Tagged: short stories
Buried Within
“Are you sure you want to do this,” Rick began, anxiously. “No one even knows he’s gone.”
Mark just stood there, his hand outstretched and holding a shovel.
“Okay,” Rick said, taking the shovel. “Okay. I said I’d help. So I’m helping,” he said, still talking himself into his decision.
Mark reached into the trunk for a second shovel. He slammed the trunk shut and the men began to walk into the woods.
“How far is it?” asked Rick, turning back to see the car fade from view.
“A ways.”
“At least I have my comfortable boots on,” Rick said, trying to make the best of it. “Aw shit,” he said, stepping calf deep into an unexpected puddle.
Mark just rolled his eyes.
Shaking his leg, Rick hurriedly returned to Mark’s side, more worried about the setting sun than a wet boot. He looked around them and noticed the trees were thinning out. About to comment on this, he bumped into Mark who had stopped.
Unaffected, Mark said, “It’s here.”
“Here? Right here? How do you know?”
“I know.”
“Whelp, I guess it’s time to dig,” Rick said as his shovel slid into the earth.
“I guess it is.”
Sweating and feeling like they were making no progress, Rick said, “Jesus, Mark. How deep did you bury him? Are you sure we’re in the right spot?”
Just then Mark struck an object.
“Finally,” said Rick. Without Mark’s cool exterior, Rick would have been terrified to be this deep into the woods at night. “Are you sure you want to go through with this?” he asked.
“I’m sure.”
It took everything the two men had to lift the box from the hole, but they did.
As Mark pulled up on his handle, Rick asked, “Aren’t we going to fill in the hole?”
“Nope. They’re going to want to see where he was for themselves.”
“Oh, right.”
Mark began, “Rick-”
“Yeah, buddy?”
“Thanks again for doing this. All the others refused. You’re the only one who understood.”
“You’re welcome. But really, it’s nothing. Everyone can see that you’re a different man since Rebecca was-” Rick stopped himself.
“Please don’t.”
“Sorry. I won’t. But yes, you’re welcome.”
Rick struggled to square the box alongside the car as Mark called the police.
Candid Conversations With George, Did You Smell That?
So every once in a while I post a scene from a day in the life with George. For organizational purposes these post’s title will now be prefaced with CCWG. I also added a CCWG category at the bottom of the page for easy reference to past conversations. On with it!
The driver and passenger doors shut near simultaneously as the two men got in the car.
“I didn’t want to say anything during the service, but did you smell that?” Pete asked, starting the car.
“Hmm, no,” George answered without confidence. “Smell what? What are you talking about?”
“Back in the church. I kept smelling something pretty rank. I even kept my mouth closed in an effort to eliminate the possibility it was just my own breath,” Pete explained.
“Ha. No, I can’t say that I did smell anything.”
“Weird. I felt bad because A- was right there too and he had invited us and all. A lot of people were lifting their hands in the air, so I guess it could’ve been just the B.O. from that,” Pete said.
“Yeah, it’s always possible. That was a lot of people in there,” George said.
“But it was pretty awful. As predicted, there were a lot of women there too. And you know how bad their farts smell,” Pete suggested.
“Oh yeah. Women’s farts are the worst!” George said. Pete couldn’t help but notice George’s energy go from zero to a hundred in an instant. “It’s all because they hold them in for sooooo long!”
“What? This is great,” said Pete, laughing.
“Yeah. They hold it and hold it and hold it. And then you let them into a large auditorium like that and they let them rip. They figure nobody will suspect them,” George articulated. Continuing the flawless rationale, he explained, “My older sister used to never fart. Never. She actually had me convinced that women don’t fart.”
“Come on,” Pete questioned.
“Dude, I was like seven,” George clarified. “Anyhow, one Christmas I heard her just rip one. She couldn’t deny it, so then she convinced me women only fart one day a year–Christmas.”
Meanwhile…Back At The Workshop
Venspu would have knocked but when he saw Santa at the window he decided against it. He was looking outside, his head resting on his forearm which was pressed against the glass.
“What is it, Venspu?” Santa asked, startling him.
“I can come back,” Venspu began, “it’s nothing.”
“Nothing wouldn’t have led you here tonight, not this night,” Santa said.
Santa’s back was still turned, but Venspu could see his eye’s reflection. They never lost their twinkle, no matter how tired he was. Remarkable, he thought.
“Speaking plainly, the elves are tired,” Venspu said hurriedly. “There’s six days to go. I’ve crunched the numbers. It’ll be close, but if you give them a break tonight, we’ll still be finished before the big night.”
“Think so?” Santa asked, finally turning to face his lead foreman.
“I do,” he said, careful not to betray his hope.
“And just what would the elves do with their time tonight if they didn’t work?” Santa asked.
Could he know? Venspu thought. No. There’s no way. Not this time.
Exhaling, Venspu said, “Sleep, Santa. They’d sleep.”
Santa loved the elves. He couldn’t understand why they were so ready to turn on him. He only enslaved them because he knew they would be happier working for him than facing the cold reality of the human world. Yet here was one of his finest workman, Venspu, looking him dead in the eye and lying. As a tear formed, Santa turned back to the window.
“Give them the night off,” Santa said.
“Thank you, Santa,” Venspu said, adding, “You can count on me to be sure they’re ready for work at first light.”
“Good night, Venspu. You may go,” Santa said, only too aware of the slaughter to come.
A Bitter End to Christmas
“Shhh,” Tinsel mouthed to Mercutious, as he deftly and silently approached his target. Mercutious sat opposite the campfire from Jupton. He couldn’t watch, but neither could he look away as Tinsel, the leader of the Elven resistance, lined up his first officer’s pointy ear for a playful–though painful–flick.
“Ahh!” Jupton cried, as he leaned forward and away from the assailant. Seeing Tinsel standing there with an ear-to-ear grin infuriated and invigorated him. “So you’re back! This is good. How does it look?”
Tinsel informed the rebel Elven leaders that since their last attack, Santa had doubled the number of guards at the wall.
“Were you able to get a response from Venspu? Do they know tomorrow is the day?” Jupton asked.
“I was. They do,” Tinsel replied.
“So this is it,” Jupton pronounced. “The end of Christmas. The end of Santa’s unlawful reign, and the end of the enslavement of two million innocent elves.”
“God willing,” Tinsel said. “You know the plan. We know the plan. Stick to the plan. Venspu wrote that he only has two thousand elves willing to fight. Of those, he personally vouches for only fifteen hundred,” he stopped, harnessed a grave look and continued, “that means the fight is ours.”
“The fight is ours,” muttered the small group of officers in unison.
“Santa is not going to go down easy,” Tinsel lectured. “He has his lists. He remembers everything.” A few of the men chuckled. “What?” Tinsel asked.
Mercutious couldn’t help but sing, “He’s making a list, checking it twice.” Soon the others joined in, “He’s gonna find out who’s naughty or nice.”
A thunderous laughter erupted among the rebel leaders.
“That’s funny,” Tinsel assented. “You’re right. I talk too much. Get some sleep. Be ready at first light.”
Murder One
For Preston
Billionaire playboy, philanthropist, media mogul, and three-time Olympic gold medalist Maxwell Rudolfson was being heralded as the most benevolent creative genius America has ever produced. The streets felt safer, violent crime statistics were at an all-time low, and for the first time ever maximum security prisons had vacancies.
“As you know, I spent a lot of time contemplating the problem of violent crime in this country. One day it hit me. Certainty is security. And as awful as the idea sounded at first, I realized that it was the best solution to the rampant and ever-increasing violence that kept people locked inside their homes, living in fear. It is no lie that it took a little convincing,” Maxwell continued to a chuckling crowd, “but, the proof of the pudding is in the tasting.” Cheers arose all along the mall.
Sure, life in the city had improved since the new legal code allowed each adult to murder one person so long as they filled out the proper application paperwork and notified their requested victim. Most people couldn’t believe how the general public responded so many years ago. Rather than rush into a murderous feeding frenzy, the whole of the country took a deliberate approach. Many people decided to save their kill for truly the right person. Then something astonishing happened. As the society waited to commit the unspeakable act, people lost interest. Looking back, it should have been no surprise that as we got older, we calmed down and wisened up. But still, no one, not even Maxwell Rudolfson himself, could have predicted the immensity and totality of the new-found peace and security that blanketed the country.
Meanwhile, in a nearly empty government building a department of justice official couldn’t believe his eyes. He asked the young man standing before him to wait at the counter for minute.
“Sir. You’re not going to believe this. Maxwell Rudolfson’s son just filled out an application for murder,” the official reported to his supervisor.
“Yeah. Ol’ Max figured this day would come. Who does Jr. want to kill?”
“His father.”
Mission Commander Stevenson
The planet’s Earth-like gravity had an unexpected welcoming effect on Mission Commander Stevenson as he stepped out of the craft. This was the forty-first world he had visited on this particular eighteen month mission. He hadn’t shared with anyone yet that it would be his last. He was sixty-four years old and while his mind was never sharper, his body was starting to say no.
NASA probably expected him to call it quits sooner rather than later, but he knew they would be sorry to see him leave. Not the first mission commander to make a career of exploring new galaxies, he hoped he would prove to be the most steadfast. He had personally stepped foot on six hundred thirty-five extraterrestrial worlds. Not one of them contained life.
Oh, sure, he had had plenty of R and R back on Earth between missions, but it was all beginning to wear on him. As evidence of this, to a person, all the other astronauts could even deliver his famous “one complaint” speech–accent and all–verbatim.
Month thirteen, almost to the day, he’d say, “For someone as fortunate as me, someone who has seen the glory of the cosmos up close and in person, to complain would be criminal.” The imitator would then pause, just like Stevenson always did. “But I am human. I do have my own thoughts. And if I had to pick one thing that I would change about the program, it would be the gloves! I have spent over half my life feeling the inside of a pair of gloves. Every celebratory hug we’ve had after discovering we got a chance to live on after opening the door, every rock I’ve lifted, every flagpole I’ve planted, every tool I’ve used, everything has felt the same. I just wish something could be done about that.” Every newbie expected the speech to end at that point and just about interrupted the old man as he continued undeterred, which made it all the more amusing for everyone else. “I miss the feel of a woman, the feel of a Christmas tree, the feel of not quite warm enough shower water. Most of all, I miss the feel of dirt–my dirt.”
As he looked back for the others to join him on the ritual first walk around the new world, he unconsciously reached for the fastener on his glove.
I Don’t Like It When You Laugh At Me
She was nearly ready for the bath. Her dad began to pull the rubber band out of her hair.
“I’ll get it, daddy,” she said.
“Okay.”
She bent her little head forward and continued pulling from where her father had left it. Once her hair was free, she shook her head the way women do in shampoo commercials and smiled. He laughed.
“I don’t like it when you laugh at me,” she said.
“Huh?” he asked.
“You shouldn’t laugh at people, daddy,” she asserted.
“Oh, H-, I’m not laughing at you, I’m laughing because what you did was funny.”
“I wasn’t trying to be funny,” she said.
“Oh okay. Well, tell me about it then. What’s the rule?”
“You shouldn’t laugh at people, daddy. It’s not nice. That’s the rule,” she said. Her earnestness made him smile.
“Okay, H-. No laughing at people.”
“D- and Mommy don’t laugh at me. Only you laugh at me,” she continued, unaware of the particularly sharp barb her words contained.
“Is that so? Hmm. Well, I laugh a lot. And I think you are funny a lot of the time. And you seem to want to make me laugh a lot of the time.”
“Can I play a little after I’m clean? Mommy lets me.”
“Maybe that’s because you don’t lecture her,” he retorted. Immediate and intense regret followed.
A clean little H- put her My Little Pony onesie on and picked out the story to follow the obligatory reading from The Hobbit. It soon became clear that he wasn’t ready to concede defeat.
“So you don’t like it when I laugh at you?” he asked. “What if it’s because you did something to be funny?”
“It’s like this, daddy. When I do something funny, it sticks to me. And so when you laugh at it, you’re laughing at me.”
On the bed with her, half laying, half sitting, book in hand he stared at her. Not thinking he even twitched, he watched as she began a sustained and genuine-seeming bout of hysterical laughter. It seemed pure, but he couldn’t be sure. And his uncertainty frightened him. If there was one trait he knew he could work on, it was kindness. But he didn’t need his daughter to be the one to force him to learn it. Though, she was probably the only authority to which he would abdicate his power. After calming down, she claimed he had made some funny expression that made her laugh and playfully asked for another. But he had not. Being called out by otherworldly logic had put him nearly in tears, not poised to play buffoon dad. On top of the uncommon display of sage reasoning, is it possible she noticed this and purposefully disrupted the forming somber mood?
Kids.
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On Mustaches
Lazily leaning against the kitchen counter, George routinely placed some kind of large green leaves into the pan on the stove as Pete unknowingly wrinkled his face in disgust.
“I think I told you that I finally joined that gym.”
“How is it?” George answered.
“It is quite the place. And it’s ridiculously cheap for what they have. They have a lap pool open twenty-four hours a day,” Pete said. “And a towel service! The last club I belonged to that had a towel service cost one hundred thirty dollars a month. This place is just forty.”
“That’s not too bad.”
“And, I might add, even at ten in the morning there were a lot of young fit women,” said Pete.
“Those places are meat lockers for sure.”
“On principal I have never picked up a woman at a gym, but I’ve also never seen such a high ratio before,” Pete continued. “It’s crazy. I’ve always hated the feeling I get that I might meet a women there. Luckily, I have my sights already set on this Cammie.”
“You’re wasting your time, Pete,” said George.
“I mean, this one blonde, there was no reason for her to walk right past my machine. No reason at all. But she did.”
“I’ve been trying to tell you, Pete, that women are more forward than you ever let yourself believe,” said George.
“No. No way. This one was gorgeous. She wasn’t checking me out. She came by because she was pissed I wasn’t ogling her,” said Pete.
“That’s beautiful women for you. And that’s why they hate the mustache.”
“What?” asked Pete.
George then elaborated, saying, “My mustache. Beautiful women can’t stand not getting the attention. And a mustache, different than a beard, demands so much attention, that women can’t stand them. I was with M- at the mall the other day. She was actually getting upset. She thought it was a fluke the first time, but a total of three random strangers complimented me. Nearly everyone else stared at me, not her, as we walked around. It was eating her alive. It was so funny.”
She Has Become Self-Aware
Even if there was an accredited parenting class, it seems unlikely it would cover bathroom protocol for opposite gender single parents.
“Are you shutting the door, daddy?” H- asked while standing outside the bathroom, as he, in fact, shut the bathroom door most of the way no different than he had done many many times before.
“Yes I am, H-. You’re getting old enough that you shouldn’t be able to see me nor me see you when we go potty,” he answered. “I know it’s confusing because on the car trips you have to come with me. But that’s just because I can’t leave you alone.”
“Oh. Okay,” she responded.
Like an apparition floating passed the cracked door, her locked-forward head led the rest of her body to her room for who knows what reason. Then he saw her pass by once more, heading back to the living room.
“Ughh! I forgot to turn off the light,” she said, exasperated.
Passing by again, she reached up the wall to flip down the light switch.
With a fourth pass she completed her second round trip.
Then, with a giggle, little H- noticed the pattern and blurted out, “It’s like I’m guarding the door!”
He had his very own little volunteer sentry. And that would have been fine until she announced, “I have to go potty now. Will you guard the door for me?”
Captain’s Log 