Archive for the ‘Noises in the House’ Category

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STORY – Somebody’s kitty went for a swim in my water barrel

Friday, May 27th, 2011




I do gardening. I tell myself I do gardening. I have a shed full of implements of good intentions; rust has had its way here and there, on both the tools and the intentions. Under the slanted roof of the veranda in the backyard there’s a blue water barrel standing under the drainpipe so it fills will rainwater for future plant thirst. Some cats use the pipe to scrabble up unto my plastic veranda roof to romp in the night, chasing each other in play or with territorial snarls.


Supposition enters from here on in. Because one of these cats, either running away, or running up, or down, the pipe, slipped, misjudged, something cattish and forever unknowable, and dove, plopped, found itself in the water barrow. The barrel was fairly full, but not full to the brim. Did the cat swim some? Did it yowl? What day, what night—when did it slip and go splash? Whenever, it could not reach up to get a toehold, or clawhold, on the edge and pull itself out. And from exhaustion, it must have horribly ended its time on earth, paddling in small and then smaller circles, miserable, tiring.


I only noticed it today, because one doesn’t often, during the winter, peek in water barrels to see how things are going.


There was something mossy-like floating on the top. Odd. There had been more than enough rain to break up any organic growth that might want to settle and spread there. So I leaned forward, spotted a collar around the muck and instinctively jerked back, stepped away, stepped further away. The mental processing going, already knowing, but just double and triple checking in order to let my mind take it in, realize, and not go into a brief shock, occupying itself instead with double looping checking, cushioning the reality.


I looked again. The moss was really fur. Much of it floated at the top, but which end of the cat was front, which back, could not be figured. I didn’t stare. I let it rest in there and returned to my computer. To build up a head of steam. Get myself prepared. Then, later in the afternoon, I finished something on my computer, stood, stretched, said, Do it.


I marched straight to the end of the garden, yanked out the metal rake, returned to the house, the veranda, the barrel. I dunked the end with the teeth in. Maneuvered, reached under, lifted. A dank, sopping mass, beyond description. I did not look, nor study. Cradled on the rake’s teeth I hauled it into the garden—the water pouring off in streams—and over to the far side of the back yard, near the high bushes, in the area I’d once buried my own cat. I dropped the body on the ground. It’s water-logged gut split, exposing pink. I swung my head away, going back to the shed to lift out the shovel that was wedged in behind all sorts of summer chairs and tables and such. I banged about. I lifted it out, turning things over in there. Turning, I went straight to where the dead thing lay and next to it dug quickly, messily, hitting roots, chopping, finally satisfied with a shallow hole.


I maneuvered the end of the shovel till it was up against the one side of the cat mess and pushed it over. It rolled like a boneless damp rug and sluggishly slopped in my minor hole.


I covered it up, quickly. Patted it once, twice. Looked at the newly torn ground. There was no loving former owner to linger, say a few words, have a few memories.


I put the tools away, back to their rusting hibernation. Glanced in the water barrel on my way back. A film of loose fur floated.


I went inside.

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STORY – Juggling

Friday, February 11th, 2011



During her noon lunch break, she went to the local park, nibbling a sandwich while glancing at the actions of others. People sat harmlessly on benches, in ones and twos. Some guided dogs along paths, and off paths. Some listened to music with things stuck in their ears, staring into mini-screens before their faces, absorbed in their self-created world sitting there running away from any possible stray thoughts.


She came upon a young man who had staked a solitary place on a modest circular area of grass. He held four balls, and was moving them meditatively around with his fingers. A sack lay limp behind him. He stood for a moment looking pensively down at the four balls, weighing them in his hands, two balls clutched in each hand, now moving them slightly up and down. Without warning or obvious preparation, he tossed them up, one at a time, in an arc, ready to move them about through the air.


She observed the excitement, enjoying the circular whirl of balls for five, maybe six seconds. One moment they were in the air, trading places, then suddenly the next, with soft thuds, the three balls had landed at the juggler’s feet. He bent down from the waist, no leg bending, to pick them up, then straightening and without any obvious preparation tossed them up, began juggling, five, six seconds later, three balls, a simultaneous single thud, all at his feet. Again he bent, retrieved, made them dance in the air for their hopeful six seconds, before the three balls, always three balls, equally and at the same time, hit the ground as one at his feet.


The juggler did not curse, did not look around in shame, did not recognize any form of public humiliation. He calmly repeated. Picking up, tossing, the inevitable falling.


She continued looking from a distance, waiting, sandwich nibbling, half-hoping for a sudden miracle of artistic coordination, some internal click that would allow all the balls to remain in the air, like rapid satellites circling this young man’s head, a triumph, a break-through, foretelling a real true future as a juggler.


Three balls again thudded to the ground, and she could no longer take the pain and turned away and walked away and resisted looking back at the eternal hope of mastering a creative act fighting a clear lack of talent.


Thud, she heard in the distance back there. Thud.

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STORY – She fell

Monday, February 7th, 2011



She flew off her feet and landed on her butt when he pushed her out of his way so he could get to where he was going. She stood up slowly, brushed herself off, and gazed at his back as he diminished in the distance, hurrying away. She took a step toward him.


She landed with a hard thump and four red marks on her forehead where he had pushed her with the fingers of his left hand. This time he stood there, looking down. Her looking up. She stood, slowly, carefully, her eyes never leaving his. Took a step toward him. He put his fingertips right back on the same places on her forehead and pushed. Harder.


She was getting used to landing on her backside and seeing life from this angle. Or if not life, at least him. The guy who kept pushing her down when she approached him. She thought she should maybe sit there for a while and think over getting up again for him, but the feelings were too strong, too wild. She was up and moving toward him again watching his hands, both of them, getting ready to push her again.


For a few weeks now she had taken to wearing cushions on her backside. Her bottom had become so black and blue with this pushing down business that it was starting to hurt and could not be ignored even with this overwhelming instinct, need, passion, this desire. So when she fell, this time on gravel in his driveway, it hurt some, but not as much, because of the cushion. In fact, she bounced a bit, which was different.


Next time when she landed on her rear end in the parking lot of the liquor store, she put her hands down for landing stability and sharp-edged pebbles dug into her hands. She cried out. She looked up to see if this mattered to the man. But he had already turned away.


Again she fell, like a fluffy animal tossed on the floor.


Once more she fell and this time she fell into the ocean and a wave came and the salt went into her wounds and stung and the man stepped back, ever determined. She got up again, ever determined. They stood facing each other, her hands ready to grab him, his hands ready to repel her.


As she fell, she grabbed a bit of his leather coat and wouldn’t let go and as she fell, he lost his balance. He came after her. She landed hard on her bottom, on her back, in the dirt beside the bushes. He landed hard, on her, his front, on her front. It was progress. Perhaps a breakthrough. They lay like this in a public space until he pushed up and away from her.


Next time he pushed her away and she fell, she felt, or she thought she felt, his heart wasn’t really in it so much. Not like before. So she fell, more than ever, in love.


The next time, he didn’t walk away after he had pushed her down. He turned away, but he was not walking away. At last. Finally. She knew in her heart of hearts that now she was not the only one falling.

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Story – A bit of a blur

Friday, January 21st, 2011




When, at odd moments during the day, when Roger moved his hand, it blurred. Which caught his attention. He dropped everything to stare at his hand. Waiting for it to come back into focus.


Later, his hand affected his arm, and it too became a bit blurry. And now standing naked before the bathroom mirror, he didn’t see himself. He saw a blur. He reached out toward the blur, but that too turned out to be a blur.


“Honey, come see. I’m out of focus.”
“Again?”
“What do you mean, again?”

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Story – Ear, nose, love

Friday, January 14th, 2011



Somehow I had sucked a virus into my system that had affected my hearing. It turned voices into a muffled mumbles way in the distance. Sounds became indistinct mysteries. To most everyone who tried speaking toward me, I said, What? a lot.


I was prescribed medicine. Bit by bit I heard the world again, until I stalled at the last 20% of my hearing. Seemed the last 20% was the most difficult to get back. Time and medication. Then, during a movie, I heard a pop and more sound suddenly was there in my ear. Later that week, there were a series of underwater notes, a clearing, and everything seemed back to normal.


But the body, being holistic, with the whole ear, throat, nose combo involved, other mysteries happened.


Because when my hearing kicks in again, my sense of smell kicks up a couple of notches.


Getting out of my car, my head shifts like a dog’s, aiming my nostrils high and slanted. It could also look like a blind person listening to a voice. I sniff.


“Leafs are burning somewhere.”


And they are, a few houses down on the opposite side of the road in someone’s back yard.


I go into a house and there’s a huge bunch of flowers and it overpowers me, a sickly scent like a decrepit person slapping on too much lotion. I have to stand by an open door to get relief.


“Someone’s cutting wood,” I say another time, walking down my street, I eventually pass an open garage where someone has recently buzz-sawed some two by fours.


The world has become wider through my nostrils; I am smelling a lot of things that other people don’t detect.


I even smell things that you aren’t supposed to to be there.


I’m next to the person who is full of love for me. She smiles benignly upon me.
I sniff her.
“What?” she asks, with only a hint of alarm.
“I smell,” I tell her, “I smell something on you.”
“What?”
I sniff. “Love.” I smell her ear. “I smell love on you.”


I smell her throat, bury my nose in her hair, sniffing like a dog wild on the trail of a favorite prey.


She giggles and her love fills my nasal passages, until my insides become like a series of mini-waves, creating the kind of ripples that happen in the middle of a wide lake right after you have thrown your heart in.

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STORY – A Depressed Person

Friday, October 22nd, 2010




We were having brunch at the Brussels Hilton one Sunday at a longish, noisy table with some people we knew—and some people we didn’t—when one man we did know, having finished his cake, smiled, leaned back and said, “I’ve been depressed recently.”


Everybody laughed.


“Look at him,” the woman to my right said in French. “He says he’s depressed with a big smile.”


“No, no, no, I assure you,” he answered. “I’ve been very depressed.”


His name was Daniel and he earned his living by buying and selling paintings of the 18th and 19th centuries Dutch and Flemish Masters and sub-masters. He had a small gallery on Avenue Louise, the big deal Brussels Avenue. He had recently decided to close it down because it took too much time. From the beginning of the year he was a going to work selectively: select paintings, select customers.


“I want to become less materialistic. I find it depressing to be busy with money, and phone calls, and contacts. No, I’m going to get rid of my big car and get a small car. It is all depressing.”


He did not look particularly depressed. His brown eyes gleamed, his ironic smile was quick to surface on his face, and he spoke with an easy earnestness that made his unsought confession of depression difficult to sympathize with.


I looked for the typical signs of depression we Westerners have refined: the ringed eyes, the slumped shoulders, the silence.


He was nearing forty, he was living with a pretty mother of three, none of whom were his children. He was having brunch with close friends at the Hilton on Sunday. He had spent his summer in Turkey and was planing to spend Christmas holidays in Naples, with other friends, and they knew a good place for water sports in February. And he was depressed.


I did silent writer’s musing at him. What was the nature and extent of this depression? Was it only the nagging doubts of material comforts? Affluent anguish? Mid-life? Perhaps he was in the process of rearranging his priorities and was sorrowful for lost time and wrong directions taken?


He was giving no details. I continued looking at him as he made a joke about something. People laughed. They liked laughing. It’s why they came to brunch with friends.


Depression. I knew about depression and I was interested in depression. Whenever people mentioned the magic word “DEPRESSION” in my hearing, I gravitated toward the emotional mess. Depression is often the meat and matter of much modern fiction. One needed conflict in stories, just as many people needed conflicts in life, and some, who had no material or personal conflicts, gave way to mental conflicts. Mental anguish as higher, spiritual needs remained unfed


Maybe he was feeling existential anguish. That self-made hell. Full bellies, painful heads. But I’d seen enough existential anguish claimed by people who simple wanted to be romantic and forlorn. They know the words, they had the terms (and the time); they put intellectual labels on emotional turmoil.


Many people, by naming their misery, hoped to tame it.


But Daniel didn’t name anything beyond using the word depressed. He chatted, allowing me to continue bringing out my handy mental file, supplying private suppositions, imaginary and real cases, cause and effects, but all that was nothing compared to the immediate real thing before me. What’s really with this guy? Depression’s a serious business. I looked across at him, wished he’d give more explanation, an expansion, about this depression that allowed him to smile so often.


Friends chatted; the conversation moved on; Daniel talked but I couldn’t hear what he was saying. I leaned toward him, trying to make out his French from the surrounding hubbub.


He was discussing Naples in December with his neighbor.

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STORY – Museums and the sexual instinct

Saturday, October 16th, 2010




It never failed to happen—it always happened—he always went into a museum ready to be stimulated, amused, moved, awed by art—but inevitably, before he’d gotten twenty-six paintings or three rooms into an art museum, he’d start feeling sparky.


There was no fuller, better, harsher word for it. Slowly, subtly, before a picture any picture—didn’t matter which—his hands would begin sliding up and down the back of the woman he was with.


Before another dozen paintings were out of the way, he’d want to head her to some impossible secluded corner in the museum to grope.


It had happened before. And before. And before that. For years, every time. Once he’d dished up an explanation for it: “I think it’s because in museums there’s this sense of extinction. It’s all done, dead, hanging on the walls, inert, trying to be masterpieces. And I react to this by getting a certain base, jumpy, grabby horiness. I’m fighting the overwhelming sense of still life and eerie permanence by being invaded, overwhelmed by the possibilities of a woman’s flesh, alive, new, there.”


“Don’t,” she whispered, looking around, squirming out of his clutches.


He tried to take his mind off the matter by going to stand and look at another painting. He appreciated. The colors, the composition, the brush strokes … and then he’d glance sideways, and there’d be another woman. He’d stand back, as though appreciating the painting by giving it a fuller view, from a fine connoisseur’s distance. He’d study the woman instead. He’d study any woman. Face, eyes, hands, thighs, ankles and everything in between.


The museum was filled with wandering women. The pictures, the chef-d’oeuvres, the exhibit that had cost so much to get into—it all became incidental background compared to the alive and moving women.


Outside, escaped, the drums of sex would dim.


“What gets into you?” she asked.


He took in a chestful of outside air. “I don’t know,” he said, quieting. He breathed.


They began descending the cement steps.


Two women passed, ascending. His eyes followed. Followed.


Within, deep within, a muffled drum beat on.

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STORY – Killing the Furniture

Tuesday, October 12th, 2010




When people come knocking on my front door, the first thing I do is ignore them. I didn’t ask them to come.


If they insist by knock and knocking again, then I creep over to stand on the other side of the shut and locked door and wait a long second…then I knock on the door from my side.


Now I believe they stand there on the other side of the door no longer knowing whether they are knocking to come in, or I am knocking to get out.


So we stand there together on either side of the shut door, silent and thoughtful and hesitant, until, for some strange reason, they knock on my door, again. This time oh so lighter, gentler, with a certain healthy trepidation.


Since they are insisting, I unlock and rip open the door: “What do you want?”


“We—“
“Hurry up. Say what you have to say. I’m busy killing my furniture.”
“You’re what…?”
“Give me a moment.”


I nearly close the door, enough so they can’t see. I grab a nearby chair and toss it across the room. It smacks against the opposite wall, cracks a leg, takes a chunk of plaster from the wall, then I open the door a bit. “What were you saying?”


“Did you just do what I think you did?”
“Oh crap. It’s started again. One sec.”


Once more I almost close the door. I reach for a nearby picture and Frisbee it down the hallway. “Die!” I yell after it.


I return to the door. “Make it snappy, there’s a lot of death I have to handle in here.”
“Maybe it would be better if I returned—”
“Watch out!” I shout and spin around and catch the blurred sight of the cactus in a vase that is hurtling itself toward me while my back was turned. I barely have time to jerk my head out of the way as some of its needles tear across my cheek. The cactus and its pot bust up against the rear of the door, falling to the floor and rolling around as though in pain. I kick it away. I touch my cheek and my fingertips come away with some bright blood that seconds ago was safe within my body traveling around, taking cells for their one minute trip all around my body. A telephone receiver smacks hard against my shin.


I go “Ouch!” before stomping my right heel hard into its mouthpiece, cracking it open.


It’s a tough business, killing your furniture, but I’ve learned, over time, it’s me or them.


I feel bits and pieces of costume jewelery pelting my back.
A throw rug tries to hug my ankles to trip me up.
Postcards people sent me and I forgot to throw away slice through the air and toward my neck.
My stereo’s loud speakers have mouths with teeth.
The tissue paper in the box comes out used with snot embedded around bits of blood and they float determinedly toward me like huge stained butterflies.
The pens on the desk are lined up and furious, their hard points out.


The guy’s still at the door. Why, I don’t know and care even less.
“Excuse me for being blunt, but how can I help you because I’m a little occupied in here.” I feel little nudges at my feet and look down. There’s three of my favorite CD music cases trying to bite me. Three quick heel ‘n’ twist movements in the middle of each jewel case takes care of them.


I look to see the guy’s now halfway down the path from my house, glancing over his shoulder as if there’s something wrong with me.


“Thanks for nothing!” I scream at his retreating back and I hear something heavy and turn around just in time to see the television set rolling straight for my crotch. I leap over it and it smacks against the side of the door with a little crunch sound and halts in pain.


Okay, okay, time for a little breather before battle is truly engaged. I glance toward the doorway to the kitchen and there’s the refrigerator and the washing machine already getting traction, preparing to have a go at me. I straighten, roll my head back and forth on my shoulders to snap my bones back in place, getting combat ready, because the next part of this was about to get real, real nasty.

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STORY – “I KILL SLUGS” – short-short flash-fiction

Friday, July 9th, 2010

I kill slugs. At night, in the beginning, I placed little bowls of beer embedded in the earth to tempt them to come, like wary animals arriving to sip in the savannah during the depths of darkness. But like unreconstructed AA members, they could not resist as they came to sip, and then sip some more, then more still, until they waded right in, and literally drown in their beer. Next morning, the little pools of beer held a number of floating and semi-sunk oblong corpses.


Snails, too, a couple of them were in there. Not a one of them could hold their liquor.


Still every morning I see my salad gets munched, holes appearing in the leaves. So another plan is formed, more sinister, more immediate. I waited until midnight approached to go hunting. I got my flashlight out but found it held dead batteries, damn, went around the house unloading batteries from remotes and cameras and suchlike discovering I had a house full of half-dead or utterly dead batteries. The flashlight kept its single eye closed. So I got a candle, lit it, not enough power, then a second candle, lit them both, and went into the night.


When I held the candles up to view the immediate territory, weird bendy shadows were cast over the land. But they were there. A transient city of snails and slugs, poking along slimeily, seeking their midnight snacks. I had filled a can deep with water and put it down near my feet. With carefully gloved hand I picked them from the ground, plucked them from the plants, one by one, and plopped them into my bucket to drown, and kept culling, and they kept acoming.


After a bit of capturing and tossing them into my mini-well, I had a look to see how many I had taken care of. Six or eight or an army of them were crawling up back to the rim, wanting life, or more free food. I pulled back three inches, as though under a surprise mini-attack. Naively, had I thought they’d just drown if there was enough water. I lowered a single finger into this world and pushed each one back down and each one was no match for my finger and fell with a tiny splash and a bob but still, still they still came up, crawling back with a zombie’s determination. This midnight raid was turning into something like night the living fucking dead.


So I put a second thought into the matter and and dumped in a dash of chlorine, swished it around in the water, then again poked those slime-balls back in. Again they went plop into the water but this time they curled and met their maker. Each released a little bit of distressed foam.


Pick ‘n’ plop was the main movement and sound thereafter out there in the garden when reasonable men were asleep. I tried pouring some salt on a couple of them and saw their innards sort of catch fire as some different but more raging sort of foam came bubbling up from under their bodies, their inner fluids flushing out.


I killed many during the next three midnights, decimating the local population. Then the following four nights there were no attacks on my small vegetable patch. The lettuce leafs thrived. No nibbles. One never foolishly declares victory in such matters, but the lettuce began to believe in themselves again. Courgette plants spread their leafy wings. Rhubarb went rhubbarbing.


But for those three nights running, with candles and evil intent, I sought and killed slugs and snails which dared assail with mucus mouths my struggling salads. Those nights were like my own little intense slasher-horror film out there in the dead of night. The foam and the bubbling. The single sound of a snail plopping into chlorinated water, that midnight plop a full one-note sound, masking the terminal.

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STORY – Flowers and Thieves

Friday, July 2nd, 2010

People have been trying to steal the flower box outside my house.


There used to be a flower box set outside my window ledge facing the street where pedestrians pass. It was long and it was full of pretty things. Indeed, the point was to pretty up the neighborhood. But some passing people would pluck out the flowers, roots and all for, one imagines, their own home use, leaving gaping holes. I replanted the missing flowers with just basic leafy greenery reducing the plucking thievery, making it, one would think, no longer such an attractive steal. But someone was not happy with this solution. One deep night someone or a couple of someones pulled the flower box off the ledge and it free fell to the sidewalk where it fractured, splitting in half. It was discovered the next morning, dirt spread across the pavement, people stepping over it like some new obstruction that’s none of their business. So one cleans up and disposes but does not give up, damn it. One puts out a pentagon cement box full of tight smiling flowers right on the sidewalk, right next to the front door, insisting on bringing a little damn cheer to this damn neighborhood. Still, still, unknown people pluck at it, as though trying out pick-pocketing skills on the inert and attractive. So, sinking to their level, getting crafty, I planted some wall-aimed though hidden sticks usually used for skewering meat, deep in the ground, sharp points behind the leaves, so when an evil hand reaches in to thieve a plant by its roots, they get their greedy little fingers and/or palms jabbed. As a result, becoming frustrated and lightly wounded, they now kick at the cement box by my front door, jarring it out of its snug place. Every morning I put it back in its place, defiant, determined. They leave coke cans in it. Sometimes cigarette butts. Plastic wrappers. Last week someone laid a steel portion of a shower pole across it. Some foolish one actually tried to take the whole heavy flower container last week. But it had been tied to a steal horseshoe shaped shoe scraper embedded near the front door, left from the days when this city street was part of the outlying fields (I don’t live on rue de l’Agriculture for nothing). But when these determined plant robbers lifted it, the two wires encircling the box held it secure, so they could only get it off a ground a tiny bit. They must have jerked at it, hoping brute ignorance would help, and it wouldn’t give because I’m smarter and so it slipped from their grip (or they just gave up) and it fell to the sidewalk, yet, a sturdy construction, it did not crack and smash. It was left right in the middle of the sidewalk as the unsuccessful thieves drifted back into their empty-handed night.


Yesterday, someone tied across my front door some plastic police tape that had “Police” stamped repeatedly in black on yellow, the kind of official narrow strip found at crime scenes or accidents, to seal off the area from a curious public. It was tied at a slant right across the bars protecting the window of the front door, with some excess tape stuffed firmly in the keyhole, blocking my ability to lock or unlock my door to the world outside.


The flowers now look nervously up and down the street to see who or what might be coming next. A sensation of paranoia has begun seeping in from the flowers outside to the life within. The next assault is awaited….

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