Fiction: Anxiety on a Different Level

            I’m twelve feet off the ground looking down on the flowerbed that used to have petunias or daisies or something prettier than dirt and rocks. I imagine myself tumbling over and striking my head on one of the half-buried bricks that keep the barren dirt safely separated from the weedy forest that is my lawn. Or maybe I’ll slip and impale myself on the sharp pickets of the privacy fence. How much blood would I lose before somebody hears me screaming? What happens if I get knocked out and can’t scream? I try to remember if I’ve ever been given advice about plummeting safely. I’m sure I know nothing about falling, so I vow to myself not to take it up until I’m better educated. So I sit.

Happily, if the Zombie Apocalypse happens today, I’ve got a pretty safe seat. Everybody knows zombies can’t climb ladders. I wonder how long a zombie can last without a meal. I wonder how long I can last without a meal. Or a beer. It’s getting pretty hot up here. I run my hand through my hair and think I’ll marry the man who brings me an ice cold beer.

Though I am certain I am holding still, my vision swirls and the ground seems to pull at my core. This must be vertigo. Who would even want to marry a girl who doesn’t have the cajones to climb down a ladder?

“Jackie, are you okay up there?” My neighbor calls up to me. I can see his balding head over the fence. He’s shading his eyes from the sun as he looks up at me in that serious way that makes me think he’s thinking he needs to call someone with authority, perhaps someone with negotiation skills. I know he probably should send somebody to shoot me with a tranquilizer and let me roll off unconscious onto a nice, safe tarp. There would be far less drama than trying to convince me to get back on the ladder. Nevertheless, my neighbor wants to get on with his day. I know this. I know he doesn’t want to be bothered, because I wouldn’t want to be bothered by him. I mostly want people to take care of themselves, and so he probably feels the same. I refuse to obligate him to my issues.

           

            “I’m good,” I assure him. “Just writing some existential poetry.” He doesn’t waste any time and believes me right away. He disappears into his garage, and a few minutes later, his blue sedan drives away. He stops at the sign and turns right just as my boyfriend Elijah is turning onto the street. They wave to each other.

            

            It must be five-thirty. Elijah always comes home at five-thirty.

            

            I am silent and still. I feel like a teenager who’s been caught sneaking out. What will he think when he realizes I’m stuck up here, and that I’m not coming down without a lot of crying? Maybe he’ll think I’m not home, and he’ll leave to go pick up dinner, and then I’ll teach myself to fly while he’s gone. He’ll never know about this paralyzing fear that has my hiney stuck to these shingles.

            It seems like an hour goes by before I hear his footsteps behind me. I don’t turn around because I am afraid to look him in the eye.

            “I got this for you.” He presses a cold, glass bottle against my bare neck. I flinch, but take it with a smile. He settles himself beside me, and we gaze at the neighborhood as we sip on our beers. A few minutes pass before he asks me, “Why are we up here, anyway?”

            “There was a kid with a helicopter,” I say, as if the explains it all, and Elijah nods, because that’s enough for him.

            “Did you think about that question I asked you earlier?”

            “Yep.” I nod, and sip my beer. I let it cool my throat before I continue. It was that beer that sealed the deal. “I think it’ll be okay.”

            “That‘s not a real answer,” he tells me and nudges me with his elbow. The force of his nudge knocks me over a little, and my fear kicks in. I clutch onto his arm and scoot away from the edge.

            “Fine then, I’ll marry you!” I shout it like I’m already falling and this is the last thing I’ll ever say.

            “Fine then, I’ll marry you too.” He reaches into his left pocket with one finger and digs out a little diamond ring.

            “You just carry one of those around all the time?” I asked him, trying to diffuse my anxiety.

            “I might.” He peels my hand off his arm, picks a finger and slips the little band around it. “It’s a good thing you said yes.”

            “Oh? Why is that?”

            He takes a long draw from his beer before answering. “Because I am scared of that rickety old ladder you’ve got propped against the house. We’re just going to have to live up here forever.”

Fiction: Family Outings

I can jot down my personal version of the truth or I can tell you outright lies, and I'll call it fiction if I want to.

After all, it's what I do.

I could tell you about the time I rode my daddy's shoulders out to the sand bar at Savannah Beach in Georgia, where the nurse sharks were circling.

I was seven when that happened. He'd lifted me up and headed straight for the beasts with all the excitement he'd exuded when that fox in Alaska came trotting down the ice-covered road. It's bright red fur stood in stark contrast to the dull, gray snow. My daddy made me whisper as we watched it perk its ears left and then right and then skitter away, frightened by the presence of humans. Not humanity, mind you--just your typical, dirty rotten humans.

The sharks were less peculiar. They circled us in the warm, clear water, closing in with each orbit. Soon enough, my daddy was able to extend his arm so the nurse sharks could swim under his fingers. I watched them caress the smooth lengths of those fearsome fish. He never flinched, and neither did they. They seemed in perfect harmony.

 The rest of the family ignored us from the safe sands of the beach. What did they care about nurse sharks when there were crabs to be chased, castles to be built?

The breeze bounced across the surface of the sea and tickled past me, causing me to shiver. My daddy wrapped a strong hand around my ankle to steady me. Or maybe to scare me. I couldn't tell.
It was the kind of gesture dad's do, you know. The good ones, anyway, and my daddy had been pretty good for a while by then.

Or maybe he had only been pretending.

I had that crystal moment of clarity right there on his shoulders in the center of a swarm of nurse sharks. I realized I was at his mercy. He could use his strength to protect me, steady me, keep me squarely on his shoulders until we made our way back to the shore.

Or he could toss me in.

And I knew he just might be crazy enough to do it. And it might serve me right that he was finally paying me back for that thing I'd done the year before.

You know.

When I shot him.

Fiction:For Lack of a Blackbird

 
"I need you to run down to the crossroads and pick up a gallon of milk and a loaf of bread."

   Sandy stared at her older sister as if she'd sprouted an extra eyeball. Perhaps she didn't understand the magnitude of what she was asking. Perhaps she had forgotten about the robbery. How could she possibly have forgotten about the robbery?

   Yeah yeah yeah. Penny understood, but she was getting tired of being the only one willing to run errands around this place. Mama couldn't do it. She was mostly bed-ridden, and when she was out of bed, she was confined to a wheelchair.

   Mama never left the house anymore, not even to go to church. One of the church ladies, Ella Hamlin, faithfully came by on Sunday afternoons to pray with Mama. Then, if Mama had the energy, they would play cards and gossip sinfully. The rest of the week, Sandy and Penny spent most of their free time tending to Mama's aches and pains. Sandy thought she exaggerated her woes, but she would never say so aloud. After all, if it hadn't been for Mama, Sandy wouldn't be alive.

   "It won't hurt you to go to the store, Sandra Francis Powell," Penny snapped. "Just suck it up and get the damn food!" She wadded seven dollars into Sandy's palm and pushed her toward the front door.

   Sandy bitched under her breath as she slid behind the wheel of the Cutlass. It was the kind of car that, when sitting at a red light, the driver would need to keep one foot firmly on the brake pedal and the other foot tapping the accelerator just to be sure it didn't die in the middle of the intersection. Thankfully, there were no traffic lights on the mile and a half of barbed-wire-lined dirt road between Mama's house and Tom's Country Store.

   She thought about bypassing Tom's and driving all the way into town. It was only twelve miles. If she sped, she could make it back in half an hour. One look at the dashboard told her she'd better stick to Penny's plan. The Cutlass was quite a gas guzzler. She'd better not risk it. Penny hadn't given her any extra cash.

   Three cars were parked in front of Tom's. Sandy recognized two of them. One belonged to Marcia Hardy's mom. One belonged to the old guy who lived just down the road with his dogs. She had never known his name, but he always waved to her as she drove by his house. His dogs like to chase the Cutlass as it kicked up a trail of dust in its wake.
 
   She'd never seen the man in the third car before. He was just sitting and staring at the storefront. Sandy wondered if he was waiting for his wife to come out. She'd probably gone in after something embarrassing, like tampons. Men were such idiots.

   She sat for a few minutes staring back at an ordinary brown cow in the pasture beside the store. It appeared to be speaking to her, though Sandy was (almost) sure it was just chewing on some delicious grass. Somebody had tagged one ear with a bright green plastic tag. Humans could be so cruel.

   Her fingers shook when she released the steering wheel, so she gripped it again, trying to calm herself. "This is stupid," she told herself. Four years had gone by since the robbery. She should have worked through this fear by now. Besides, Daddy was safely locked away in Huntsville. They were never going to let him out of there.

   She checked the sky for ominous signs of impending doom. No dark cloud crept across the sun. No black bird perched atop any nearby poles forewarning certain death. No bells tolled. She released the steering wheel once more, and although she was still shaky, she pulled her hands away and reached for the door handle. Every little step seemed to take super-human effort. She pushed the creaky door wide open and turned her entire body before stepping out of the car.

   The cow in the pasture watched all this. It jerked its head up and snorted. Strings of snot shot from its nostrils. Sandy stepped onto the lot and faced the cow. "Shut up, you heifer," she told the cow. She glared at it for a second and then added, "I think you lost an earring." She slammed the car door and moved toward the front door of the country store.

   She paused there. She had to take a deep breath because this was the closest she'd been to entering this store in four years.  Memories started slamming into her, but she persevered. She was strong. She could do this. The past was the past. How many times had Penny told her to come here and do this? Just face it. Just do it. Just go for it.

   She grasped the handle and pulled. Marcia Hardy was coming out of the store with her little brother Andrew.

  "Hey, Sandy," Marcia greeted her warily. "What're you up to?" She shifted the grocery bag in her arms and placed a protective hand on her brother's head. Sandy got that. If she had a little brother, she might decide to protect him from someone who came from a family like hers.

  "Milk, bread," Sandy mumbled as she passed them by. Marcia nodded and headed for the door with her arm wrapped around Andrew's shoulders. Smart girl, Sandy would think later on.

   "Sandy Powell, did you come out here to see me?" Alton Burkett purred from behind the counter. Sandy rolled her eyes. She'd gone on a few hayrides with the boy, and now he thought he could whisper in her ear any time he pleased. He kept telling the guys at school that she was his girl. He was a royal pain in the ass.

   "You wish, Alton. I came for milk and bread. Where do you keep it?" He pointed them out, and she moved to the back of the store. She passed the old neighbor guy on her way to the bread. He smiled and waved, and for the first time, Sandy noticed his double hearing aids.

   She was still focused on those hearing aids when the first shots tore through the air. She could hear Alton screaming incoherently, but she was also hearing another voice that was only in her mind. The voice from four years before. Her father telling everyone to "Get down! Get Down! Give me that money!"

   "Daddy?" she wasn't sure if that came from the sixteen-year-old that she now was or the twelve-year-old who had lived through it the first time, but it got his attention. He rounded the corner and aimed the shotgun. Neighbor Guy was blissfully unaware that he was being gunned down until he fell on top of Sandy.

   She knew it was her neighbor who was lying motionless on top of her, but in her mind's eye, she felt her mother's weight on her, just as before. The blood seemed to be everywhere, just as before, and just as before, the gunman was more interested in the cash register than he was in the little girl lying helpless on Aisle Four. She heard the shuffling sounds of dollar bills making their way into some sort of bag. Sandy laid motionless, watching him in the convex mirror cleverly placed in the upper rear corner of the shop to discourage theft. She watched him disappear into the bright, sunny afternoon. The sign on the door swung back and forth daring her to "Have a Nice Day."

     Sandy slid herself away from Neighbor Guy. He was dead. Those hearing aids were useless to him now. She saw Alton staring into the Great Beyond from the other side of the register. She half-nodded to the cow as she crawled back into the Cutlass and turned the engine over.

   She didn't remember about the milk and bread until she slipped into her back door and made her way upstairs to the shower.

   Penny popped her head into the bathroom just as Sandy was turning off the water.

   "Well? Didn't I tell you it wouldn't hurt you to go to the damned store?" she harped.
 
   "Yes, you were right, Penny," Sandy sighed and reached for a towel.  She thought about  Neighbor Guy and Alton lying motionless on the country store floor. She thought about her mother struggling to push a wheelchair across a dirt lawn, and she thought about her father rotting away in prison for his deviant behavior. She held her hands in front of her face and noticed that the shaking had finally stopped. "It didn't hurt a bit."

Trashy Fiction: Such a Nice Girl

I’m not awake. I’m not.

I AM NOT AWAKE!

Aw shit.

I am awake.

It’s not the kind of barely awake when I can pretend I’m dreaming and slip back into unconsciousness as if awake had never happened. My eyes have lost their heaviness and my bladder is screaming for relief. I’m not going back to sleep today.

I am fully, undeniably awake.

The blackbirds are bitching in the eaves outside my window. The triangle of soft light sneaking under the blinds tells me I’ve fallen asleep on the wrong side of the bed. The right side of the bed seems to be blocked by another human being. A man. I’m not sure if I should know him.

Great.

Just what I need on top of the alcohol fog left over from last night. I move my head to peer at my new bed buddy. I swear I can hear the slosh as my brain floats around in a skull full of tequila and salt.

He’s still sleeping. Lucky jerk. He is slumbering silently with his back to me. He is hogging most of the bed and all of the blankets.

My territorial self wants to slug him in the shoulder and shove him over, but my hung over, self-loathing, mortified self lets him sleep. No need to poke the bear.

Snippets of last night’s activities are beginning to solidify into an actual memory. I moan and cringe with the realization of what I’ve done.

Flickers of mouth against mouth, flesh against flesh, screams of pleasure and pain. Empty promises.

Geez. What will my neighbors think?

I’ve always been so quiet. I’ve not been known to have such a wild side. I’ve never parked my car halfway in the yard at two in the morning, dragged my drunk ass into the house and had raunchy, loud relations with a man I have known for only one evening. A man whose name I do not know, and cannot, for the life of me, recall right now. I am such a slut.

Gregory? Gilbert?

I am suddenly obsessed with finding out what his name is. I’m thinking back to dinner, before the bar, before the booze, when Sandra introduced us. “This is my friend from work…” Galen? Garth?

I sit up slowly and scan the floor for his pants. Surely he has an I.D. in his wallet, right? I’ll just slip it out and have a look before he wakes up. He’ll never know.

My body is achy with the familiar feeling of having been overly intimate. My thighs are sore, and my breasts are bruised from his excited love bites. I see a friggin’ hickey on the left one, right above the nipple, dammit! What is this? Junior High? Is he marking his territory? Does he think I’m his new girl?

Like HELL!

I hop out of the bed and start sorting through the clothing that has been haphazardly slung in all directions: my panties, my bra, his shirt, a stinky sock (definitely his). I can’t find the pants, and I’m beginning to get pissed that this slumbering, blanket-stealing, bed-hogging, no-named idiot is still in my house stinking up my air with his dirty laundry.

“Hey, Gavin,” I say to him, not bothering to whisper. I just want him to get up, get out and stay gone. I shove his shoulder with my fingertips, but he doesn’t move. “Graham…Grady…” I shove harder and then shake, but the oaf is still non-responsive. “Gordon.” I grab his shoulder now and pull him toward me onto his back.

Somebody is screaming like a maniac. My hand waving in front of me is flinging blood everywhere. I want it off me, but it’s not coming off. A warm gush between my legs lets me know that my bladder has finally been relieved. I won’t have to bother with the bathroom. Apparently, this is just as good a place as any.

Gunther is lying in his back staring into nothing, and the blood is everywhere. I don’t know how I didn’t smell it before. I need to vomit. His neck is just a massive black hole. Somebody has slashed it. I don't think it was me. My stomach heaves and I retch onto the floor, not onto Griff. He’s suffered enough. No need to add vomit to his list of woes.

“You WHORE!” That hiss comes from the corner of the room. One of my Grandma Hazel’s upholstered conversation chairs sits in that corner. I usually toss my jacket and my briefcase there after a long workday, just before I kick off my shoes. Right now, there’s a woman sitting there with a shotgun pointed right at me.

“You think you meant anything to my Gabriel?” she whispers. I don’t know why she’s whispering.

“Who's Gabriel?” I ask, confused. I've never met a Gabriel in my life. What the fuck is she talking about?

BOOM!

I’m not dead. I’m not.

 I AM NOT DEAD!

Aw shit. I am dead.

It’s not the kind of dead that you can come back from either. My chest is stinging on the ragged edges of the hole that used to be my heart. Crimson red seems to be the new black. I won’t be slinking back into life anytime today.

I am fully, undeniably dead.

Thumpers- a not so fictional story.

We let the demons in.
We might as well have slit our wrists to dye the carpet red, we were so accomodating. We invited them to sit comfortably in the parlor and offered them iced tea.
Nevermind that it was laced with incrimination. It had no effect on them whatsoever. They greedily drank down the poison, wiped their mouths and politely asked for more.
While we whispered secretively in the kitchen, they were perusing our family photographs, taking stock, making plans.
While we were arranging petit fours on a tray, they were drugging the dog and conferring with the cat.
By the time we returned, tray in hand, smiles pasted across our faces, they had returned to their seats on the cushioned sofa, skirts pulled down to cover their scandalous knees.
We knew what they were. We knew they were there, not to kill us, but to destroy us just the same. We knew they would do it so skillfully, and quietly that we might not even notice the bombs they'd planted.
We looked at one another, raising our eyebrows in acknowledgement.
At that moment, we both understood that we would not go down without a fight.
So what do you do with a group of skirt-wearing, kitten-petting, bible-thumping demons?
You invite them into the parlor and offer them cake and tea.