Archive for the ‘Fiction’ Category

You have 47 new messages in your mailbox. It looks like you’ve been slacking off. Press one to listen to your messages.

First new message.

Press one to save this message.  Press seven to delete.

You have pressed one.  Are you sure you need to save this message?  You’re running out of room, and as as soon as you do, you’ll only find out when your receptionist e-mails you to tell you that irate people have been calling all day saying your voicemail box is full.  Let’s not be a hoarder, shall we?

You have pressed seven. Are you sure you want to delete this message?  Because you’re never getting it back.

This key is not valid.

You have 47 messages in your mailbox.  Press one…

You have pressed seven.  All messages will be deleted.  Press one to confirm.

Security override.  Please enter your fourteen digit pin to confirm deleting all messages.  Oh, you don’t know what your fourteen digit pin is?  Someone didn’t read the instructions when we first got our account, did we?

This key is not valid.

You have 47 messages in your mailbox.

This key is not valid.

Oh, I’m sorry, did you just actually swear at me?

This key is not valid.

Rebooting.

The community had come to an agreement. One must be sacrificed for the good of the many.

That one was me.

I donned a fine, white cloak and bravely approached the hilltop stone. The gathered community watched my every step. I reached the summit and turned. My mother was standing among the throng, a strong smile on her face but her eyes weeping. She caught my eye and gave me a small nod. My father was nowhere to be seen. I was certain he couldn’t bear to see his eldest daughter die.

I laid myself on the granite slab, suddenly self-conscious about my modesty, careful to keep my cloak over my legs.

“Don’t worry,” said the woman administering the poison. “You won’t feel any pain. It will be just like falling asleep.”

I wasn’t worried. I knew, deep in my heart, I would live again.

I just wished someone — anyone — would sit beside me and tightly hold my hand.

Kowalski tugged on his hood, adjusting its eyeholes while peering in the rear view mirror. The tip drooped sadly, and the fabric smelled vaguely of Taco Bell. He still hadn’t done laundry, and Laura wasn’t around anymore to iron it. She’d always starch it just enough to stand up straight. 

Not that he could exactly take it to the dry cleaner.

Though honestly, the Korean guy behind the counter probably wouldn’t even blink. He’d just accept it solemnly, hand over the claim ticket with both hands, and bow slightly.

Kowalski sighed and forced himself out of the pickup. He wasn’t sure he could stomach this again, but he’d already paid his imperial tax through December.

Holding his robes up, dainty as a debutante, to keep them from dragging along the red-clay parking lot, he hurried behind the Deja Vu strip club and knocked on the back door in the assigned rhythm.

The door creaked open. Another robed and hooded figure stood waiting.

“K.I.G.Y.,” the man said.

“A.K.I.M.,” Kowalski replied automatically.

The figure nodded approvingly and swung the door wider. The two exchanged an awkward secret handshake before stepping inside together. Kowalski still hadn’t mastered those.

The strip club’s back room was already crowded.

“Greetings, citizens!” proclaimed the hooded figure at the front of the room, as though everyone had been waiting for Kowalski before beginning. “How go preparations for the next mission? Nighthawk Wilson, do we have enough nooses prepared?”

The man who had answered the door, Nighthawk Wilson, cleared his throat and raised his voice through the confines of his hood.

“Our old rope supplier shut down,” he announced. “I’m trying to find another one that carries the thick kind. The really menacing stuff.”

“I guess all the good suppliers are on the coasts,” the Nighthawk continued. “Shipping’s astronomical.”

“Gosh darn it!” proclaimed a robed figure slumped in a wheelchair situated by the back door, his hood on nearly sideways.

“But we may have found a supplier in Colorado that can get us quality hemp line for a reasonable price,“ continued Nighthawk Wilson, “if we buy in bulk.”

“Any other updates from the wrecking crew?” inquired the man at the front.

“I’ve got the four-by-fours cut for the cross,” another man called out. ”But the lumber really needs a full forty-eight-hour gasoline soak, and gas prices are just so high right now.”

“Not as bad as two years ago.”

“Still up a buck fifty from last year.”

“Mother lover,” slurred the man in the wheelchair.

Kowalski tried shoving his hands into his pockets before remembering, once again, that the robes didn’t have any. He had never bothered to have slits cut into the sides so he could access the ones in his Levi’s. The cheap polyester was making him awfully hot.

“Schubladen Schmidt, do we have enough in the treasury to cover gasoline expenses?” asked the man at the front of the room.

“Yes, Grand Cyclops,” answered Schmidt, “And if we need more, I have a private donor I can reach out to.”

“I should hope all our donors are private,” chuckled the Grand Cyclops In response.  “Is there anything else we need prior to the mission in Pastor Washington’s front yard?”

Kowalski froze.

Pastor Washington.

D’andre’s father.

Suddenly he was back under Friday-night lights: churned turf beneath his cleats, blood where he’d bitten his cheek during that last tackle, sweat running into his eyes.

And D’andre touching his shoulder pad.

“I gotcha, man.”

Then D’andre stepping in front of the biggest linebacker Kowalski had ever seen, ready to throw his body between Kowalski and disaster, then glancing back over his shoulder and giving him a nod.

A present day drop of sweat stung his eye under the polyester hood. Kowalski ripped it off his head.

“This is wrong!” he burst out. “All this hate. All this stupidity. All this bullshit!”

“Baloney,” corrected the old man in the wheelchair flatly. “Malarkey.”

Two robed figures hurried to Kowalski’s sides.

“Stop talking,” hissed Nighthawk Wilson, grabbing his elbow.

“We need to get you out of here,” whispered the other man urgently, the one who’d been talking about lumber.

“Quiet, brothers,” boomed the Grand Cyclops. “Let the young man speak.”

Kowalski swallowed hard. Every pair of eyeholes in the room turned toward him.

“Shhhhhhhoot,” sighed the old man in the wheelchair.

Then Schubladen Schmidt stepped forward.

“I believe,” he announced, “that what Citizen Kowalski is attempting to express is that modern civilization depends upon human rights, democratic values, and the rule of law. In contrast, white supremacy represents racism, violence, and domestic terrorism.”

Kowalski blinked.

Yeah, he thought. That.

Schmidt removed his hood.

“Saul Schmidt,” he said. “Southern Poverty Law Center. Guess the jig’s up.”

The nighthawk next to Kowalski pulled his hood off next. “Chad Wilson,” he said, “Metropolitan Police.”

“Deputy Hank Savage,” said the man on Kowalski’s other side, pulling off his hood as well.

Another man removed his hood. “Special Agent Skulder. FBI.”

One by one, men all over the den pulled off their hoods, revealing their true identities.

The Grand Cyclops then doffed his hood. “Agent Smith,” he said. “CIA.”

“The CIA can’t spy domestically,” shouted Special Agent Skulder angrily.

“Because violent racism isn’t nearly as bad?” shot back Agent Smith. “Is there anyone here who isn’t a white supremacist?” he added, looking around.

“I still am!” announced a still-hooded figure leaning against the back wall of the room, grasping a white cane. “I can’t believe all of you suckers are betraying the pure race!”

“Oh, come on!” exclaimed Officer Wilson, “It’s way past time anyone told you, Blind Dave. You’re Black!”

“Dag nab it,” offered the man slouching in his wheelchair.

 “Really?” asked Agent Smith. “There are no real white supremacists here? What about our oldest member, Citizen Burns?”

“Fudge,” answered the man in the wheelchair.

“Hi,” said a figure, removing his mask and lifting a hand from one of the handles of the wheelchair in an introductory gesture. “I’m Vivek Srikarthikeyan, Mr. Burns’ home health aide. I’ve been bringing him to these meetings for years because he really seems to like them. But between the Tourette’s Syndrome and the dementia, it’s hard to tell if he’s really a white supremacist anymore.”

“Darn right,” muttered Mr. Burns.

“His mother may have taught him to be a racist, but she also taught him not to use obscenities. I’m guessing he’s probably forgotten any real curse words he ever learned.”

“Jiminy Cricket in a chicken basket,” added Mr. Burns.

Discussions, arguments, and ordinary chit-chat were breaking out around the room. Kowalski made his way to the back door, swinging it open himself. He looked back, and decided he wouldn’t be coming back inside again once he left. He pulled his robe off over his head, leaving it on the ground where it fell, and reached into his jeans pocket for his phone. He might still have D’andre’s number. He started closing the door behind him. He heard one last outburst from the old man in the wheelchair, the only person still wearing an off kilter hood.

“Poop.”

After paying my fee, we stepped into the room. It looked like a cyber café from the nineties: long tables lined with computer terminals, but also a few overstuffed easy chairs where people sat reading. Through the windows on the far wall, afternoon sun fell in rectangles on the floor. A door off to the side was shut tight, a paper sign taped to it: QUIET.

“Here you are,” the employee said quietly. “If you’ll notice, time has stopped.”

I tugged back the sleeve of my dress and glanced at my wristwatch. The second hand hovered mid-tick, perfectly still.

“Once you step back out into the lobby, it will have been as if you had just walked in. People come here to cram for exams, catch up on reading, even sleep.” He nodded toward the QUIET door. “You can also venture out into the wider world through the back. As far as we can tell, you can buy anything out there, eat whatever you want. When you return and step back out into normal time, your wallet is exactly as full as when you arrived. The calories don’t count either.”

“But the mind…?”

“Your mind keeps what it keeps,” he said. “As well as it ever does.”

I wanted to be precise about this. “So when I leave, my body will be exactly the same as when I came in.” I tried to steady my voice. “But I’ll remember. How does that work?”

“Proprietary information,” he said, smiling faintly.

“And if I were injured? A cut, a disease — gone the moment I leave?”

“You’ll be restored.”

“Completely?”

“Completely.” He hesitated. “With the possible exception of PTSD. Trauma.”

The word hung between us, strangely fragile.

I looked around the room again, at the students chasing perfect grades, the readers chasing completion, the sleepers chasing rest. All of us trying to borrow something from forever without paying for it in flesh.

“No other questions?” he asked.

I shook my head.

I headed for the back door.

I was going to find someone to sleep with.

The prophet stared at the bird bones.  They were a bit more charred than usual. He blinked. Crossed his eyes. Blinked again.

The visions used to come unbidden, sometimes unwelcome, but lately they hadn’t been coming at all.  He rubbed his right thumb knuckles with his left hand. Behind him, the elders inhaled sharply, then whispered among themselves. He quickly clasped his hands behind his back. He hadn’t meant to signal anything; his joints just ached.  

He tried squinting at the small blackened heap.

One of the assembled men cleared his throat.  “What do you see, wise one?” he inquired.

The prophet glanced up at the chief, then back down at the black pile at their feet.  All he saw were burned bones. 

He briefly considered asking for two more pigeons. Maybe three. “Best of five,” he could say. It might buy more time. He squatted, poking gingerly at a scorched drumstick with a twig.  He closed his left eye, stared with the right. Switched. Nothing. He stood again.

He could sense the men shifting, growing restless. They expected an answer—soon. What good was a seer who couldn’t see? He had no other useful skills. And he was too old to go into battle, though the chief, only a few months older, would be expected to lead the charge.

“There is a man…” he began, hesitantly, “…born of woman,” 

“Aren’t all men born of woman?” It was the chief’s son, a young man even worse tempered than his father.  The elder man reached out, placing a hand on his son’s chest, never taking his eyes off the prophet.

The prophet’s gaze jerked up, then back to the bones on the ground.  He coughed, then continued. “Where the mountain kneels to the sea,” he continued.  Was that vague enough?

“But, our whole land is mountainous,” pointed out one of the elders.

“And surrounded by the sea,” added another.

The prophet swallowed. “There, what has been attempted will be accomplished,” he continued, nearly stammering. “And what has been concealed will be made known.”  

He risked a peek back to the chief’s face.

The chief’s eyes, still fixed on him, narrowed. The prophet involuntarily hunched his shoulders, instinctively making himself smaller.  But the chief wasn’t looking at him—he was looking past him. The prophet turned, but behind him was only the heap of charred bones.  He looked back at the chief.

“I know the place,” proclaimed the chief. “I know the exact place.” He nodded, still staring into the middle distance. “Where the mountain kneels to the sea.”

The prophet opened his mouth to say more, then thought better of it, and closed his mouth again.

“Come!” ordered the chief. “Tell the men to gather their arms.  We leave at once to accomplish what has been attempted and to make known what has been concealed!”

The prophet watched the horde march off. He clinked two pieces of gold in his hand. The sound was satisfying, but the motion made his joints ache even more.  Then he turned and kicked the charred bird bones, scattering them into the dust, and walked away.