Write-On Prompt: Summer Solstice Walk

 Note: Tuesday night was prompt night at the Write-On Writing Group. The prompts were all related to summer or summer activities. I ended up veering a bit off those and writing something centered around the solstice. I think there's some interesting parts here. If I were to decide to build on this, I'd probably spend some time learning more about the solstice, solstice rituals, witchcraft, aging, and develop the characters of Gareth, Hector and Olivia more. Let me know what you think, if you feel so inclined. 

Dawn

A younger man might have been described as folded neatly under the canopy of a dull purple sky. Gareth wasn’t a younger man, though, and he resembled more a pile of bones stacked next to a ring of perfectly round stones with a dying fire in the middle. His left eye was blind, something he was used to by now, most of his teeth were gone, and the few hairs still scattered on his pocked-skin dome were wiry gray tangles. His back was to the rising sun, his mind slogged in ages of fog, and his heartbeat softly and slowly in an uneven rhythm. Tap. Tap…Tap…Tap.Tap…..Tap.

He couldn’t count the number of solstices he had walked anymore. A hundred. A thousand. He used to know. Kept a ledger, a diary, if you will, of all these years, all these lifetimes, but eventually the pages weren’t filled and his desire for knowing nil.

When Gareth was a young man, a real young man, not the kind he’ll be in twelve hours, his father said. “A boy, who make a vow is foolish. A boy, who keeps a vow is a man.”

Behind him the sun’s first strokes of brilliance penetrated the horizon, a few birds began a simple, old tune, and the longest day started. Gareth’s duty was to walk. His knees popped; his bones were no more than slightly bonded particles of dust, and his skin sagged like thin bread dough from his ill-suited, decaying frame.

He shuffled forward, his heels and toes barely leaving the dust.

Three hours later

A bus motored past on his right, kicking up stones and dirt, and Gareth raised a finger, not caring if it was a bus was filled with prepubescent kids. Likely they’d seen and heard worse from their idiot mothers and fathers at the dinner table. Gareth considered biting his thumb, but he figured that Shakespearean gesture would be lost on this generation. That gesture had been lost on many when Shakespeare was putting on his little plays with all their nasty barbs at critics, ex-lovers, and royalty hidden in his iambic pentameter lines. Gods, what a snot that man had been.

“Give me, Elliot, any day,” Gareth said. “I’ll show you fear in a handful of dust,” that’s some real shit. “To be or not to be?” Cripes. Make a choice, and live with it. I sure did.”

“What did that cost you?” Olivia’s voice echoed from somewhere.

His strides were better now, he could see from both eyes, and the sun was draped on his pointed shoulders. His knees and hips hurt from walking, but not as bad as when he started. His heart was more dependable, not quite a Ringo Starr sturdy beat, but you could sing a tune to it, sort of.

The bus went over the rise, the kids were probably still tittering about getting flicked off by some crazy old guy on the side of the road. He was happy to give them something to talk about.

High Noon

“You there,” the police officer waved him to approach the cruiser.

“I have to keep going,” Gareth said.

The officer’s belly spilled over his belt, and he probably wanted to avoid vacating his seat. The officer sidled the cruiser along the curb, his foot ever so gently on the pedal to keep pace with Gareth, who was booking along at a pretty good clip.

“You come from out of town?” The officer asked, pointed back toward the direction Gareth had come.

“Yes.”

“You see another fella in a robe like yours?” The officer asked. “Maybe twenty years older, scraggy gray beard, bald on top, kind of stooped over? Heard he was being obscene toward some kids.”

“No,” Gareth wasn’t lying, after all, he had seen no one else in a robe. “It’s just been me.”

The officer was perplexed, but also didn’t seem all that interested in pursuing the matter anymore. Kids made up stories, after all. He pulled away from the curb. Gareth remembered when the law had been more brutal, not necessarily more effective, but they sure did pursue things with more vigor. Hector Alaster, for instance. He wouldn’t let that thing with Olivia go. Claimed she was a witch. If Hector had galloped off that morning on the road to town instead of confronting her, Gareth wouldn’t be here now, alive, and walking back time.

He passed a store window for a grocery; his reflection didn’t even cause him to stop. His back wasn’t stooped. His once bald dome was covered with a light brown hair, and his skin was taut and a healthy bronze.

“Fear in a handful of dust,” Gareth muttered.

Midafternoon

Gareth had lain with many women since Olivia, growing younger on the solstice every year brought urges that he could not repel for millennium nor satisfy with his hand forever, but none of them had been like her. When they made love, there were no such things as fireworks or even explosions other than thunder. The strongest spark in their village was sparks from campfire. The lovemaking between Gareth and Olivia had filled the night sky with dancing sparks, so bright that it caught the attention of a certain, jealous nobleman’s son.

Gareth was out of city limits again, along a stony backroad that cut between two fields, and he was about thirty years old. At times, he broke into jogs, enjoying the limberness of his joints and the strength of his muscles again.

They had run down a similar road, he and Olivia, when they were children, shouting and jumping. Olivia’s voice was higher, almost like the birds, and the beasts of the field always took notice of her. The worst beast was Hector Alaster.

“If he ever touches you, I’ll kill him,” Gareth said that night before the solstice all those many generations ago.

“You’ll do no such thing,” Olivia said.

“I will.”

“You won’t, promise me.”

Gareth stared into her green eyes, her red hair spilling down to her naked shoulders. He couldn’t disagree with her long.

“Fine, I promise.”

“Not good, enough. Vow, you’ll not touch Hector, or you’ll walk a million summer solstices on this earth without me.”

Gareth spoke the vow, not forgetting his father’s words. “A boy, who makes a vow is foolish. A boy, who keeps a vow is a man.”

Evening

The sun was still well above the horizon, and Gareth was nearly that boy of twenty-two again, the one that made a foolish vow the night before the Summer Solstice all those years ago. His heart was more like a John Bonham blitz now, tap.tap.tap.tap.tap. No wonder he’d said such stupid words back then, how could he think over such noise?

He was on an incline toward where his village once stood. This road was old, Hector had caught Olivia on that Solstice morning, walking home after a night in Gareth’s arms. Hector had watched them after all and seen the sparks they sent into the ether. No normal woman could cause such a spectacle. Hector in his jealousy and anger, accused her of witchcraft, took her to his noble father, who was all too happy to tie her to a stake. Gareth was miles away, walking to a pasture to bring in his father’s sheep. He’d offered to walk her home that morning, but she declined. Now, he walked every solstice, hoping to catch her before Hector arrived.

Gareth broke his vow when he found out about what Hector had done, he hunted his rival down, forgetting his vow, and smashed in Hector’s face with a stone. Gareth ran, escaping punishment and mourning his lost love. He still mourns, and he still walks, thinking about all the ways he let her down.

Sunset

Gareth dropped to another set of stones as the sun dropped below the horizon. A young man, twenty-two. He disrobed, his naked body firm and strong under the moon’s light. The aging would begin again soon, two years or so every week until the next Summer Solstice, when he’d walk back his ago once more.

“I vow someday my walk will end,” he said to no one. He had said it before and would say it again. Someday it would be true.

Pandemonium Season, Episode 6: Beyond the Sea (1994)

Note: I wrote this quite a while ago and was never really happy with it. In the interest of moving ahead, I am posting it now. Previous episodes are on the blog if you want to remind yourself of what is going on or catchup. Thanks for reading, Dan. 

The freezer was loaded with frozen dinners: meat loaf with mashed potatoes and carrots, chicken nuggets with French fries and green beans, turkey a la king, and cardboard pizzas. The fridge had two gallons of milk, a pack of deli meat, individual cheese slices, a jar of pickles, butter, and something in a Tupperware – the last remains of food brought over after the funeral two weeks earlier. Richie refused to open it because he was sure something was growing inside and even breathing it would send him into convulsions. Richie knew the cupboard had cans of spaghetti and ravioli, macaroni and cheese boxes, and peanut butter. A loaf of bread was on the counter next to a note from his father.

“Out of town for work for week. Be sure to eat.” Below was scribbled a number for a hotel. A Monday night in April, the house was otherwise empty, and Richie couldn’t fathom what to do next. So, he left. Retreating the sidewalk in front of the house and watching his home, as if he stared long enough, he’d uncover some secret. Perhaps, another family inhabited the space when they were gone. A happy family. With a living mother. A sober father, and a son who wasn’t neurotic.

His tics had increased since his mother died. The cleaning. Not just his skin, but the house, was compulsory. He wore gloves everywhere, including at this moment, outside in April. The night air was cool, but not cold, yet his hands were shoved in a pair of skiing gloves. Now there were the cracks in the sidewalk. He couldn’t’ step on those. School was a mental breakdown between each class, as he tip-toed from one tile to another. He supposed the teachers noticed. He knew by the looks from his classmates that they suspected he was cruising for a breakdown. At least out of respect for his grief, they were still leaving him alone.

The worst was the paranoia – he was certain he was being watched. Even alone on the sidewalk in their quiet neighborhood, he felt eyes on him. Studying his every move. Noting his comings and goings, and his impulses. He took nightly walks, but he couldn’t take more than a few steps without glancing over his shoulder, expecting to see a white van with tinted windows following behind. Something straight out of the X-Files. Dr. Bitch would be worried. His father had stopped paying for his counseling, but his grandmother had taken over the payments and his mother’s insistence that he continue with the therapy.

Richie walked the block, watching other families through their dining room windows. The full tables with warm meals, the happy parents, the content children. He was the watcher rather than the watched. Some of them waved, growing used to this lone boy roaming the neighborhood at dusk. He never waved back, instead increasing the pace of his steps and turning his attention completely to avoiding the cracks in the sidewalk.

He returned home after dark, and the phone rang as soon as his key slipped into the slot. Perhaps, his father was checking in to apologize for abandoning him for a week. The notion was so absurd, Richie was glad that even though he was alone that he hadn’t spoken it aloud. It was more likely that it was his grandmother. He rushed to the phone on the kitchen wall, not bothering to turn on any lights. The sound of a needle scratching across a record came from the other end of the receiver and then music with the lyrics: “It's far beyond a star. It's near beyond the moon. I know beyond a doubt. My heart will lead me there soon” style"

“I’ve been watching you,” Sarah Arndt’s voice greeted him. It was a calm, precise voice with no humor.

“Yeah, and?”

“Your lonely,” she said. Richie wasn’t sure how to respond, so he listened to her shallow breathing on the other end. “You know pain.”

“I sound like a hoot.”

“No joking,” she said. “Joking is for the weak, and if you were weak, you’d be broken by now.”

“Thank you, I guess.”

“Tell me something about your mother and nothing corny like that fruity pastor was saying at the funeral.”

“She loved Led Zeppelin, and her and my dad met at bar when she picked a bunch of Zeppelin songs in the jukebox.”

Sarah didn’t react to that, and it felt like he had uploaded data into a computer, and it was deciding if the information was valid. It was a dreadful silence, like he was standing with a blindfold and being forced to walk forward with no idea if there would be ground to touch once he took my first step. She was so quiet that he wondered if she had put the receiver down when she lost interest in him.

“I’m going to pick you up tomorrow night at seven,” she finally said.

“Where are we going?”

“Beyond the sea,” she said, but the reference was lost on him. When he didn’t respond, she continued.  “It’s never bothered you to get into a strange vehicle before and take off without knowing where you were going, right?”  She said, and he realized that she was referring to his infamous trip with Grandpa Ricky. Most of his classmates had forgotten about that enough that it was rarely mentioned, although it was never too far away in his mind. While Richie was thinking this over, the line clicked dead.

Write-On Prompt: Misspelled Words and a Haunted Mansion

 

Note: We had prompt night last night and it started with a spelling test on ten commonly misspelled words. The prompt became that we had to use five of the ten words in a story about a haunted mansion. I borrowed the location and characters from some previous story attempts on my part and played around a lot with word choice and description. This doesn't have a conclusion, but I thought it was a nice exercise. 

Here are the words I had to choose from: Restaurant, Rhythm, Schedule, Separate, Success, tomorrow, twelfth, vacuum, weird, zoology. I have underlined the ones I used in the text. 

Weird? That’s an understatement. Saying Thunder Lane is weird is like calling the surface of the sun toasty. That might be kinda right, but it doesn’t fit exactly. Spooky? That’s closer, I suppose. It’s a hella spooky street if you happen to be walking down it tomorrow night when the moon is full and the shadows long. Yet, spooky is so childish sounding, like a story told to keep kids from wandering off into the woods. Spooky doesn’t do it justice. Haunted? Perhaps, but there’s a lot left open to interpretation with the word haunted. Like maybe it’s just Casper whispering sweet nothings in the wind rather than the spirit of some tortured soul. No, the only word that fits into place when I think about Thunder Lane in Lincoln, U.S.A. is possessed. That strip of blacktop from Main Street to Adams Street is a mile owned by evil, maybe so evil that even Satan wouldn’t pick it for a vacation spot.

 And right on the northwest corner of Thunder Lane and Main sits the epicenter, the dilapidated mansion with gabled peaks and gargoyles sneering so savagely that walkers-by break their usual rhythm before speeding along, suddenly remembering that anywhere but here is better. Young kids run toward school, gamblers toward their debtors, old men turn back home to their fussing wives, and even cats take one look at that damned house and seek out the company of the nearest big dog.

Then there’s me. Why do I know so much about it? How do I stand separate from any of the rest who whisper in this damned town about the evils of Thunder Lane and that one house? Well, I’m the fool who twenty years ago bought the house next to it. A tiny thing, a ranch style house built in the 1970s and when sitting next to that looming monstrosity appeared to be nothing more than a dropping of that hulking beast rather than a living structure of its own. Up to that point, my life had been on schedule. Graduate high school. Check. College. Check. Got a degree in education, you see, and I wanted to be a history teacher. When Lincoln High School hired me on in 1991, I was stoked for the chance to shape young minds in the Midwest, and when I visited town to find a place to live, I couldn’t believe the luck that I could live so close to such a vintage looking mansion.

Nobody told me, of course, about Thunder Lane. Certainly not the real estate agent, who was probably drooling about making a commission on an otherwise unsellable house.

“Who lives next door?” I asked while that greasy scumbag showed me the one-car garage that had a cheap roof that would blow off in a storm two summers later.

“Well, that is the old Scarlet Mansion. Not sure why it’s called that, but I think one of the town’s founders built it. No one lives there, I think it’s just waiting for the historical foundation to dump some money into it to fix it up.”

“Well, I hope so, it’s a shame to see such Victorian architecture go to waste.”

“Yes, I’m sure it’ll get worked on next summer, probably just needs the right budget resolution. Politics, am I right?”

I laughed, but hell, I was twenty-two, what the hell did I know about politics. I just thought we went to vote every so often and then the right people get in. Goes to show that I was as stupid about the real world as I was the otherworldly back then.

When did I first notice things were a bit off? You sure ask a lot of questions. You aren’t planning on publishing anything on this? I don’t want the whole country thinking that Lloyd Rivers is some sort of quack.

Just some paranormal research, you say. Well, be sure to keep it that way. I could survive the embarrassment, I suppose, and folks around here wouldn’t think any less of me, that’s for sure, but I doubt the scarlet witch would approve, and she’s less forgiving than me.

The scarlet witch? Well, that’s what you’re here for, aren’t you? I mean there are others. Those god-awful twins from the other end of the block cause a ruckus from time-to-time. Then there’s that vile Mr. K. He’s a bit more outgoing than the rest, carrying his cane and wearing that ridiculous monocle. The other one I call the druid, wears a brown robe and some say he has no tongue. Boy, I could go on and on about the things I’ve seen, but the Scarlet Witch, she’s my neighbor, and I know her best. She’s boss demon in this troupe. Anything that goes down in Lincoln, goes through her first. Well, anything bad, that is. Not much good to write about here, just a lot of heartbreak and split blood.

Anyways, I didn’t notice anything was up until the twelfth night living next to the Scarlet Mansion and the witch within. That night the twins – ugly beasts those two, each about four hundred pounds and never wearing anything but ragged bibs overhauls that let the fat of their torsos spill out in grotesque roll ­- visited the witch.

About midnight, I heard them pounding on her door – the front door that faces Thunder Lane. The knocking was like thunder, and it woke me like someone cracking a ball bat against my head. I fumbled around in the dark, only reaching the window in time to see the two hulking figures lurch forward into the mansion.

Write-On Prompt: Earl's Two Requests

Note: Last night was prompt night at the Write-On Writing Group. I used the prompt that my first line had to be "When he died, their father had two requests." This is not a completed work, and I do have hope of expanding it. Where do you think I should go with it? 

Earl's Two Requests

When he died, their father had two requests. Making two the grand total of requests that Earl Little had made to his children in the entirety of existence. He’d been a solitary man, so quiet that it chased his first wife out the door of their farmstead after eight years where she did a lot of yelling and he did a lot of retreating. The divorce was handled civilly enough, Earl gave her everything she asked for as long as her requests came via the mail. He didn’t want to hear her voice anymore. It’s little wonder that his second wife was deaf. She couldn’t hear him, which was good because he didn’t have anything to say.

Earl fathered one child with each woman. Della was the product of his first marriage, her features were angular much like her father, but her personality rotund just like her mother. She was often belligerent toward authority while going through school and kept her peers at an arm’s length. Della struggled to trust anyone after her mother died of an embolism when Della was eighteen. At forty-one, Della lived alone, owning a cat that spent most of its time hiding under furniture. Her home was above a storefront downtown that she rented for three-fifty a month, and she made her money as a clerk at the thrift store at the edge of Jordan.

Earl’s second child was named Marvin, after Earl’s second-wife’s father. Marvin was raised in a house so quiet that he still felt driven to apologize for any sound he made, which made his normal stride almost absurd, as with each step he appeared to turn his jaw over his shoulder to whisper a quiet missive for the tap of his toes on the earth below. His shyness was so ingrained that many thought he was dumb, including most of his teachers in grade school. They were the most surprised when his ACTs came back perfect. Although it didn’t matter, Marvin didn’t have the courage to apply to schools, choosing to stock shelves overnight at the Save Mart, a time when the store was otherwise empty. Unlike Della, Marvin wasn’t alone in life, he still had his mother, who had also divorced Earl after a time. She might not have been able to hear, but she had never felt more alone than her twelve years out on that farm with that silent man.

Earl’s funeral was an unobtrusive affair, a graveside service consisting of the usual rites said before a crowd of Della and Marvin and the man that sold Earl Little his crop insurance. When the final words were spoken, Della whipped a pile of dirt into the hole, mad about something and just waiting for the appropriate time to yell it at someone. Marvin tried to ease the dirt from his palm, hoping it would drift down and not disturb the worms and other crawly things below much less his father’s corpse inside the casket.  After the funeral, Della and Marvin assumed they would never see each other again.

Except both were approached by the man who sold Earl crop insurance. His name Jamison Matterhorn, a red-haired man in his seventies. Earl had been his last living active client, and this funeral meant Jamison could officially retire with a clean slate and a clear conscience.

“You two,” he waved, as Della and Marvin were already heading toward different cars parked a few feet away from the gravesite. “I have something for you.”

“What now?” Della cried. “We paid all the bills already. Bleeding vultures, pecking at dead folks’ bones for every last cent. I tell you, Marvin, we’ll both end up in the poor house just cause our pops died.”

Marvin didn’t respond. Della terrified him so much that he actually worried that the volume of her voice might crack open the fabric of the atmosphere and send them all spiraling into the vacuum of space. The only reassurance he got from that was that he knew that sound didn’t travel in outer space, so at least it would be quiet.

“No, no, nothing like that,” Jamison said. He introduced himself and how he was connected to their father. Explaining that Earl had bought crop insurance faithfully for that the last fifty years. He also had served as a lawyer of sorts for Earl in the last few months, as the sick man (Earl had had cancer although no one knew, and he never bothered to tell anyone) put his affairs into order. The one hundred twenty-two acres were to be sold to pay off the debt incurred from trying to keep such a small farm going. The house wasn’t much, and likely would be destroyed by whoever bought the land. All Earl left was two requests.

“See he wants two things from you both,” Jamison said, taking out an envelope and opening it. He hadn’t read it yet, but had been instructed to read it aloud to both of them, just to be sure that the note was heard at least once.

“Jesus,” Della raised her arms to the sky. She didn’t like what was going to be said even though she hadn’t a clue what it was.

Marvin put his hands in his pockets, nervous for the sake of being nervous.

“Ok,” Jamison cleared his throat. “First, Earl says he’d like you to try and forgive him for being such a lousy father. You don’t have to go all the way through with it, just a try it out, and see if you can forgive a little at least.”

“Cripes,” Della muttered. Marvin was already feeling sorry for having been put into a place of having to forgive his father.

“Second, ‘I want you both to try to love someone. Even if it doesn’t work out. Give it a go. It’s something worth trying at least once.’” Jamison handed the note Della, his job done and walked off.

Blog Update: I'm Still Writing!

Well, this old blog has become a bit of a barren wasteland over the first few months of 2022, and while a lack of motivation shoulders most of the blame, it hasn’t been entirely because I haven’t been writing. Between a busier work cycle and a series of other projects, I just haven’t been able to devote time to writing content for the blog. So, I thought I’d report on a few things going on concerning my writing career. 

• Earlier this year, I found out another one of my short stories will be published by a literary journal. My story entitled “String Theory” will be published in the spring edition of American University’s literary magazine FOLIO. I will let you know when that it is available for purchase. 
• I have the next episode of the Pandemonium series wrote, but haven’t been happy with it. So, I am waiting for a bit of time and inspiration to tackle an edit. As I said at the beginning, this is based off a NANOWRIMO project from a couple years ago, and I encountered similar issues that time. I was hoping a different approach would open some avenues, but so far, traffic remains stalled. 
• This week I received news that I placed second in the first round of the NYC Midnight Short Story contest. My story “What’s in a Name?” was created based off the prompts of Political Satire (Genre), Edutainment (Subject), and a Witch (Character). I hesitated making this story available to read publicly initially because I am generally uncomfortable in the political sector. I believe that political beliefs are like rear ends, everyone has one and all of them stink. This sort of attitude means that I almost always revert to a sophomoric sarcasm when confronted with political satire. The judges picked up on two of my inspirations in my style: Vonnegut and Orwell. I wasn’t sure I pulled it off, but they seemed to like it. Now, I have to consider if I want to take the edits they offered and pursue publication. If you want to read it, contact me directly and I’ll send it. I never publish potential publication pieces on the blog because oftentimes that disqualifies them from most professional publications. 
• With my advancement to the second round, I will receive a new prompt on Thursday night and will have three days to write a 2,000-word story using said prompt. I have entered this contest three or four years in a row, and I have never advanced past the second round, so here’s to hoping for a good prompt and a visit from a profound muse. There are four rounds total in the short story contest. 
• I have also started a new project that could turn into a larger work. I have workshopped the first 7,000 words or so with my writing group and have received positive feedback. The one drawback is that I tend to be a pantser instead of plotter, which means that I don’t write with an outline just by reacting to the whims of my imagination. While this tends to work for me in short spurts, I can often write myself into corners. (See Pandemonium bullet above). This project is more of a dystopian epic set it two different times in the future. One time feels like a time-travel Sci-Fi story, the other timeline is closer to a fantasy story. It’s too early to tell if I am going to be able to pull off a logical, meaningful and entertaining story. That’s the challenge, if I choose to accept it. 

Well, I think that basically does it. I hope to get back on track to posting once a week or so. Sorry for making you wait, and thanks for reading. 

Write-On Prompt: Staying on the Road

Note: It was prompt night last night (2/15/22) at the Write-On Writing Group. We had a list of prompts last night to choose from that included "Write about an argument" and "Write something that includes the color red." So I combined the two. I am on a stretch of traveling both personally and professionally, so I guess the feeling on being alone in a hotel room was in the back of my mind.

Staying on the Road 

The desk clerk at the hotel was an Indian man who spoke in broken English from a mouth with broken teeth in a hotel with mostly broken amenities. Ice machine – unplugged. Air conditioning on life support. Television, four channels, all of which were in Spanish. Pool drained. Shower leaky. Key card defective.

“Enjoy your stay,” the clerk had told Harold, probably assuming only a person that enjoys inconvenience would follow through with staying the night there.

Harold grumbled a thanks out of habit.

“You are always soooo damn polite,” Susan shouted in his mind. “Tell that idiot this place looks like it fell out of his butthole.”

“What good would that do?”

“Maybe it’d inspire him to pick up a mop or something.”

“I doubt it.”

Harold had these conversations in his head all the time with Susan. The bickering little back-and-forths that had marked their twenty years of marriage. After a few minutes, his key card found the right spot near the door handle for his room, a dim green light flashed and there was a croaking sound. He grabbed the handle and the lock gave way.

The room reeked of stale marijuana and old cheese. The bedspread was a dark red with an even darker red spot about the diameter of a basketball in the middle.

“Jaysus,” Susan’s voice sounded. “Call the cops, we found the crime scene.”

“It’s not that bad.”

“Yeah, if you were staying in Baghdad, maybe.”

“Where was I supposed to go?”

“How about the Holiday Inn five minutes down the street?

“Who do I look like, Donald Trump?”

“Jaysus,” Susan’s favorite expression sounded again. “All I am saying is you might as well sleep in the dumpster; it would be cleaner.”

Harold dropped his bag on the floor. It had his change of clothes for the conference the next day. He attended a dozen conferences a month these days, peddling his company’s shit while wearing a wrinkled suit and thinning hair. None of the young kids wanted to hit the road like this, shake hands with a customer, look a man in the eye when he gave him his word. These kids couldn’t sell water to a dying man in a desert.

“You’re kidding yourself,” Susan replied to his thoughts. She was always only a moment away from interjecting. He went to the bathroom, turned the handle for warm water on the sink and something brown spewed forth from the faucet.

“I know sales.”

“You don’t know, jack. Those kids make a dozen sales with emails while you’re trying to find a parking spot.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Jaysus, this doesn’t have anything to do with sales.”

“Oh yeah, Ms. Smarty, what’s it about then?”

“You know.”

Harold looked in the mirror, his sad eyes refusing to meet the reflection. He’d been on the road for the better part of the last two years, stopping at home only long enough to retrieve bills and use the washing machine.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he whispered, unbuttoning his shirt and removing his belt.

“You stay on the road so you don’t have to admit that I’m not at home.”

He turned off the bathroom light, wanting a hot shower, but assuming the water here would probably only make his skin itch or burn. Plopping on the bed, he switched on the TV, a bunch of masked Mexican wrestlers jumped about on the screen.

“I miss you.” He said to the empty room. 

 

Pandemonium Season 1, Episode 5: Jailbreak (1991)

 

The walls of the kitchen were like a vise squeezing in on Maggie as she juggled a hot casserole pan and a barrage questions and comments winged at her from both directions. Richie was stuck on her medical issue, and RJ was trying to get the story on Richie’s suspension. And both were answering for her.

“He told the teacher what?”

“Will they cut your boob off?” 

“No, Christ, Richie.” 

“Get bent.” 

“Don’t say that to me, boy!”

“No, that’s what I said to the teacher.” 

“You both should take a break to eat something.” 

“Will all your hair fallout?” 

“Well, she doesn’t have much hair left.” 

“That’s true.” 

“Why the hell did you say that?”

“Well, it is true.” 

“No, why did you say that to your teacher?”

“Oh, that.” 

“He was washing his hands.” 

“Who?” 

“I was.” 

“When?” 

“When he should have been in class.”

“Do I have to go to your appointment? I can see the germs from here.” 

“Don’t start in on that shit!”

“That’s what got us in this situation to begin with.” 

“What?”

“You got a lump from the germs? I knew it!” Richie jumped from the table and went straight to the sink, poured a quarter of a bottle of dish soap on his small hands and turned the water on full blast. 

“Stop that,” Maggie shouted. “Washing your hands for twenty minutes is what got you in trouble, I didn’t get a lump from the germs.” 

“Christ!” RJ said. 

“Oh,” Bubbles were floating from the sink and into his hair. 

“I have had it with this shit,” RJ stood, grabbed his son by the elbow, and dragged him away from the sink.

“Hey, that hurts.” 

“RJ, stop that.”

“You are going to spend the next two weeks getting over this once and for all. We’ve spent thousands of dollars at the shrink and that hasn’t worked. Now, it’s my turn, I am going to break you of this washing business if I have to beat it out of you.” 

“RJ!” Maggie yelled, but her husband was lugging Richie from the kitchen and down the hallway to his bedroom. The boy was screaming, and her husband was listing all the things he was taking away. TV. Books. The record player. Candy. Soda. Anything that could be named, RJ was shouting it, not that Richie could possibly have heard him. Not that it mattered anyways, come five in the morning, RJ would be out of the house for twelve hours leaving Maggie to be the warden of this prison he was creating. Typical of him, set a bunch of rules that he couldn’t and wouldn’t be able to enforce, putting her in the position of dealing with her angry son or dealing with him when he came home to find most everything had returned to normal. 

RJ plopped Richie on his bed. 

“You’ll stay in here and think about what I just said.” 

“I hate you!” Richie’s face was beat red, his eyes filled with tears, and his hands were still drenched in water and soap. RJ slammed the bedroom door, behind it something heavy and hard hit it. 

Maggie eyed her husband, who was wearing a dirty t-shirt and blue jeans. His stomach pushed at the seams at the shirt. He was still basically fit, but the years and the beers were catching up with him. 

“Really.” 

“I’m done coddling him.” 

“You think taking everything away just a few hours after finding out his mother might have cancer was the right move?”

“Someone had to do something.” 

She wanted to slap him. That damn line: “Someone had to do something.” He had said the same thing to her the night they had met, seconds after he leaned in for a kiss. 

“What was that?” she had asked, flirting at the time with the sounds of Led Zeppelin roaring from the bar’s jukebox. 

“Well, someone had to do something,” RJ had said, grinned and kissed her again. 

That felt like a thousand years ago, and the charm of the line was completely lost on her now. She followed him back to the kitchen. She had met RJ Glenn when she was in college, and he was working construction on a bridge at the edge of campus. He had walked into a bar one Thursday night while she was filling the jukebox with quarters to play about two hours of Zeppelin. That was enough to win him. He was young, bronzed from working outside, and still had a hint of bad boy gleam in his eyes, that little gleam she’d learned later he’d inherited from his father, the real bad boy of the family. RJ and his father had never got along, and even though RJ was determined not to make the same mistakes as Ricky Dean Glenn, he was doing a grand job of finding all kinds of other mistakes to make. 

“You can’t just expect Richie to stop because you say so,” she said. 

“Why the hell not? I’m his father.” 

“Because he can’t control it no more than you can control having to go to the bathroom. It’s his compulsion.” 

“Oh, don’t get me that psychobabble, if we give him some tough love, he’ll change.” 

“No, he’ll get worse.” 

“Whatever.” 

“So, are you going to stay home and enforce all these rules for the next two weeks?”

RJ eyed her. Their arguments had verged on the precipice of violence for the last few weeks, both too proud to admit part of their anger was fear over her prognosis. Neither could admit that much like their son, their emotions compelled them to behave in certain ways, and this tension brought out the worst in both of them. 

“Fine, do whatever you want,” he said. “I’m going to the bar.” 

He stormed away.

“That’s just great, and who is that just like?” She went to the sink, finally turning off the water, and didn’t bother to listen to his reaction. She knew where to hit him where it hurt. Running had been Ricky Dean Glenn’s specialty, and any comparison to Ricky would just spur RJ’s anger. Maggie didn’t cry, she just put her hand to her heart and then felt a little lower to that alien being clinging to her body, the one that reminded her that when life felt like it was going completely to shit, there was always something worse just waiting around the corner. She squeezed it like a zit, but the damn thing wouldn’t pop. Maggie didn’t cry. She never cried.