Tag Archives: short story writer

12 Plays of Christmas: In Service of Elves

Posted by Madd_Fictional on

I like to walk the park near my home at night, even in wintery weather. Some consider it a dangerous undertaking, I know, and there have been a few tragic incidents over the past several months, but I was born in this city and I take my chances because I am old enough to accept the risks associated with my nightly constitutional. That, and I refuse to live in fear.

Along the path I walk there is a stone bridge and each night I pass over it I see the same elderly woman squatting at the mouth of the underpass below with two wicker baskets sitting on either side of her.

Being city-bred, I generally tend to my own affairs and leave other people to their business, but this evening curiosity is my master, so instead of walking across the bridge, I take the path leading to the underpass.

As I get closer to the woman, I spot shapes moving in the shadow of the overpass. Too large to be rodentia or stray cats or dogs, these figures move about on their hindquarters but are too small to be dwarves. The first insane thought that comes to mind is leprechauns…but a niggling bit of ancient knowledge that must be buried deep within human mitochondria corrects me and states that they are…elves.

The baskets beside the woman are open and one is filled with fruits and finger sandwiches and the other with wet wipes and first aid materials. Three elves meander around the food basket nibbling on apple and orange slices, while the woman gingerly wipes the dirt and dried blood away from a wound on a fourth elf’s knee with an alcohol swab.

I clear my throat as to make my presence known and say, “Hello. I see you here at this same spot every evening. I hope you’ll pardon my nosiness, but I’m curious to know what you’re doing with these elves.” I cannot believe that I am openly discussing the existence of elves as if it is commonplace.

“I’m tending to them,” the woman smiles. “Sure, they can fend for themselves, but they happen to be Christmas elves which means they live a life of service to others…”

“I do not catch your meaning.”

“These little ones spend the better part of their days making useful items for the creatures that live in this park. They help them build functional homes and escape traps and things of that nature. They’re so busy doing these helpful deeds that they rarely have time to care for themselves, so I feed them and clean them and patch them up as best I can.”

“Awfully charitable of you.”

“A life of service,” she shrugs.

“But how did they come to be here?” I ask.

“Quite by accident. You see, on Christmas Eve when the mad rush is on to deliver presents to all the deserving people of the world, Mister Claus packs his magic sleigh with elves as well as presents and they aid in the delivery process, but sometimes an elf will accidentally fall from the sleigh in mid-flight or get left behind. When that happens, they are instructed to go to the nearest forest, which in the city is a park, and wait patiently until they can be collected. And while they wait, they help whom they can because it’s in their nature.”

“But would it not be better to move them to a place where they can be of service to people? I am sure there are plenty of underprivileged families who could benefit from having a helpful elf around, would you not agree?”

“Yes, I’m sure there are,” she replies. “But elves live in service of all living things. To them, there is no difference between humans and rodents and birds and fish and insects. They serve whom they serve. Who am I, or you for that matter, to direct the course of their service?”

I scratch my head. “I understand that but what about the difference they can make in society?”

The woman giggles aloud and looks down at the elf in her lap as she applies a bandage to its knee, and says, “Who says their actions aren’t making a difference in the world?”

I want to argue the point, I want mankind to benefit from these tiny miracle workers, but then the wiser part of me, the part that often remains hidden, points out that I am being selfish and specist, and thinking myself to be smarter and nobler than whoever or whatever is in charge of the natural order of things.

I regroup myself and exhale slowly as I kneel beside the elderly woman and ask, “How may I be of service?”

12 Plays of Christmas: Some Assembly Required

Posted by Madd_Fictional on

In the midst of a tantrum burst of emotions, Robson stomped into his room and slammed the door shut so hard the picture on the wall to the right came free of its hook and crashed to the floor. It was one of his favorites, a print of a painting depicting a young boy and girl building a snowman with the caption “Snowmen fall from heaven…unassembled” across the bottom. The glass and the frame were cracked and now it was ruined just like everything else in his life!

He kicked over his wastebasket, the plastic one with Captain America and all the other Marvel’s Avengers on it, and discarded candy wrappers and other bits of broken junk he no longer had a use for skittered across the floor which only made him angrier.

He threw his head back and screamed, “Why can’t you give me what I want? Why can’t I eat what I want to eat and watch what I want to watch on tv? I’m sick of this stupid house and I hate you both! I can’t wait until I get older and leave here forever!”

And the rage kept spilling out until he had expelled all the air from his lungs and the rant became a coughing fit, but he didn’t care. He pulled in a deep breath of new air and let out a frustrated and sustained, guttural bellow so loud it vibrated his eyeballs.

When the red mist of fury lifted from his vision and he was left with nothing more than the fatigue of ages pressing down upon him, he heard a soft rap on his door. He had no desire to respond, so he didn’t but the door handle turned slowly and his father pushed his head inside.

“Got it all out of your system?” his father asked with no trace of anything being out of the ordinary.

Robson didn’t answer, he couldn’t answer, the fatigue wouldn’t allow it. But as his father entered the room and surveyed the damage, the young boy stood firm, and let his breath out through his nostrils in a defiant hiss.

His father picked up the cracked picture frame and examined it as he walked past Robson to sit on the bed. He patted the full-size mattress, indicating for his son to have a seat but the boy didn’t move. “Come on, it’s not going to kill you to sit next to me. I just need you to listen to what I have to say and then I’ll leave you alone to continue being mad at us.”

Reluctantly, Robson dragged his feet as if the gravity inside the room had suddenly increased tenfold and plopped onto the bed as far away from his father as he could manage.

“A shame about this picture,” his father said. “Your mother and I bought this for you because it was the first thing you actually asked for. You pleaded with us and made your case so succinctly that we had no choice. At the time, we didn’t have the money to spare but sometimes the happiness of the people you love is worth more than any dollar amount.

“The reason I’m bringing this up is to talk to you about sacrifices. You’re too young to fully understand this but everybody in the world has to make them, no matter how young or old they are. And you may think the things we ask or tell you to do are unfair but that’s only because you don’t see the bigger picture and there’s no real reason you should at your age. Our job as parents is to take care of the big important stuff so that you can live the easiest life we can manage to give you. But it’s also our duty to prepare you for what’s to come and we planned to wait until you were a little older, but since you’re so eager to grow up, let me tell you what life holds in store for you.

“As you get older, you’re going to learn that even the people who were never supposed to let you down probably will and someone who has the same opinion about you…you will let them down, as well. That includes the three of us, champ. We’re eventually going to let each other down.

“You’re going to fall in love one day and your heart will get broken and it will probably happen more than once, and it will get harder to love with each passing break. And most likely you’ll break a few hearts yourself, even if you remember how it felt when yours was broken and try to avoid doing it to someone else, it’s still going to happen.

“Despite your best intentions, you’ll fight with your best friends, blame a new love for things an old one did, complain because time is passing too fast, wish you had your childhood to do over again to get things right, and you’ll eventually lose someone you love, which includes me and your mother.”

Robson sat motionless, staring at the cracked glass and broken frame, unable to meet his father’s gaze because he felt the sting of tears in his eyes. “What do I do?” he said in a small voice.

“What do you mean?”

“To stop all the bad things from happening. What do I do?”

“Well, you can start by not taking the good things and times for granted, but do take too many pictures, laugh too much, and love like you’ve never been hurt…because every sixty seconds you spend upset is a minute of happiness you’ll never get back. But before any of that, you should go apologize to your mother, she was really upset by some of the things you said.”

Robson hopped off the bed, turned his back to his father and wiped the tears from his eyes with his shirt sleeve. He walked to the door with a purpose, but stopped at the door jamb and said over his shoulder, “I don’t really hate you, you know.”

“I know, kiddo,” his father smiled. “Now, go give your mother a great big hug and kiss and shag your butt back in here so we can straighten this room up.”

The little boy took off like a shot out of the room yelling, “Mommy! Mommy! I’m sorry!”

His father stood up, righted the wastebasket and carefully tilted the broken glass into the little plastic bucket. He caught sight of the caption on the picture and thought, Snowmen aren’t the only things that require assembly, sometimes family bonds do too.

12 Plays of Christmas: Memory Is The Liar That Whispers Fantastic Pasts In Our Ears (a true story…I think)

Posted by Madd_Fictional on
Calvin-and-Hobbes-esque-Tiny-litle-snowman-army

There’s a Christmas-adjacent story I’m fond of telling, that hand on heart I swear is true, about a girl I met in a park during a blizzard.

Before I go any further, I need to let you know that I’m probably older than a good many of you who will read this and there are miles and miles of memories between now and when the incident occurred, so the sad fact of the matter is I don’t remember what she looked like. Not exactly. In my fading memory’s defense, I only saw the bit of her frosty red face that was nestled within the fur ring of her hooded parka.

And I’ll admit that my recollection of events might be slightly dramatized and infused with more schmaltzy innocence and devil may care fun, as we built a snow fort to defend ourselves from the invading snow army, but it happened, the girl was real and not some imaginary snow playmate—I’ve had plenty of those and I know the difference—and a good time was had by all…or at least by me.

The memory gets more Michael Bayish with each retelling. It takes on mass and bulks up and challenges me to become a better liar in order to bear its additional weight. But am I actually a liar? If the current version records over the initial memory on the VHS tape in my mind and all I have left is the most recent telling, then I am relaying events as I recall them, no? And why shouldn’t I drape this memory with grace so that it might straighten its back and hold its head higher, as it strolls amongst my other remembrances? I am one of only two people who possess this memory and since I cannot verify that the other party is holding up their end, it’s my sworn duty to keep it alive, embellishments and all.

Just before Christmas vacation, it started out as one of my favorite kinds of schooldays, you know, where you wake up and the world outside is completely white and Alice Cooper’s voice is singing on a continuous loop in your head, “School’s out for-ever!” as you do your victory dance in front of the icy window.

What was that? Just me, then? All right. Good to know.

Anyhoo, after lying about leaving my books at school—thereby avoiding studying to get ahead of the class (perish the thought)—and breezing through my chores, I ventured forth into snowmageddon and discovered… no one else was outside. Oh, sure, people were attempting to dig their cars out, but none of my friends, hell, no one my age was visible in the dense thundersnow.

Cowards, the lot of them!

Undaunted—I wasn’t going back inside, not on a free day like this—I trekked to the local park and that was when I saw The Girl. Out on her lonesome, rolling the lower portion of a snowman-to-be with all the intensity of a Winterland Victoria Frankenstein.

When she eventually caught sight of me, she stopped and glared, trying to suss me out. Was I friend or foe? We stood there for ages, still as statues, locked in a silent Mexican Stare Off. She was determined, this one, to wait me out. She had staked claim to this park and I was the trespasser. If we were ever going to come to an accord, I’d have to make the first move. So, I did the only thing I could do in that situation…

I began rolling the middle portion for her snowman. That seemed to be good enough for her.

You ask me what her name was? Well, there are only two words that come to mind when I think about her: amber and hazel. So, either her name was Amber and she had hazel eyes, or she was an amber-eyed Hazel. Perhaps even something in between like Hazamberel or Amhazelber? I can’t rule any options out at this point.

The park was ours and ours alone, we two intrepid children of The Bronx. We laughed in the face of the snowpocalypse and frolicked—as much as our starfish overlayering would allow—and built an ominous snow army that we waged snow war against, plowed through the snow soldiers, and beat them down to the ground, before turning on each other in the snowball fight to end all snowball fights, tried to sled downhill on a ratty piece of cardboard, discovered how truly fast squirrels are when we tried to catch one, marveled at how far trees could bend under the weight of snow and made a pact to be friends forever.

I learned that day that pacts are not unbreakable—I never saw Hazamberel again—and just how like a delicate snowflake a memory was.

Not a terribly exciting story to hear, I realize, but I’m not telling it for your enjoyment. I tell it so that I don’t lose it and so that it doesn’t fade any more than it already has from the weathers of time or become trapped and freezes to death in the hedge maze like Jack Nicholson in The Shining.

That’s part of the duty we owe to our past, to not only remember it but become the architects and build up the bits of foundation that have crumbled away due to neglect.

So, please stop me if I’ve told you this one before, but once, when I was younger, I met a girl in a blizzard, at least I think it was snowing, maybe it was rain, and her name was some sort of color, Vermillion or Fuchsia, maybe…

Tiny Stories: Knight’s First Quest

Posted by Madd_Fictional on

Popular belief has it that the universe is comprised of atoms. In reality, the universe is actually made up of…

On the twenty-first year of his birth, after proving his bravery and skill at battle, Eldred the squire was called to the dubbing ceremony, where he knelt before the King, who tapped the squire on the shoulder with a ceremonial sword, making Eldred a knight.

Once he took the oath to honor and protect both his king and the church, he was presented with a pair of riding spurs and his very own weapon, the Sword Perilous, crafted by the king’s master armorer and enchanted by a powerful wizard for the sole purpose of slaying dragons. Many a knight wielded the mighty blade, yet the sword always returned to the king unused and ownerless.

The new knight, determined to make his mark and break the curse of the Sword Perilous, traveled the desolate road through the forbidden forest for three moons until he crossed paths with a maiden fair. Eldred’s eyes feasted upon her—the aureate waterfall of her hair, the glimmering emerald of her eyes, flawless diaphanous skin, and the elegant and fawn-like neck that supported the most pulchritudinous face he had ever seen.

The moment he laid the enchanted steel upon the mossy earth, he discovered that this delicate creature, whom he would have sworn his life to protect without question, was in fact the dragon he had been ordered to slay.

Can You Keep A Secret?

Posted by Madd_Fictional on

Walton had done the calculations. The building stood twenty-two stories tall which was approximately two hundred and forty feet and his freefall wouldn’t last longer than four seconds, reaching seventy-five miles per hour on impact.

That should do the trick, he thought as he closed his eyes, held his breath, and stepped off the building ledge.

A hand caught the crook of his arm in a vise-like grip and yanked Walton violently back onto the roof. He was confused when he opened his eyes and saw…

A ghost?

No. Although she was so pale she almost looked faded and thin to the point of anorexia, skin stretched over bones, the woman standing over him was definitely corporeal. Walton wasn’t one to judge a person’s appearance but she wasn’t attractive. Her hair was baby-fine and lifeless and it collapsed onto her shoulders. He was in midair when she grabbed him but there was no way this frail, bony woman could have yanked him back onto the roof.

“I didn’t mean to manhandle you like that. I just didn’t know your story,” the woman said. Her voice was mousy but her tone was strong.

“Are you insane? What are you talking about?”

“I wasn’t the one about to swan dive into concrete, so let’s not judge anyone’s sanity here, okay? And I’m talking about your story. Everybody’s got one and it would be a shame if you did what you were about to do and nobody knew your story.”

“Wait, you stopped me because you wanted to know my story? Not because I was going to kill myself?”

“Let’s be honest here, if you aim to top yourself, you’ll find a way to do it, and there’s nothing that I or anybody else can do to stop you. I’m just curious to know who you were.”

“You mean are.”

“I mean were. You’re going to kill yourself after all.”

“You really are crazy.”

“There you go again, with that label. Hello, pot, meet kettle.”

“What are you doing up here anyway?”

“I could ask you the same question.”

Walton pointed toward the building ledge. “Isn’t it obvious?”

“Oh yeah, right.”

“Look, I don’t have time to waste talking nonsense with a stranger,” Walton said, rising to his feet and dusting himself off.

“Vonda Darleen Honeycutt,” Vonda said, extending her hand.

“What?”

“My name. We’re not strangers anymore. And you are…?”

“Not interested.” Walton walked past her to the roof’s edge.

“I’m just going to go downstairs and rummage through your gunky remains until I find your ID, so why not save me the trouble?”

He let out a sigh of exasperation. “Walton.”

“Got a last name there, Walton?”

“Summers, all right? Walton Mayson Summers, are you happy now?”

“Hey, we got something in common, you’re a three-namer like me. Ever wonder why middle names went out of fashion?”

“No, now if you’ll excuse me…”

“Uh-uh, not so fast. I still don’t know your story. It must’ve wrapped up in a shitty day to bring you to this.”

“How about a lifetime of shitty days?”

“That would certainly do it. Wanna get it off your chest? You may not know it to look at me but I’m a helluva listener. Besides, I’m only gonna keep snatching you off the ledge until you tell me.”

“Then I’ll take you with me,” Walton said.

“Are you a murderer?”

He wasn’t. Walton sat on the ledge and asked, “If I tell you my story, will you let me do what I came here to do?”

Vonda made the sign of a cross over her left breast. “Cross my heart and hope to…well, you know.”

And with that, Walton told her the story of an unsuccessful author whose work failed to connect with an audience of any kind, who turned to alcohol, an addiction that chased away his wife, his family, and his friends, relationships he wasn’t able to repair even though he had been sober for almost five years.

“Not exactly a life worth living,” Walton concluded.

“What if I could show you something?” Vonda asked.

“Let me stop you right there, I’m not religious, never have been, never will be.”

“I’m not proselytizing, not trying to sell you on a cult, but what I have to show you will damn sure feel like you’re having a religious experience.”

“What have I got to lose? This will all be over in a minute, anyway, so go on, show me.”

Vonda began feeling the air. looking like a mime trapped in a box. Walton rolled his eyes and was about to swing his legs off the side of the building when the odd woman found what she was looking for. She traced her fingers down an invisible seam in the air and dug her fingers into it. With a bit of effort, the bony woman pulled back a piece of reality.

Walton’s eyes grew wide as saucers as he looked upon a sight that altered his perception of himself, his life, everything. It was similar to the overview effect reported by astronauts who viewed the Earth from outer space. What stared back at Walton from the rift in the space/time continuum allowed him to see, for the first time with his mere mortal eyes, the big picture: his life in relation to the universe at large.

Vonda closed the rift, making sure it was sealed tight. Walton walked to where the rift had opened and felt around. He had to see it again but his hand touched nothing except air.

“I never knew,” he said.

“And now you do,” Vonda said. “But there’s a catch.”

“What sort of catch?”

“What you just witnessed has to remain a secret.”

“I’ve just had a cognitive shift in awareness, how can I not scream this from the mountaintops?”

“Them’s the rules,” Vonda shrugged. “In exchange for this experience, you can never tell anyone about what you’ve seen. You can’t even write about it, not in a story, journal entry, email, or text. You are forbidden to utter or issue a single word referring to it.”

“Then why show it to me?”

“You’re about to kill yourself, who are you going to tell?”

“Well, I don’t want to kill myself now, do I?”

“I don’t know, do you?”

“You know damn well I don’t, which is why you showed it to me!”

Vonda shrugged again and held out her pinky. “So, do you promise to keep this a secret?”

“You want me to put it on a pinky swear?”

“It’s universally accepted as a binding contract,” she smiled.

Walton locked his pinky with hers and agreed to keep the secret.

Then something occurred to Walton. “Wait, if this is such a big secret, how were you able to tell me?”

“I have special dispensation, you should have been able to work that out on your own by my ability to peel back reality. Besides, I didn’t tell you anything, I showed you. Big difference.”

“Will I be able to do that, too?”

“Learn to crawl before you walk, pal.”

It turned out that Vonda had been sleeping on the roof since she had no place to live. How could Walton not allow her to crash at his rundown apartment? She was the keeper of the greatest secret unknown to mankind, after all.

Sheer proximity to one another and the sharing of a perception-altering experience led them to become involved in a serious relationship and through her encouragement, he sold his first short story. Vonda turned out to be his good luck charm because published short stories turned into published novellas and Walton’s life soon improved as his struggling writing career became wildly successful.

The couple eventually married and had two beautiful children. The years rolled by as years were wont to do and Walton’s career continued to blossom, however, he had written so many books that he exhausted all of his ideas. Yes, he had earned enough money and invested wisely enough for him and his family to live comfortably for the rest of their lives, and if he needed to work there was always the lecture circuit or he could have sculpted aspiring author minds by teaching a masterclass, but a writer in the pit of their soul wanted to write, wanted to be read, and if he was being honest with himself, fame was a difficult thing to let go of.

Walton had written forty novels at a rate of four books a year and on the tenth anniversary with his publisher, his agent thought it would be a spectacular idea to mark the occasion with a new release. He agreed, even though his new idea well had run dry, because he felt he owed it to his fans to attempt to put out at least one final book before announcing his retirement.

The road to hell was always paved with good intentions.

He wrote in secret, and Walton’s conscience should have plagued him to no end but he somehow convinced himself that what he was doing wasn’t a breach of his promise because he wasn’t detailing the wonders his wife showed him ten years ago. He wrote a fable in allegory and metaphor, craftily altering elements and tweaking details until they in no way resembled the precise details of the truth. But the moment he put the finishing touches on his manuscript, Vonda and the children appeared in the doorway of his study.

“All you had to do was keep one secret and the world would have been yours,” Vonda sighed heavily, letting her head drop. Her teardrops beat patterns on the hardwood floor.

Vonda held out her pinky, a reminder of the vow he made, and Walton watched her pinky fade into nothingness. She screamed and clutched her two daughters tight, who emitted a heartbreaking wail as they began to unravel corporeally and dispersed into so much stardust.

And after they were gone, his current reality followed suit. Films and television programs based on his books became unmade, audiobooks were unspoken, novels melted away from bookshelves, his words vanished from the minds of fans and his publishing company, deals were unsigned, his house unbought, all the positive things that paved the path to his success were undone and time reversed on itself, speeding faster and faster until he was back on the ledge of the building again taking that first big step off.

But this time there was no hand to pull him back onto the roof and gravity did what it was designed to do.

Savior Complex

Posted by Madd_Fictional on

Me and the past never really saw eye to eye, so when I occasionally ran into someone I used to know, I immediately flipped through my mental Rolodex for an excuse to chuck at them before continuing on my merry way. It worked like a charm every single time, that is until I bumped into Tatum.

It had been at least seventeen years since I last laid eyes on her and the years had been very kind to this woman, in fact, she hadn’t appeared to have aged a day. She was still that slender mocha-skinned Honduran with a disarming smile but the updated version rocked a nose piercing and shoulder-length dreads in lieu of a bob cut. I couldn’t believe that I was actually pleased to see her, and during the moment of reciting the usual social pleasantries by rote, all the negative history between us had been replaced with heart-warming nostalgia.

Her smile never wavered when she mentioned her life hadn’t turned out quite the way she planned. When we were together, she was studying to be a lawyer. Now, she worked as a marketing senior manager for a cosmetics firm, was the mother of two, a girl and a boy, nine and thirteen years old respectively, who were fathered by a deadbeat boyfriend who ditched both the wedding and his kids in one fell swoop.

Time had no meaning as we stood there conversing on the sidewalk and for the first time in quite a while, I honestly enjoyed exchanging words with a person who wasn’t a character trapped within the confines of my overactive writer’s imagination. But all good things, as they say—so, we exchanged numbers, promised each other we would call, and went our separate ways.

And on my way home, the strangest nagging notion crept up from the back of my mind: had we been able to work things out all those many years ago, her life might have turned out differently. Better. Then came the guilt, as if my absence was somehow responsible for the direction her life had taken. And on the tail of the guilt came the shame for not being a better boyfriend to her and a better person in general.

I promptly deleted her number from my phone because neither she nor I needed to be reminded of what might have been.

Less than a week later, once I had time to regret deleting her phone number, she called with an invitation to have lunch and meet her children. I wasn’t keen on the latter, but against my better judgment I wanted to see her again, so I agreed.

We met at a faux Italian restaurant, a fast-food chain done up in dime-store décor to give the eatery a stereotypical taste of Italy, and I had to admit that I didn’t mind her kids all that much. They were a bit unruly but what children weren’t at those ages? Although I felt a little awkward being interrogated by her brood, it was nice being in Tatum’s company again. I experienced a level of comfort that oddly felt like home.

That was until her daughter, Stacie, asked, “Did you and Mommy have s-e-x?” as if spelling the word somehow made the question safe to ask.

Confirmed bachelor that I was, I wasn’t comfortable chatting with a nine-year-old about sex. Having no idea what the proper protocol was, I turned to Tatum and with a look, asked, Did we have s-e-x, Mommy?

Without batting an eye, Tatum answered, “Yes, we had sex.”

Was that how it was done nowadays? Was it the norm for ex-boyfriends to be brought to lunch with the kiddies to openly discuss their sexual history? I was still reeling from that exchange when her son, Lee, chimed in, “You could be our Dad!”

The old one-two punch. These kids worked me over like a speedbag. They laughed at my embarrassment and I tried to play it off, but it unnerved me on a deeper level. The rest of the conversation was downhill after that in terms of my personal comfort. We got on well enough, the four of us, better than expected, and when we said our goodbyes after lunch, I was hit with another weird sensation—jealousy. Because her children weren’t our children and at her family dinner table, there was no place setting for me. It only lasted an instant but long enough for it to have registered.

I tried to put things into perspective, tried to remember why our relationship ended in the first place. It wasn’t a build-up of all the minor things, the petty annoyances that masked the underlying truth that people sometimes simply grew apart. It was the Santeria. I told her I didn’t believe in magic, voodoo, and things of that nature and it was true, but the other truth was that it scared a part of me that I didn’t want to acknowledge.

If Tatum actually practiced rituals, she did a great job of keeping it to herself, her mother, on the other hand, was very open and vocal about the matter. That woman hated me the moment she clapped eyes on me, no rhyme, no reason, just pure unadulterated hatred. For some reason, I hadn’t measured up to her exacting standards of what constituted a proper boyfriend for her daughter and she never bothered hiding that fact. She visited our apartment constantly and when she left, I would find things hidden around the house, under the bed, in the refrigerator. Santeria objects everywhere.

Things finally came to a head the day I came home from work early and walked in on a Santeria ritual in progress. Our tiny studio apartment was packed with strangers clad in all white, eyes closed in a trance, and chanting in a language I didn’t understand while they danced to the beat of the drummers positioned in each corner of the room. Tatum must have given her mother a key because she was standing in the center of the room, smoking a cigar and glaring at me as if I was the intruder in my own apartment. Speaking in tongues, the old battleax walked up to me and blew a cloud of disgusting smelling smoke into my face.

Tatum came home to find me lying face down on the floor. I told her what happened and not only had she taken it all in stride but she also took her mother’s side, stating that I had no business interrupting the ritual. I’ve never been an arguer, chiefly because I was no good at it but we had a knock-down-drag-out that day…which ended with me moving out of the apartment that night and never looking back. Depending on how you looked at it, if her mother did cast a spell on me, it actually worked because I was finally out of her daughter’s life.

I kept this firmly in mind when Tatum phoned and invited me around hers for dinner. I accepted the invitation with the intention of cutting ties with her altogether but being gentlemanly about it and doing it in person. And if I was being absolutely honest, it had been a month of Sundays since I had a proper home-cooked meal because no one in their right mind would have called what I did cooking.

Tatum greeted me at the door in an apron dusted with flour and seasonings, the picture-perfect happy homemaker. The kids were in the kitchen and to my astonishment were finishing up washing the dishes. They dried their hands before they ran up and hugged me. I looked into their faces and something seemed off. Their smiles were too wide, teeth too white and there was something unnatural about the intensity in their eyes. And their faces were different, still possessing features reminiscent of Tatum but the rest was somehow…incomplete, like faces in transition. I chalked it up to a writer’s overactive imagination and thought nothing more of it.

Dinner went well. Who knew Tatum could have been such a gracious hostess? The kids made the meal a pleasant experience, as well. They stopped bickering and playing with their food when I asked them to, laughed at my jokes, and listened with rapt attention as I told the story of how I met their mother. Cutting ties with them wasn’t going to be easy.

After dinner, we sat in the living room and Tatum pulled out a photo album and flipped through family pictures of vacations with the deadbeat boyfriend, of her during various stages of her pregnancies, of her and deadbeat holding a newborn Lee, and later with Tatum holding a newborn Stacie while deadbeat lurked somewhere in the background. A life well documented.

She described how difficult things had been. Deadbeat developed a drug habit and came around under the guise of seeing his kids only to beg off some money in order to score and if that hadn’t worked, he stole things to sell. One time when Tatum refused to give him any more money, he had Stacie and Lee removed from her custody by Child Protective Services because of alleged abuse charges. She was nearly in tears as she spoke about the hell she had to go through in order to get her family back together.

As if on cue, there was a knock at the door. It was deadbeat, whose Christian name was Oscar, most likely coming around again to score. She spoke with him in hushed tones through the space in the apartment door allowed by the security chain. When his shouts turned to raged kicking on the door, I stepped up behind Tatum so that he could see me.

“Everything all right, Tate?” I said, placing a hand on her shoulder.

It was like pouring gasoline on a fire. Oscar lost his mind to the point where there was no reasoning with him. I did the only thing I could think of doing, I made sure he saw me dialing 911 on my cell. This caused him to weigh his options, and he eventually left but not before making a threat to come back to get his kids and make Tatum pay.

She convinced me not to involve the police but only after Tatum agreed to let me stay the night in case Oscar decided to return. We tried to salvage the rest of the evening for the sake of Stacie and Lee but deadbeat’s presence lingered in the air.

The sofa was made up for me as comfortable as she could manage but sleep was the furthest thing from my mind. I was afraid that Oscar would return and afraid that I wouldn’t be of much use since I wasn’t a violent man. All I could have done was to block his attack while Tatum grabbed the kids and made their way to safety. And if that was what it took, then so be it.

When I started drifting off, as the tension of the evening released its grip, Tatum came to me. Her nightgown slid off her perfect body. Why hadn’t I ever noticed just how perfect she was before? She stood there, naked and beautiful in the moonlight that poured in from the window, and I knew then and there that I would have done anything for her. Smiling, she climbed on top of me and it was paradise.

After we were done, after all the love I was capable of making had been made, after the pillow talk in which things were said that were sweet and emotional and ultimately meaningless, Tatum gathered her nightgown and went back to her bed. I understood her not wanting the children to find her in my arms in the morning, but a small piece of me was disappointed.

My head swam with a million thoughts, my heart filled with far too many emotions, and that combined with the feeling that something wasn’t right, meant there was no sleep for me tonight. I was so preoccupied that I hadn’t heard it at first. The sound. The jingling of keys.

I went silent, straining my ears—moments passed. It couldn’t have been him with a set of keys. Surely Tatum would have changed the locks. Then it happened again. The sound of a key sliding in a lock. I sat bolt upright on the sofa, eyes scanning the darkness for a weapon. Remote controls, game console controllers, DVDs—the candy dish! It was no gun, but glass and solid enough to damage a skull.

I stared into the dark hallway from the living room entranceway. The sound of the doorknob turning. The door opened a crack and light spilled in from the apartment building hallway. An arm slipped in through the crack. It held something wire-like. A hanger? The tip of the hooked wire scratched at the door until it found purchase. The handle for the security chain. It slid across the groove slowly until the chain fell away.

I should have acted then. I should have rushed the door, slammed his arm in it, put my full weight against the door, held him there and called the police for them to cart him away. But I was held in place by a tense moment that locked inside of me. Instinct had taken over. So had the fear.

The intruder’s silhouette appeared in the doorway before the door clicked shut behind him, plunging the hall back into darkness. Footsteps, slow and deliberate. The floorboards creaked as if they were screaming a warning.

Then I heard a rustling come from the kids’ room. Had they heard the noise? Were they coming to investigate? Something snapped inside me. This bastard wasn’t going to harm the kids!

I charged into the darkness until I collided with the intruder. But as angry and determined as I was, it was no match for his explosive violence. He heaved me into the air and threw me on the floor. The ashtray slipped through my fingers and clattered away out of reach. The intruder proceeded to punch and kick me and I had absolutely no defense, I threw up my arms but they blocked none of his attacks. He wrapped his hands around my throat and I flailed spastically to get him off me as I gasped for the air that had been cut off from me.

I was overcome with fear but my body was overcome with instinct. My limbs simply tried anything they could to free my throat so I could breathe. But the intruder was having none of it. He slammed my head against the floor in a violent demonstration of his control over me as I gasped my last remaining breaths.

Then light flooded the room. Tatum and the children stood at the end of the hall, staring at me. My emotions were mixed. I wanted them to go away, I didn’t want them to see me like this. I wanted them to get to safety, but on the other hand, I wanted them to help me. I didn’t want to die.

But there was something in the way they looked at me, something that told me things weren’t right. And I looked up at the intruder—

Who was no longer there.

And now I understood why they were staring at me. Here I was lying on the floor with my own hands wrapped around my neck. It took some effort for me to loosen my grip. I staggered to my feet and tried to explain how Oscar had come back, how he had a key and he broke in and was going to do something terrible to them, but they didn’t understand.

Who was Oscar? they kept asking and, What’s wrong with Daddy?

When I told them to stop it, that it wasn’t funny anymore, that I wasn’t their father, looks of genuine hurt danced across their faces. I ran into the living room and grabbed the photo album for proof and flipped through the pages of—

Tatum and I on vacation. Me posing with her during various stages of her pregnancy. She and I holding a newborn Lee. Of us holding a newborn Stacie while Lee lurked somewhere in the background.

I had no recollection of having taken these photos, yet they existed.

And I looked at Stacie and Lee and they were different again, now a mixture of Tatum…and I thought I actually saw bits of myself in their faces. The kids asked Tatum what was wrong.

“Daddy just had a nightmare, that’s all,” she explained. “Everything will be all right in the morning, everything back to normal.”

And as Tatum ushered me to the bedroom, she grabbed the pillow off the sofa and something fell onto the floor. It looked like a figure made of folded palm leaves but I couldn’t see it properly because she quickly brushed it under the sofa with her foot.

“What was that?” I asked, my head still swimming in confusion.

“Just one of the kids’ toys,” she replied in a tone so soothing it was almost hypnotic.

Tatum said she would talk to Lee and Stacie about picking up their things, or she asked if perhaps I could do it because she wouldn’t have time since she was staring at a monster of a day at the law firm tomorrow, sitting first chair on a high-profile case.

That’s right, she’s a lawyer, I thought as the fog slowly lifted from my brain. Why did I think she worked in cosmetics? Perhaps she was right, everything would be all right in the morning after a good night’s sleep. Everything would be back to normal.

Of Breadcrumbs Lost (a Thanksgiving tale, of sorts)

Posted by Madd_Fictional on

What caused me to speak to the man, I cannot rightly say, for I do not make it my business to chat with homeless people. They are a dime a dozen in the city in which I live and work and if I regularly engaged with them, I would never make any of my appointments on time. But there was something about this man with the sun-faded, barely legible cardboard sign, something in the deep well of his eyes that beckoned me.

He told me his name was Horace as I patted my pockets to add validation to my claim that I had no money to drop into his dingy paper coffee cup, a statement I made before he even asked. In truth, he never asked. I simply went into automatic defensive mode, not wanting to seem heartless, but not offering any charity, either.

“We all drop breadcrumbs in life,” Horace said.

“Do we?” I asked, struggling to mark his intention.

Horace nodded. “Even the most carefree among us, and we do this because normalcy comes well-equipped with comfort zones. You may take exception to the word normalcy but it has nothing to do with the definition society places on the word normal. Here it applies to the recurrent patterns in your life, the things you’ve grown accustomed to.”

“I don’t follow you.”

“The breadcrumbs are used to lead us back to the path of familiarity when the detours we take spiral beyond our ability to control and/or accept.  I stray from the path constantly chiefly because my path is an uneventful one, which many people would kill for, but I find boring. I ought to be a baker with the number of breadcrumbs I’ve dropped over the years.”

“Um, I’d love to chat, but it’s Thanksgiving and I really must be on my way.”

“Since I’ve always been able to find my way home I never had a problem tearing my life apart,” Horace continued as if he hadn’t heard me. “Going on concrete jungle pilgrimages, and returning to my path at some later date to rebuild things from scratch. But this time is different. This time the demolition wasn’t of my choosing and there’s something about the way events have been playing out over the past six months that have clued me in on the fact I am near the end of the race.”

“You’re dying?”

“Homeless yet again, despite my best efforts to avoid it, I have this sinking feeling deep in my marrow that this will be the final time. There’s no way out and no way back. All the breadcrumbs I dropped to lead me back to the main road of rebuilding my life are gone. Most likely eaten by the crows of a fate long overdue. I guess you can only hit the reset button so many times in life.

“And I can’t honestly say I didn’t see it coming. Life stopped making sense about three years ago, though not all at once. Little by little, all the rules I had ever learned, all the tricks I added to my arsenal, no longer applied. Now, life, the daily routine that the majority of the population manages to perform without a second thought or breaking a sweat, is a game I no longer know how to play. Existence no longer makes sense to me.

“Needless to say, it doesn’t help matters that I have always possessed a nihilistic bug in the back of my brain that constantly questions the logic of struggling to achieve anything when all roads lead to death.

“As you can probably work out, I do not believe in the afterlife. So that we’re clear, this is not an invitation for proselytizers to dust off their soapboxes. I am an aspiritual entity and I’ve made my peace with the fact that I shall not receive salvation. If religion works for you, good on you, I wish you nothing but the best.”

I stood there in silence, wanting to walk away, but also wanting to make sense of this interaction. As if reading my mind, Horace said,

“The purpose of my stopping you from your events of the day and rambling on about things which bear no significance to you is to pass on as many of my thoughts and impressions before I lose my sanity to the streets and become one of the wandering bagmen screaming at invisible antagonists.”

And it finally dawned on me. “You want to be remembered,” I said.

“Who among us doesn’t want to be remembered?”

“You wouldn’t happen to be hungry, would you?” I asked.

“It was not my intention to solicit charity from you, sir, at least not of the monetary kind.”

“I didn’t say anything about giving you money. I need to put something in my stomach before I go on the search and I don’t like eating alone.”

“What are you searching for?”

“Breadcrumbs,” I answered. “You said you’ve been dropping them all your life. I’m sure there are enough lingering around somewhere to get you safely back on your path.”

HAPPY THANKSGIVING! Wishing all who celebrate the holiday (and even those who don’t) good food that fills your belly, good health as you strive for your unique brand of success, and good times with family and friends. May you have all the best delights in a life filled with moments that are as sweet as pumpkin pie!

Tiny Stories: Susa’s Playground

Posted by Madd_Fictional on

Popular belief has it that the universe is comprised of atoms. In reality, the universe is actually made up of…

Everyone who ever met Susa knew there was something not quite right with the soft-spoken alabaster-skinned little girl but not one single solitary soul could have told you what it was that set her at odds with the rest of humanity.

She appeared to love her parents dearly, was respectful to adults, kind to animals and everyone she met, and never spoke a bad word against anyone or anything, never threw a tantrum, and was never angry or upset with anyone over any matter, not even when people were unkind to her.

But each time Susa’s head touched the pillow, the young girl would spend her sleeping hours traipsing through the dreams of the unkind others, pulling them into a phantasmagorical landscape which showcased the death of everything, their loved ones, hopes, ideas, memories, and every other type of death both real and imagined.

Not as revenge or punishment, mind you, but as an example of the rewards that awaited those determined to remain on the wrong side of her good temperament.

Stars Go Blue by Rhyan Scorpio-Rhys (posted on MasticadoresIndia)

Posted by Madd_Fictional on

We cannot help who we are attracted to and even the most hard-hearted among us have fallen victim to one or more of the five main determinants of attraction: physical attractiveness, proximity, similarity, reciprocity, and familiarity in their lifetime. But there are behaviors that we find charming in romantic comedies and romance novels that would unnerve us in real life.

Submitted for your approval is a love story of sorts:

It was a secret place, a quarter acre of Eden abandoned and erased from the mind of mankind the instant the original sin was committed, and I had stumbled upon it quite by accident. No, that was a lie and I promised myself I would not defile the sanctity of the garden if it could be helped. I was not proud of the actual reason of how I came to be in this place, simply because I was a stalker [Continued here…]

Stars Go Blue by Rhyan Scorpio-Rhys — MasticadoresIndia // Editora: Terveen Gill

No Future In Arguing

Posted by Madd_Fictional on

Because of the argument with her mother, Lakshmi wasn’t able to sleep. It happened ten days ago to this very minute and her hatred for her mother hadn’t abated one iota. Truth to tell, she wasn’t able to remember who started the argument or what the initial disagreement was about but, as with most feuds, it opened a doorway for all the other things, the niggling bits of minutia to spill out, and words were exchanged and feelings were hurt on both sides.

Ten days of freezing her mother out. Ten days of refusing to eat or talk or even be in the same room with that woman. Ten nights of lying awake in bed, staring at the headlights of passing cars that trailed rectangles across her ceiling. Lakshmi knew every inch of the ceiling and walls of her room like the back of her hand…which was why she was shocked when her eyes fell upon the crack.

It was beside the mirror that sat atop her chest of drawers, a horizontal crack no longer than a foot in length that resembled a demonic smile. Lakshmi stared at the crack long and hard, wondering how she had missed something so obvious before…when it blinked. All right, so perhaps blinked wasn’t the proper word, but she could have sworn she saw a light flicker from within the crack.

Probably just the wiring, she thought as she pushed a chair against the wall beneath the crack. At night, Lakshmi regularly heard mice scurrying between the walls. One of them must have nibbled on a wire and exposed it. She’d have to remember to tell her father in the morning as it had to be a fire hazard.

Standing on the chair to inspect the crack, she ran her index finger along its jagged yet smooth edge which was surprisingly cold to the touch and she thought she felt a slight suction…then the flicker again!

I didn’t imagine it, Lakshmi thought as she leaned forward and stared into the crack. There was something moving within and she was surprised to see that it was…

Herself.

It was like watching a movie. She watched herself being herself, doing the things she normally did, but not on any day she ever remembered. The images began at a normal pace, then sped up to such a degree where, to anyone else, they would have appeared to be nothing more than a blur but Lakshmi was able to follow along because she was somehow connected to them. They were her personal images, of her life and she was living them, retaining the information contained within them as the events unfolded.

Eyes glued to the craggy slit in the wall, Lakshmi watched the rest of her life, the entirety of her existence, unfold before her in a series of flashes. Her life was quite literally flashing before her eyes.

Flash: Her relationship with her mother falls apart after a series of little spats over the next few years, which leads to the fight to end all fights when she turns seventeen which causes irreparable damage. That will be the final time the two will ever speak to one another.

Flash: Her father grows miserable with all the constant fighting, which wears on his soul until he can’t take it anymore. Lakshmi cries uncontrollably the day he finally leaves their home for another woman. She begins smoking to handle the stress.

Flash: Her dream career of becoming a geophysicist vanishes that day she quits college for a job that allows her to move out of the family home and away from her mother for good.

Flash: She works so many menial jobs, none of which manages to hold her attention for very long, and slowly saps all the dreams and creativity she holds in reserve. With each successive job, the sheen in her eyes dulls a bit more.

Flash: As with the job situation, so too her love life. Her many attempts at love fail for the same reasons time and time again. Somehow, she becomes relationship poison and seeks the same.

Flash: Eventually, her worries and frustrations in finding a mate cause her to settle for a man beneath her worth, a man who adds nothing to her life, a man who also works dead-end jobs with no hope of career advancement.

Flash: Then comes the struggle to save money for secondhand furniture and a used car, and as rents increase, their apartments over the years become smaller and rattier.

Flash: She cries alone in the bathroom with a pregnancy test showing a positive result.

Flash: The birth of her daughter, Rani, is agonizing and when it’s done and the baby is placed in her arms, she knows she should feel something, tries to feel love, but the emotions just will not come.

Flash: Not long after, she’s pregnant again with a premature boy this time, Samesh, and makes the effort to spread the already nonexistent love even thinner.

Flash: Samesh is born sickly and remains that way. Medical bills mount that they’re unable to pay, and her husband comes home later and later, complaining of overtime that is never reflected in his paycheck.

Flash: Fed up, her husband leaves in much the same way as her father did, for another woman, and she now is forced to get a second job to make ends meet.

Flash: Her already distant relationship with her daughter grows volatile when Rani turns to drugs after running with a group of delinquents.

Flash: Samesh’s condition worsens and neither her husband nor Rani are present at the hospital when he dies.

Flash: She develops a cough that turns into a hacking fit that turns into lung cancer that kills her a day before her sixty-sixth birthday. And like her son, she too dies alone.

Lakshmi thought the images would stop there, but she was mistaken. Somehow she was actually able to see beyond her own death, where Rani, holding a one-year Narcotics Anonymous recovery coin, arrives at her hospital room moments too late. Too late to apologize, too late to make amends, too late to say “I love you.” And the pain of this sends her running back to a drug den to score, where a fatal hot dose takes her life.

***

A noise, the sound of wood and plaster breaking in reverse, pulled Lakshmi away from the visions of her future and back into the room with such a quickness that she staggered back, falling off the chair, and hit the hardwood floor with a heavy thud.

A concerned woman’s voice called from outside the room. Her mother. The woman she hated mere moments ago and wished all the nastiness a seven-year-old girl’s mind could muster…but now, there was something else. Something she couldn’t quite remember. The images of her future started jumbling inside her head to the point they no longer made sense and began evaporating like so much mental vapor.

Something about her father and her husband leaving? Something about a baby…a girl, or maybe a boy, sick and dying? And a fight, a big fight…

Scrambling to her feet, Lakshmi raced out of her bedroom and down the hall as memories greyed out and faded from her mind. There was something she had to do, something before these feelings vanished and she went back to being angry.

She burst into her parents’ room, where her father, just about to fall into a deep slumber, leapt out of his skin at the girl’s sudden arrival.

Her mother, on the other hand, was fastening her dressing gown, about to investigate the sound from her daughter’s room, when Lakshmi rushed up, arms flung wide, and embraced her.

“I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!” Lakshmi sobbed as the recollections of her future life disappeared completely.

Her father watched in confusion, while her mother shrugged at him, smiled, and stroked her daughter’s hair, cooing, “Everything will be all right. Everything will be just fine now.”

***

In Lakshmi’s room, the crack in the wall, once the length of a wooden school ruler, began to shrink, as the wall knitted itself whole again.