look after her myself.”
“Are you sure?” said Bob, “it would be so much easier, and if we sell her house she could afford to be looked after in a home. They know how to deal with this stuff.”
But Tracy was adamant. So her mother moved in with Tracy and her husband Matthew and their daughter.
“Grandma can read to us every day!” said Elizabeth.
But Grandma soon tired of reading, and forgot who Elizabeth was, so the little girl withdrew into her world of play.
“Grandma’s getting old, dear,” said Tracy, “and old people like to sleep a lot. They forget things because they have so many memories to look after. They have memories of when they were little children, just like you, running around with their friends, having tea parties, and all the things little girls did back in those days. Grandma has memories of getting married and having her own children and of course she has memories of you.”
But those memories were fading, disappearing from the old lady’s head until soon she was just a shell, a total stranger. It was hard for Tracy, having to show her mother how to button the same sweater over and over. Having to check her room to make sure she did not leave forgotten food lying around for the cats and the spiders to find. Having to start every morning with, “hello, I’m Tracy; I’m going to bring you breakfast.”
“I don’t know why you don’t just move her out,” said Bob, after lunch that afternoon, when their mother had fallen asleep on the porch, “she’d never know the difference; she doesn’t even recognise us anyway.”
But Tracy just shook her head.
“I can’t do that, not to Mum. She looked after us when we were sick, when we were grouchy and ungrateful. She came to nearly all my dance recitals and all of your soccer games. She went back to work so that we could have extra money for vacations after Dad died. She was there for me when Elizabeth was born. No, Bob, we owe her so much, I have to do this for her.”
“But she doesn’t even know what’s going on – you’re throwing your life away and she’ll never notice. Get on with the future, Tracy.”
A single tear rolled down Tracy’s cheek as she looked over at her mother’s shrunken form huddled under the blankets. Beyond, in the garden, Elizabeth and her cousins chased each other round the maple tree, whooping like savages. She sighed. Bob was right; she was putting all her energy into her mother, who was totally unresponsive, at the expense of her own family. What was it somebody had told her once?
“The debts we owe our parents we repay to our children.”
But in her case it was different. Her mother had become a child again. It did not matter that her mother would never know the love that Tracy was showing to her; the important thing was in the giving.
I Am a Gravedigger
“I’m a gravedigger,” the man said, “not a murderer.”
He looked across the table at me with eyes blazing out of his rugged face and gripped the arms of his chair with such intensity that I thought his fingers would snap. I looked down at my notes.
“Um, Mr Wright; Mr Albert Wright, isn’t it?” I asked, “did you know that for the last few years the death rate has been on the increase in this town?”
“Well naturally,” replied Albert, “everybody’s getting older at the same rate, so it stands to reason that sooner or later people are going to start dropping off the other end of the lifeline, if you see what I mean.”
“Didn’t you think it was odd that the faster you dug graves, the faster people ‘dropped off’ as you put it?”
Albert scowled at me and leaned across the table.
“Look, if you’re saying that I killed anybody just to put them in a grave I’d dug you’re crazy. Why would I want to do that?”
The questioning had been going on for several hours now, and all that we had uncovered was circumstantial evidence. There was no doubt that more citizens had died over the last three years than in the previous ten. However, none of the deaths had appeared suspicious at the time. The strange thing was that many of them appeared to have little or no family left so it was difficult to get the full details of the cases.
I shuffled some papers in front of me and decided to try another line of questioning.
“How much do you get paid per grave, Mr Wright?”
“Two hundred dollars.”
“And do you know how much families are charged for each grave?
“Er, well, Charley handles the payments,” said Albert.
“Did you know that Charley asks five hundred dollars for each new grave?”
He shook his head.
“Rather a lot of money for a hole in the ground, don’t you think?”
“Hey mister,” Albert looked up and thumped his hand on the table, “have you any idea how hard it is to dig down six feet into the hard, packed earth? I earn every penny of that money.”
“Have you ever opened up an old grave?”
The man put his head on one side, as if considering this question.
“Well, it depends if they’re family or not. Sometimes family like to be buried next to each other so we make a hole side by side with the first grave.”
“And do you charge the same for opening up an old grave?”
“Like I said, Charley does the money.”
Albert shifted in his chair and looked around the room. The light from the window caught the top of his head and the dust and earth from his hair appeared magnified as if in a spotlight. His elbows poked through the holes in his sleeves and mud spatters dotted his trouser legs. He did not look like a rich man.
“Do you remember when the work started to be busier?” I asked.
“Yes, it was two years ago, about the time that the big discount store was bringing in their Christmas stock. I remember because Charley told me there might be extra work on the gravedigging and I told him that I had to work longer shifts moving the boxes in the store room and that maybe he should get another person to dig a few graves.”
“And what did Charley say to that?”
“He said no, that he’d wait for me.”
“What did he mean by that?”
“I suppose he meant that he’d wait until I’d finished my stacking shift before calling on me to dig.”
“I see. And when did you dig the graves?”
“Well we dug them during the day at first, but then Charley explained that it would be cooler to dig them at night so we started digging at night.”
“Didn’t you think it was odd to dig a grave at night?” I asked.
“Well no, you see I had just finished my shift stacking the shelves and Charley said it would be better to go straight to digging so that I could get all my work done in one go. I liked that because then I could go home and sleep.”
He looked as if he could do with some sleep right now.
“How many graves do you normally dig a night?”
“Three or four. It depends.”
“And didn’t you think it strange that so many people were dying in this small town?”
Albert slammed his fist down on the table again.
“Look, I already told you, I’m a gravedigger, not a murderer! I don’t get paid to think about people dying – that’s your job. I get paid to dig, and I ain’t done nothing wrong.”
He was right. He had not done anything wrong. He was just the poor old middle man, paid $200 a time to dig as many graves as he could during the night. Charley was the one who made the profits. Charley was the one who charged the grieving families for the graves, reselling the same one sometimes over and over. Charley was the one who sped up the flow of customers by poisoning the water in the hospital and the two nursing homes. Charley was the one who buried coffins full of drugs in the extra graves that he paid Albert to dig. Charley was the one who paid Albert to dig up those coffins so that a family member could be laid to rest next to the supply of cocaine – after it had been moved on, of course.
Oh, I knew all about Charley. I had been investigating him for almost three years now. There was nothing I did not know about Charley and his operations. There was only one problem.
Charley had been murdered the night before.
A Murder
I have never written a murder scene, so I decided to try one, but I could not bring myself to describe a detailed gory act, like plunging a knife into somebody, so I decided to focus on the state of mind of the murderer.
Robert had never so much as been late for class and now he was a thief and a murderer. Well, he was not a murderer yet, but he would be as soon as his stepfather came home. He lifted the gun one more time and pointed it at the door, trying to remember how tall his stepfather was. His heart would probably line up with the second hinge. Robert nodded then put the gun down on the table and took up his lonely vigil.
It had been easier than he expected to steal the gun. Getting the weapon had seemed the hardest part of the plan, but once he began to investigate the local gun club and discovered how many people owned guns it became merely a matter of deciding who to steal one from. Not that breaking into a house, finding the keys to the gun cupboard, selecting the right weapon and the ammunition to match had been a piece of cake, but at least he had not been caught. Yet.
Robert did not care that he would probably end up in jail and that scared him. He planned to run out the back door and drive as far away as possible after the deed was done, but that was more from a wish to get away from what would probably be an ugly sight than because he expected to be able to evade the law for long.
How would his friends see him, he wondered, and also his sister and his mother. It was for them he was doing this, to stop that monster from doing what he did to them, but would they want Robert to become a murderer in exchange?
Robert noticed that he was pacing up and down the hall and he willed himself to be still, but he was too nervous; his left foot took up a tapping rhythm on the floor, getting louder and louder until he could stand it no longer and resumed his pacing.
Where was his stepfather, anyway? He always came home around this time, so why should today be different? Did he know that Robert had sent his mother and sister on a false errand across the city?
Robert lifted the gun again, checked it was loaded and lined it up with the door, squinting, watching the line of sight shift slightly as he aimed with first one eye then the other. Which should he use? He knew one eye was the shooting eye, but surely he should use the eye that saw better?
His eyes watered and he put the gun down. His hands felt sweaty inside the rubber gloves but he dared not pull them off and get a new pair in case his stepfather came. He sat on the foot of the stair with the gun next to him and began to count, slowly and steadily.
By the time he reached two thousand the counting had become a mantra and Robert felt calm, and ready for whatever was to come but the sound of a key in the door jolted him back to the present. Leaping to his feet he grabbed the gun with both hands and pointed it at the door, aiming it at the centre panel in line with the second hinge.
He heard the sound of boots scraping on the doorstep, then the door swung open and Robert fired. A loud explosion deafened him leaving a ringing that throbbed in his ears like a second pulse. He staggered backwards, more from fright than from the slight recoil from the gun and closed his eyes to shut out the scene in front of him. Now he really was a murderer.
When I Discovered the Leg I Knew I was in for a Really Bad Day
Sometimes I get inspired by an opening line, and jump into writing a scene, only to come up blank half way through it. I wish I knew what happened next!
When I discovered the leg I knew I was in for a really bad day. I had just stepped into the back pantry to fetch a sack of rice for Uncle Larry when I tripped over something on the floor. The pantry was dark and disorganised so I did not think anything of it at first, being more concerned with not dropping the rice, but when I went back to have a look and move the object I saw it was a leg.
A human leg. A woman’s left leg, to be precise, with a stocking but no shoe.
“Uncle Larry,” I whispered, when I was back in the kitchen, “there’s a leg in the pantry.”
“I know,” he whispered back, “I put it there this morning.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because the food inspector is coming today, and I can’t have a leg lying around in the middle of the restaurant.”
I could see the logic in this argument.
“Whose leg is it?” I asked, “And why do you have a leg in your restaurant?”
“It’s Joe Bolger’s. He left it here last night. He was so drunk he could hardly stand and was in no fit state to be taking his leg home.”
I forbore to inquire as to why Joe Bolger needed a leg when he had two perfectly good ones of his own and suggested to Uncle Larry that any decent food inspector would want to see in the pantry as well as the restaurant.
“Well then,” he said, “you’ll have to take the leg back to Joe.”
“Me? You want me to take a leg to Joe Bolger? I asked incredulously.
“Sure, that’s the best idea. Here, put it in this rice bag, then nobody will see it.”
Uncle Larry dumped the rice into a large, metal bowl, sending little white grains skittering around the floor. I wondered briefly if the food inspector would crunch the rice grains underfoot during his tour of the kitchen then Uncle Larry thrust the empty rice sack in my hand and pushed me out of the kitchen into the panty.
There it was, still, lying on the ground. At least it was not dripping blood, but it was a fairly unpleasant colour all the same. I pinched my nose as a precaution.
I slid the rice sack under the leg and jiggled the offending limb into the sack without touching it then slipped out the side door and headed towards my truck.
“Well hello, Sammy!”
A large hand clamped on my shoulder heralded the arrival of the Sherriff.
“Uh, Hi, Pete,” I said, shifting the sack slightly to keep it out of sight.
“What’ve you got there? A dead body?”
I could feel the sweat running down my back as I forced my face into a smile.
“Oh no, Pete, only a leg,” I replied in a hearty a voice as I could muster, although it sounded more like a squeak.
“Well, see you on Tuesday!”
Pete clapped me on the back again and turned into the restaurant. Sometimes it was good to have the Sheriff as your best friend but today was not one of them. I threw the sack into the back of the truck and roared out of the parking lot so fast I could smell the burning rubber from the tires and I swear there was a black mark on the road behind me. I slowed right down then because I did not want Pete coming after me. Friend or no, he would be obliged to pull me over if he caught me driving dangerously.
Joe’s place was not far; one of those busy complexes where you park out front and walk through miles of paths to get to the apartment, only I didn’t know which was his apartment so I figured I had better ask.
I pulled into the visitor parking and walked over to a group of women talking by a door. Some kids were playing tag in the courtyard and a couple of men were lounging against a wall, cigarettes dangling out of the sides of their mouths. I had just asked the women where Joe Bolger lived when there was a commotion behind me. A young boy came rushing round the corner, followed closely by gang of kids slightly bigger than him. He dodged behind the cars then clambered into my truck and seized the sack with the leg in it. As his pursuers advanced he twirled the sack over his head and walloped the closest assailants.
“Oi!” I shouted, “Put that down!”
The boy, momentarily distracted, looked my way and in that instant another of the pursuers grabbed the sack and took off with it.
At this point I should have just driven away and forgotten the whole thing but I felt responsible to Uncle Larry and poor old Joe, so I followed, chasing the boy with the sack. The place was like a warren, with paths and stairs all over the place and the youngsters had the advantage not only of being on familiar ground but of being much fitter than I so before long I had fallen behind them and was completely lost.
Now I was really worried. By chasing the boys I had identified myself publicly with that sack and its dreadful contents, so any minute now my old friend Pete would be turning up to arrest me. There was only one thing to do; find Joe Bolger, apologise and make sure he took on the responsibility for that severed limb.
It took three doors before somebody opened to my knock and grudgingly told me which apartment was Joe’s. I suppose by this time I must have looked a sight: panting, eyes wild from worry, shirt flapping loose. Following the directions I went two floors up and along to the end where I found a dark, grimy door with the name plate Bolger stuck on at an angle. I hurriedly adjusted my clothes then banged on the door of Joe’s apartment.
A thump and a shuffle announced the arrival of the occupant. Would he be angry, I wondered?
“I’m sorry, but your leg is gone,” I gabbled as soon as the door opened.
Standing in front of me was an old woman holding a cane. Beneath her flower print dress I could see her right leg in a thick brown stocking and slipper. The left leg was no more than a wooden peg.
Hegemony, Hedonism and Hubris
The three sins; that is what my father called them: Hegemony, Hedonism and Hubris. My mother used to laugh and say that it could not be a sin if you could not pronounce it, at which point my uncle Franz would slap his hand on his leg and shout a stream of words in French or German, winking all the time, so that my brother and I would know that he knew of plenty of sins we could not pronounce.
My father kept three tankards up on a ledge, one for each of the sins, and every time my brother or I committed an offence he would drop a coloured stone into the tankard: blue for me, green for William. When we were younger the tankards were almost empty but when we entered our teens the tankard for Hedonism started to fill up with green stones at an alarming rate.
William was not a bad person, just a self-centered one. He took up with a crowd in college who spent all their Saturdays driving around and drinking – at least, I hope it was in that order. After a few weekends where he puked on the carpet my mother banned him from going out, and he turned his interest to music instead. Not classical, and not the modern music that you can dance to, but loud, banging noises that made your head pound.
It was at this time that he stopped going to classes too, telling us that he knew all the stuff anyway, and it was boring. My father added some green stones to the tankard marked Hubris during this phase, and still I did not think anything of it.
I was busy myself. I wanted to go away to college and knew that the only way to afford to live away from home was to earn enough money to see me through two years of rent and classes. I took jobs everywhere I could, delivering papers, working night shifts at the local store, doing yard work. My uncle Franz used to mutter that I was working too hard when he came over for a visit but I took no notice.
One day he dropped a black stone into the Hegemony tankard and pointed at my father. My father looked up, saw what Uncle Franz had done and shouted that he had no right to interfere with another person’s property and his ornaments. Franz sat through it all with a big grin on his face, then answered in German, which of course we could not understand, and which made my father really mad. Dad shouted in English, and Uncle Franz replied in German, with each of them getting louder and more animated. Then, just when my father had slammed his fist onto the table, Uncle Franz got up, dropped a black stone in the Hubris tankard, took his coat from the peg by the door, bowed elegantly to my mother and left.
We never saw Uncle Franz in our house again. I know my mother used to visit him, and she would sometimes bring us packages from him, but they were never very interesting, once opened, and I sometimes wondered if Uncle Franz had forgotten we were grown up, and not the six and eight-year olds he used to buy candy for. To my relief, the tankards were never touched again, after that day, because somehow, William came to his senses and finished college and got a job in an insurance broker’s office, although I know he continued drinking.
I finally finished my degree, met somebody and we lived together for three years, saving money for a house. My father was not happy with the arrangement, but then, he did not offer to pay the rent, either. I know my mother disapproved, but she said to me one day that Uncle Franz had told her not to worry, that we would turn out all right in the end.
And so we did. Jim and I got married, holding the big, family wedding which the family loved, and we hated. Dad gave a big speech, full of long words, and knowing looks at various family members. I do not remember too much of it because the champagne made me a bit dizzy and my dress was too tight, but I know he mentioned Hegemony, Hedonism and Hubris because he had the three tankards in front of him while he made the speech, and they were all full of blue stones.
Afterwards, when we opened our gifts, we found the usual collection of toasters and candlesticks and one large heavy box, labelled ‘the sins of marriage’. Jim and I looked at each other in surprise, then tore off the wrapping. Inside were three tankards, each with a blank plaque, not yet engraved, and two bags, one with red stones, the other with yellow. At the bottom of the box was a note.
“Choose your own. Uncle Franz.”
The Tool
The alien walked once around the tree and looked up into the branches. A small furry creature with a bushy tail sat and watched him, then scuttled along a branch when he moved towards it. He had heard about these creatures; they were called squirrels and ate the things that grew on trees. The alien did not have squirrels on his own planet, nor trees, but he had heard of them too. He wondered about taking a squirrel home as a pet, but dismissed the idea when he realised he could not fit the tree into the space craft. He supposed the creature would need food for the journey.
Food. The alien needed food too. He turned to his command pod and pulled out some of the emergency rations, which he ate quickly, fearful that earth people would arrive; he still did not know if they would be friendly. He was glad that the food had survived the landing, unlike the nose of his craft which had a large dent in the front right section. That would need to be repaired before he took off again, and he had no tools.
The squirrel had come down from the tree and was scampering across the soft, green, ground covering, then with a sudden leap it jumped onto a hanging dong, and swung round and round in the air, scrabbling at something with its front hands. As the alien watched, something fell off the bottom of the dong and a shower of small bits, a bit bigger than sand grains fell down to the ground. The squirrel leaped down on top of them and ate some.
The alien went over to inspect the dong. It did not look like a tree, yet he had learned that squirrels ate things from trees, so he supposed this must be a type of tree. It was about half as long as the alien’s first arm, and hollow, made out of something that he could see through. He put his eye to one end and squinted. He could see all three of his feet standing on the sand bits. It was not as big as the dongs he was used to, but it probably worked the same way. He put it in his spaceship; it would come in useful later, but first he had to make the repairs to the nose cone.
The alien walked farther into the new territory looking for materials. He saw many broken bits of tree on the ground; he supposed that the repair people from this planet would one day come out and fix the tree. He hoped today was not a fixing day; he had no desire to meet the earth people yet.
Moving his third leg through the green ground covering was hard work, and he grunted when his foot hit a heavy object. Bending down and feeling with his first hands he discovered a stone, just like the ones on his planet. It would make a very good tool for the repairs.
Back at the space craft the alien positioned the nose plate and hit it with the stone. A loud crash told him that he had hit it too hard. Some earth people had heard his crashing too, and before he had time to raise his second arms and launch a protective shield a hole opened up in the white box behind him, revealing a large and a small earth person.
The alien stood up tall and tried to look menacing, but his heart pumped wildly inside him.
“Kevin!” a sound boomed from the larger earth person, “what are you doing with my mixing bowl?”
The large earth person came towards him, followed closely by the small one which was making puffing, croaking noises.
“And just look what’s happened to the bird feeder, there are seeds all over the grass!”
The small earth person screeched.
“My boot! Mum, why has Kevin got my boot?”
The small earth creature stepped forward and tugged at his third leg. The alien tried to protect himself and fell over, causing his extra limbs to come off.
“Now look what you’ve done!” he shouted, “you’ve spoiled it all!”
A Penguin Comes to Tea 