short stories – Page 7 – Aremyfeetofftheground

Cassandra’s dream

Gerald. My Gerald, my boy.

I seem to wake on this snowy night, and, my boy, my little boy, you are deeply asleep, but you float in my room. You are a balloon boy on a string, and, bumbling against the ceiling, you drift toward my open window….why? why? did I leave it so?

I grab onto your string….ah! my little boy!…..but you are taken fast out into the night.

I climb out quickly, something is tugging you away, away. I hold fast onto your lifeline, and run stumbling out into the cold white.

A seething throng, out of the birch forest, all pale, all living death, all grasping with bony hands, all floating, has come to take you.

They pull, they pull, they sighingly say you belong with them.

Gerald, your eyes open and you are in fear, my son.

How comes this visitation? What have I done?

My dear dear boy. My life.

***

Art by Michael MacRae

Some mothers do have ’em

So, I went to the store to buy kitty litter for the little honeys. I always buy the ten pound bag. Today, they only had 50 lb. bags. I lugged it home, then nearly fell down the stairs with it. At that very moment, mister kitty decides it’s time to go to the bathroom, so I hastily empty the old stuff, wash out the tray, and refill it while he’s eyeing every move that I make. Here you go kitty, I’ll set it down for you, a nice fresh box. He scratches around, then balances on the edge and craps on the floor.

I’m driving in downtown traffic with the wife, and I notice there’s a vacant lane. I can’t believe my luck. We’re sailing past all the gridlock, when she says to me “What are those funny marks on the road?” We’re in a bus lane, going the wrong way, and one’s coming right for us. True story.

On the highway this time. There’s serious construction up ahead, and I have moved 45 feet in 45 minutes. No hope of an exit. Damn, I wish I hadn’t have gulped that extra large coffee, “one for the road”. I really really really have to pee now. There are transports on both sides of me, and they’ve got a bird’s eye view just as I start to seriously consider using that empty coffee cup. I’m wondering if they’ll notice how I set things up, complete with a newspaper tent over the whole business.

I see an ad for a beautiful wooden file cabinet, just the kind I’m looking for. The people who have it live 30 miles away, but I decide to take the drive. I get there, and they are waiting in the driveway, all smiles. I back up to load it, and find out it is exactly one inch too big, in any direction, to fit into my vehicle. We’re all standing around scratching our heads, and I actually consider tying it to my roof, but no one has any rope. The guy goes to his garage and comes out smiling again with an assortment of screwdrivers and wrenches. We perform a complete disassembly and all is well. Home again, and I carry the parts in five trips into the house. Damn, I think, this is like a freaking Tetris puzzle. Next step: browse about 39 pages of Ikea cabinets, only to find out I can’t get the instruction manual from them. Finally wind up paying some schmuck ten bucks because he has a PDF printable file of it. Drive to the hardware store for that one special screwdriver I don’t have. Then, in one magical afternoon, it is finally done. I go to move it into place, and wonder why it is so rickety.

I forgot the glue.

The girl of his dreams

It’s three in the morning.

He gets up to pee, second time since bed. Hobbles to the hallway bathroom, then stops suddenly, swallowing a seeming lump in his throat. Silhouetted against the streetlights of his bay window, there’s a figure sitting on his couch. His stomach jumping as if in a fast elevator descent, he closets himself in the bathroom, shutting the door. He’s scared to even turn on the light switch, but there’s a small night light by his mirror. This must be one of those lucid dreams I keep hearing about. Shit, that scared me. He studies his reflection. It has an eerie cast in the drowsy glow. A sheepish expression after his sudden retreat from the remnants of a dream. Takes a leisurely pee, makes sure he’s well drained this time. Opens the door and looks foolishly up the hall.

She’s still there. He knows it’s a she from the long tresses and the manner of sitting. She reaches out an arm and motions him to come. She has no visible features except her eyes, showing dimly but tantalizingly, as if in the weakened beam of a dying flashlight.
A thrill of fear and excitement races down his spine, and he feels immobile. In a body cast with an ant colony. No good. Can’t hide. Go there. Come on, lift the lead weights. No, go back to bed Joe. Wake the wife. He’s half turned, groping for the wall, when he hears the hissing (from their cats?), and feels an almost physical pull to the couch by the picture window.

All is still darkness, backlit by the streetlights projecting a heavy fog, hints of tarnished glints suggested by the familiar: his dirty ashtray, a coffee cup and spoon left on the end table. And now, to complement those charnel-house eyes, there’s a spreading disembodied smile. Oh God, he thinks. My own Cheshire Cat. Not knowing and not remembering how, he is beside her on the cold couch. She does not look in his direction, but faces front. Stunned, and at the apex of his fear, he feels her clammy hands upon his cheeks, turning his head to hers. The eyes, dimly radiant, show nothing, like coins laid on a dead thing. The left is half closed, and twitches, shuttering the silverness. Some moans escape her, but in a singsong tone. His nerves are as taught as catgut strings, and she is playing him, playing him.

Able to speak at last, he mouths the first of one thousand questions….Who…How…Why?

SSHHHHHH……You called me. You did, you know. Still she grips him, as within a vise.

He faints, or sleeps.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

That is where his wife finds him. On the couch, in the newborn position. She asks why.
Bad dream, bad dream, dear. That’s all.
She feels funny and strange, because of the way he looks, so shaken, and because he has never sleepwalked as long as she has known him.

The morning brings the workaday world back to him. Today’s gonna be a tough one at the office. My goddamn presentation, after three hours of sleep? Off he goes, finally out of that body cast. When it’s all done with, his friend Sasha whispers to him that the boss wants to see him. Funny, the way she puts her hands upon his head, then gives him that sly little wink.

Saturday morning blessedly arrives for Joe. He doesn’t get out of bed until eleven, and his wife awaits him with a kettle already boiled. “You’re so nice”, he says, as he drinks the hot cup of his namesake.

Marlene says to him, as she’s reading the morning paper, “Joe, wasn’t there a Sasha at your work?”

He grips the table and spills the coffee.

Wrong tense, Marlene. Please let it be someone else………….

“It’s just Colin”

We had been looking for a place to rent near town because our landlord gave us notice to vacate. His kids wanted the house to live in.

We’d never lived in the country before, but were attracted by an ad for a newly renovated farmhouse. Met with the owner, signed a lease, and moved in. It was a century old brick home that had been completely redone. The property was beautiful, and he assured us we would only see him “the odd time” because he had some machinery stored in a barn there. The main floor of the house was spacious, with a nice kitchen and carpeted living room, and there were two small bedrooms upstairs for my son and daughter, who were in their late teens.

After we had moved in, we heard through the grapevine that two elderly brothers had once owned the house, and they had lived there for most of their lives, never having married.

The story was that they had also adopted a young boy to extend their family, and he would eventually inherit the property. His name was Colin, and it seems that he was a handsome young lad. Among his reputed qualities was his penchant for being a snappy dresser.

It developed that his adoptive parents both eventually died within a short time of each other, and he was left with the farm. There are some differing versions of what happened next, so I must go on hearsay, but the most likely one is that he had never married either and had stayed there until his death at a young age from misadventure. How the house fell into the hands of our new landlord, I do not know. He was secretive, and not the type of man to suffer too many questions.

We had actually moved in during the spring, and enjoyed a beautiful summer and fall there. In the middle of a winter’s night, my wife and I awoke to a series of terrifying screams coming from upstairs. Dazed, confused, and frightened, we rushed up the steps to our daughter’s room. Simultaneously, we saw headlights coming up the drive. Our son had returned from a late shift at work, and he could hear the screams from outside. He bounded up the stairs just behind us.

We switched on the lights, and found our daughter standing on her bed with her back against the wall, crying out “He’s gone! He’s gone! I held her closely, sat her down on the bed, trying to calm her, and kissed her on the forehead. When I asked her what was wrong, she said there was a man in her room, sitting on the floor looking at her. My instinct told me that she was a very impressionable girl, and had just had a bad nightmare. She became distraught again, and said he was real, then proceeded to describe him in some detail, saying that he had freshly pressed pants on with cuffs, a crisp white shirt with golden studs, and raven black hair combed in a neat pompadour. He had sat with his arms folded, and had just gazed at her with a smile.

As the days went forward, she would not go back to that room for some time, sleeping instead on the main floor with us. Each time this event was mentioned, she became annoyed because we were treating her as a young impressionable child, and were dismissing her terror as a bad dream.

When spring arrived, my wife and I happened to be out shopping in town, when she ran into an acquaintance. She and this woman got into a conversation about our time in the country, and how it was, etc. It turned out that the woman knew something about the history of the place. When the subject of the winter’s night visitation came up, she suddenly showed intense interest, and asked about the appearance of the apparition.

After we had related the story to her, she said, matter-of-factly, “It’s just Colin”.

photo credit….www.youtube.com

#14 Things in the swamp (not at all pleasant)

we’ve been led here. I feel we have. on a forest picnic so bright and sunny. dappled trails. you wanted bare feet, and carried your funny shoes. mossy springy grass. squishy clay mud between your toes, and you laughed. wee violets and buttercups so pretty. we half expected to meet the dryads of the woods. why did we go so far in? happy hearts caught in a halcyon time. afternoon shadows are getting long, and we move to go back, but take a wrong turn. the sun’s at our back. yeah, it’s wrong. at each other we look, then quickly behind. in the greying gloom our recent walk, foot prints and all, seems to have been sucked away, vanishing like Alice’s confusing path. new trees, as close together as a bamboo forest, crowd each other in a riot of obstruction. there is no going, except forward. this very bad thing has us confused and frightened, and we hug tightly. nothing for it but to go on, although there’s a foul smell, the keening of bugs, and sounds of heavy splashing. you put on your shoes, and we hurry ahead with far fetched optimism that we’re nearing an outlet. as we go, there’s a chuck-chuck-chuck tat-tat-tat as trees sprout behind in terrible time lapse, like arrows flung from a thousand bows. we run. the smell of rot in front. our path behind is blotted in a zipper of foliage. and now, we are here: the vestiges of sun show us a lime green cesspool of swamp, lapping against intruding bush on all sides. On the opposite shore is a (fake?) hallway through the trees, a hint of daylight at its end. things flip and slap on the pond’s surface, disturbing the pale lilies. you, the brave one, walk into the warm steaming water, telling me to come…it’s not deep. and we go. halfway now, the silty bottom sucking at our shoes. slithery things caress our ankles and knees. tiny teeth seem to test us. only waist deep, we pause, hanging onto the roots of a fallen tree. and then, you’re down. gone. so fast. i yell and scream, grabbing green slime, and i’ve got your hair, then your armpits. leveraging against the roots, i hoist you up, parting your seaweed coiffure. you vomit a chunk of green mucus onto me, and then i see your face. you are not you. you are my dead school teacher. i let go in terror, and you sink like a stone. i hear insane laughter from the far shore, and there you are waving, silhouetted in the dying day. you turn and take the appointed path. new growth closes behind you. dark has come.

momma, momma, momma.

The times, they are a-changin’

The Elder bugs tasted the best, Itchy thought. When you couldn’t get crickets, that is. Toasting them like so many pine nuts in his banged up aluminum frypan, he fancied he could hear little screams as their legs shriveled and they made popping noises under the lid. Their chitinous wing cases sometimes got lodged between his teeth, like so many popcorn hulls. But the flavor, crunchy and al dente, kept him going. A steady protein supply, and plentiful in this time and place.

He didn’t know his own name anymore, just the things that people called him. The name Itchy stuck, ’cause all he ever did after the flash was scratch. Lots of nasty scabs he had. When they got nice and hard, he picked and peeled them, just like normal people used to peel the diaphanous skin from their sunburns. Put ’em in his pocket. Save ’em for later, for the desperate times.

Normal people were hard to find now. He had fallen in with a group of wanderers, on a time. They had welcomed him in, and had given him his benediction. But, boy, they all got real sick after a while, getting blue and bloated, with cracks and open sores. He thought he would get it too, and so he ran. Collected useful items along the way, things that seemed to have rained haphazardly out of the sky. A wavy-edged lid from an aluminum can was his knife. A curved lens from someone’s pepsi bottle spectacles served as his fire starter. The pot and lid from a collapsed cabin. Leather shoes, still smoking a bit, and a little too small.

He tried remembering how old he was, but he had no reference point. Further and further he got from the old city, and he began to find houses still standing, country type homes isolated on backroads or in the bush. In one of these, he found some good tools that he could carry, and, as he was taking his leave, he spotted a calendar hanging on the kitchen wall.

In the month of July, 2027, someone had circled the 3rd, and penciled in Bad news today. This might be it for us.

***

Image: Pixabay

Oh, that magic feeling

Irene’s lovely spirit had indeed changed Jack over the years. Spring was coming now, and he looked back at his winter as having been worthwhile. Since Irene’s death, he had helped many people on the streets, and some of them had even gotten off the streets. He had wanted to spend as little time as possible fretting in his lonely apartment, and had thought of many novel ways to somehow make their lives more bearable. He had a pretty good instinct about people, and knew which ones would make good use of some cash, and which would be better served with some groceries, a hot meal, and some extra blankets. Some he even brought home for a time.

On a particular morning, actually the official first day of spring, in his 70th year, his phone rang. Doctor’s office. Could he please come tomorrow to see Martin Smith? The secretary sounded a little off. Jack could tell, because he had known her for years.
So, this was how he got the news about his Cancer. Inoperable, but, with a treatment regimen, he had a chance, had a chance. Without, there were no guarantees.

Something was going through his mind now. Something Irene had always said. Don’t fret, Jack, don’t fret. It does no good, and will only eat away at you. Enjoy today.
Soberly, he packed a few things, made some sandwiches. Pulled his last will and testament out of its file and laid it on his work desk. Drafted an email to a select few, scheduled it to be delivered in a few days, and pressed Send. Then got in his car.

Jack was not going to the hospital. No Sir, not this guy. I’m not having anybody mooning over me for weeks while I lie drugged up with tubes and wires. Just like dear old Dad. No thank you.

He drove to the bank, withdrew a good sum in cash, and more in prepaid cards. This would be his last trip uptown. He’d meet some new people, and some old friends he had made, wish them well. Say some farewells. Visit the kids and say nothing. Just make sure they were okay.

Jack knew of a bridge under construction a little ways out of town. The road was closed, and there would be no workers there today. Neat and tidy.

Just at dusk, he pulled up to the barricades, got out, and managed to move one enough to squeeze his car through. All quiet on the western front. He had a little cry, for Irene, for this ending of things, for his nagging pain that had been with him for weeks. He stood by his car as the rain came streaming down. Tears in the rain, Hah! Sorry, Irene! I’m coming Thelma! I’m coming, Louise!

It was a good five hundred yards to the drop off. Plenty of room.

The last thing he thought of was an old song.

McCartney said it best.

But Oh, that magic feeling….nowhere to go.
Oh, that magic feeling, nowhere to go.

Follow Jack in a previous story…..

https://wordpress.com/post/secret-lifeof.com/2405

A peculiar guy?

Haha….today’s little spot of amusement.

I had stopped along a country road to take a photo of an interesting tree, standing by itself. I had to navigate a shallow ditch to get into proper position. As I was doing so, a Police Officer pulled up behind my car. My first thoughts were Oh oh. Am I trespassing? Perhaps she thinks I am peeing in public? Or maybe doing an illegal drop off?
Of course, what actually happened was that she opened her window, kind of gave me a look, and said “Are you alright?”. Yes, Officer, I was….ah….just taking a shot of this pretty tree. She looked from me to the tree, then back, gave kind of a funny smile, then waved goodbye.

Hopefully, we made each other’s day.

the Tetris of decision

slowly he walks in the snowy night. approaching the street lights, he’s in one of those glass globes, shaken. frozen furrows underfoot. crispy, crunchy. making statements in the deadened sound. there’s only the baying of solitary hounds, fading back into cotton in the ears. he’s glad of the long johns and the fur hood. much to think about in this wintry vacuum. a relationship that’s run its course. irreconcilable, he thinks. how much, or even whether, he has sinned in seeking or accepting new friendships. whether he cares about the fallout. what she will do if he leaves, how she will live. will these clunky intractable blocks of woe somehow fit together and form a path, a way out. she knows they are in trouble. she sees his half smiles and repartee with others, and is despairing of what to do, what to offer.

he is rounding the block, and sees home now. the wind is picking up and he’s shivering a little, but he thinks he will do it one more time. Maybe one more time.

Once upon a December

In nineteen hundred and eighty one

At Christmas time, with Mrs. Dunn

And two unruly cats out for a ride

we headed west on 401

And branched off to a northern run

Just me, myself, and Deb (my pregnant bride)

In two more months, she would be due

And the cat would have its kittens too

and I would be beside myself with glee

But we were in a nasty stew

A snowstorm on the avenue

It slowed us down, and I could hardly see

Two hundred miles we had to go

On Christmas Eve, through blinding snow

To Mom and Dad’s, upon a northern bay

The wind was blowing to and fro

The road, it was a horror show

I couldn’t tell which was the proper way

Then all at once we took the ditch

Our Christmas plans had met a hitch

The wife and I (and cats) were all okay

then, someone stopped ( his name was Mitch)

And said Ain’t that a son of a bitch

And helped us back upon our merry way

He towed us with a cable hook

A little time was all it took

To get us once again upon our tour

Then gave us both a funny look

And said “A room, you’d better book

They’re closing up the highway now for sure”

Now, further up the road a way

We found a place where we could stay

And had to wake the landlord from his bed

The room was cold, but anyway

We slept our Christmas Eve away

And woke at dawn, with shadowings of dread

Another foot of snow there was

‘Twas quite enough to give us pause

I shoveled just enough to let us pass

The cats were busy cleaning claws

The wife was all upset because

We’d let ourselves run almost out of gas

This Christmas morn, the roads were clear

The storm had stopped, the sun was here

We woke the sleepy landlord once again

He had some gas, among his gear

He filled us up, said “Never fear-

You’ll reach your Mom and Daddy’s place by ten”

And so, we reached the northern bay

And spent a cheery Christmas Day

The memories would stay with us a while

We watched their little grandkids play

With starry eyes, and I would say

This year, we had a lot to make us smile.