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"Deadline" (the sixty-fifth ACWclub monthly writing contest) |
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Assignment: Write a story or poem using the following title: "Deadline" 2500 words or less. Deadline: Midnight (EST), Jan. 15, 2007 All entries are the property of the authors and cannot be copied or reprinted without their consent. |
| Deadline By LGVernon@aol.com (Entry #10) |
| ~Winning Entry~ |
| I see them. The dead come—came—with the territory, and have never left. They don’t tell you about that at the academy. Oh, they tell you about death, all right. They just don’t tell you about the dead. And even during the darkest, most drunken moments of those off-duty, late-night choir practices, no one ever says, “Hey guys, I see the dead. Do you see the dead?” But we all see them. I haven’t worn a Sam Browne in years. Probably couldn’t buckle on the one that hangs in the back of my closet if I wanted to. It’s dusty with age, like me, and the leather’s dry-rotted. I used to keep it spit-shined—back when I wore it. I used wadding polish on the brass of the keepers, and on my badge and on my nameplate. Now the kids I see in uniform—all of them look about nine to me—use Velcro keepers to hold their gear in place, and most times it’s not even leather; it’s that Kevlar stuff that’s become so popular. They don’t wear real badges anymore, either. They’re sewn on. Embroidered. Seems kind of candy-assed to me. It’s hard to read them, sometimes, when I get close enough to a cop to look. But when I scan past the newfangled uniforms, the shorts, the bicycles, the fancy equipment, the sewn-on badge, and the tiny, tapered, politically correct baton, and look into their eyes—really look—I know they see them, too. Resignation, not fear, is what stares back at me. Once in a while I talk to a cop. He or she’ll size me up at first. Oh, I know what they’re thinking. Old, shriveled. Couldn’t know a thing about what I do. But then we mesh. We know the same neighborhoods, know that kick of adrenalin at the sound of a siren, speak the same lingo; we’ve both felt the tingling intuition that tells us the nice mama with the two kids we just talked to would kill us if she could. Putting on the suit changed us both forever. We walk into a room the same way—looking at hands, waistbands, ankles, faces, and exits. We size people up, skeptical of every story, every excuse, every bulge, every twitch. We laugh and joke, like cops often do. Then, soberly, we shake hands and we know. We’re closer, sometimes, than kin, as we exhale regret. The dead are always with us. Even when we’re wrinkly-assed and gray, and not cops anymore. First in line—my line, anyway—are two ladies. Blue-hairs we called them, then. You know what I mean. Sixty-five, carefully curled hair, bulletproof stretch pants and striped tank tops. They were walking with their husbands. Both men had retired a week before from the same factory after forty-five years on the job. The four of them had been friends for life. It was just past dusk. They’d been down the highway to a coffee shop and were strolling back to the RV park and the brand-new, identical, motor homes they’d just bought, when a couple of big Dobermans lunged at the junkyard fence they were passing. The ladies jumped away—into the street and into the path of a Camaro—and were killed instantly. I was twenty-one, and probably looked about nine to the husbands, if they even noticed. What got me most were the shoes. Both ladies had been knocked right out of their canvas low-cuts. Impotently, I picked up the pink sneakers and handed them to one of the husbands. He stood there, clutching them, then silently handed one pair to his buddy. At that moment, I felt about nine. What do you say? How do you make it all go away? Those old ladies—probably younger in death than I am now—smile at me. It’s alright, officer. It wasn’t your fault. Next is the young Northsider. They call them gang-bangers, now. He was sprawled on the floor of his apartment, leaning against the wall next to the sofa. He’d been stabbed twice in the chest. Tiny holes. Not a drop of blood. An ice pick lay on the threadbare carpet. I knelt next to him. He was breathing, talking, alert. I called for an ambulance and started taking notes. “Who did this?” “Fuckin’ Eastsiders, man, who else?” “Did you know them?” “Yeah.” “How many of them were there?” “Two of them. I’ll kill those pinche’—” “—Who stabbed you?” “Ramon . . . Ramon Cisneros.” “From over on Third—that Ramon Cisneros?” “Y—yeah.” I scribbled, then talked on my radio, telling dispatch to put out the APB. “Was he in that old brown Pinto he drives?” “I don’ know, man. I was here, asleep. I wa . . .” And, just like that, he was gone. The ambulance arrived right about then, and they started CPR on him, but there was no bringing him back. Later, at the post, I learned that the ice pick had torn the bottom of his heart, his aorta, actually—just a tiny tear, but big enough for him to die while I was getting what I needed to put his killer away for a very long time. Not that it did him any good. He ambles along in his gray corduroy pants and his wife-beater, right behind the ladies. He smiles at me, too. There’s a tattoo on his left chest—a bleeding heart, with the name Amelia underneath. Pretty ironic, if you ask me. Anyway, those were my first three. Then comes the drunk who hanged himself when he arrived home and found his wife had had enough and split. His fourteen year-old son found him. He’d come by after school to tell his dad that he wanted to stay with him, not his mother. There are probably a dozen or more heroin addicts who tripped south from LA to get some 'good' stuff in our border community, and died in their cars, in restaurants, one in a phone booth, and often, very often, in bathrooms—because the smack was just too good. It hadn’t been cut with baby powder or corn starch or any of a thousand other products it gets stepped on with as it makes its poisonous way to the City of Angels. And so they died, with belts around their upper arms and syringes still stuck in their flesh, gasping their last in the tiny spaces of gas station bathrooms—writhing in the urine and the toilet paper incumbent with such pristine surroundings. There are children, wives, husbands, parents—killed by the ones they loved. There are accident victims and croakers—elderly who die of natural causes in their homes, the police who find them their only mourners. There are drunk drivers, and their passengers, and the others they took with them all in the name of a good time. There are six teenagers, still in their tuxedos and poufy formals. They’d left the prom for some late night kanoodling and were speeding down a dirt road in a station wagon, when the driver lost control and the car ended up on its top in an irrigation canal. Their parents reported them missing in the middle of the night, but it was daylight before we spotted the car, its wheels sticking partially out of the water. The kids tried to get out. They really tried to get out. But the car was wedged, side-to-side. They couldn’t open the doors. You don’t want to know the rest. There’s a beautiful baby girl, two months-old, who has a place in line. It was an early Christmas morning when I got that call—a frantic mother couldn’t awaken her only child. The door to the apartment was ajar, but there was no crowd. No one. Just a young Mexican woman, standing quietly in her nightgown in the middle of her low-income living room, waiting for someone to come. A secondhand crib dominated the space. “Ayudame’, por favor,” she whispered. Help me, please. She gestured toward the crib. I was across the room in two steps, and knew immediately I was hours too late. The infant drowsed in death, a tiny knitted cap on her glossy black hair, her fat little fist still against her mouth, her eyes half open. But first rigor had already set in. There was nothing I, nothing anyone could do. I think telling that poor woman—whose husband was far away in the Central Valley, picking lettuce—that her first child was dead, was the hardest thing I ever did. She had no one. No one. And was too devastated to do more than stroke that child’s hair. No tears. No wailing. Just the subtle movement of her fingers. I called the Salvation Army, but there was no answer. It was Christmas Day. Babies weren’t supposed to die on Christmas; babies weren’t supposed to die ever. I finally got hold of Father Curzon over at St. Mary’s. He came and I left, but the baby, a SIDS baby—well—I see her every day. There were countless others over the years: A young father of two little girls, gunned down by his wife and her lover for the insurance; a gay man, shotgunned at point-blank range for making advances to the wrong hitchhiker; a wife bludgeoned to death by her 80 year-old husband because, as he put it, ‘I got tired of her mouth.” And there are other cops. Friends. Guys who had my back more than once when the stuff got deep. I wonder sometimes how the fates picked them and not me. But they smile, and shake their heads, their badges glinting. Shit happens, they say. You know that. I’m old now and I really thought all this would have left me by now. That the anger, that the impotence, that the sense of loss would have dissipated over time. That I would have been allowed to forget the dead. That, after years of service—after years of seeing them—day after day, I’d be granted a reprieve. But no, they’re all still here, walking somnolently through these rooms of mine. And along with this daily communion comes the knowledge that soon I’ll be in someone else’s head, myself—standing on someone else’s line. A specter, a memory, one of a million horrors about which no cop speaks. So now I wait, here in my house with the big trees out front. Just me and the dead. My dead. I mow my lawn, barbecue on the weekends, watch football with other old retired cops—and I wonder whose line I’ll be in when it’s over. Will it be the cop I talked to down at the Stop and Rob on the corner who finds me dead in my bed? Or will I croak over in the yard and some poor rookie’ll get the call and have to help the ambulance guys drag my fat ass onto a gurney? Am I going to topple over in my dining room and lie there for a couple of weeks with the sun streaming in the south windows like it does, until the only things alive here, besides the cop who gets the call, will be the maggots doing the conga in and out of my eyes? Who will I haunt? Who? Whoever it is, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. |
| Deadline By Darryl Brooks DarrylBrooks@comcast.net (Entry #5) |
| ~Runner Up~ |
| The deadline was fast approaching.
January 15th was less than two days away and he still sat and stared at a blank
monitor. He had been writing his monthly column for twenty-nine plus years and
never missed a deadline, but 25 hours remained and he had nothing. Not a spark.
It’s not as if there weren’t enough current affairs on which to
write. President Ford, Saddam Hussein; hell Britney Spears fell asleep New
Years Eve. There was a headline screaming for print. He knew what the real problem was. It was that -other- deadline. January 15th he would also post his last article before retiring. He had begun his career in that post-Vietnam and Watergate heyday of the late 70’s. His first article was framed over his desk, “The Day The Music Died.” Elvis and Lynard Skynard. The Iranian Hostage crisis, Lebanon, Granada, Desert Storm – he’d covered them all. From Carter to Clinton and now Bush II, the sequel. He had written about wars, politics, entertainment – even those silly-ass stories on Y2K. Now, what was he going to do? Finish that damned book? Twenty-seven thousand words and he still had no idea where the hell the plot was headed. Did the world need another book about some ex-military guy saving the world from terrorism? Maybe he should just scrap the thing and start over. Three-hundred something articles, he ought to have something he could turn into a book. Or two. It’s not as if he didn’t know how to handle idle hours. One column a month for thirty years hadn’t exactly filled his calendar. Outside of speaking engagements and public appearances, he still had plenty of time left over to wreck two marriages, and write six articles from inside a rehab clinic in Arizona. And for what? To end up sixty years old, in a three-room walkup above a dirty bookstore, with a view of the airport, staring at a blank screen. He watched as the little clock in the corner of the monitor clicked over to 12:00. Okay, one day left, and no ideas. He picked up the remote and began clicking through the stations again, searching for inspiration. Letterman, Leno, and Law & Order repeats. Christ, there ought to be a Law & Order channel. People never been to New York probably think people trip over dead bodies every time they go for a walk. He turned off the tube and threw the remote in the corner. Leaning back, he propped his bare feet on the windowsill and stared up at his wall of shame. Pictures of him with celebrities and politicians he had interviewed. The one in front of a New York nightclub with his arms around Boy George and Joe Strummer. No memory of that night other than the picture, his column, and the rose tattooed on his ass. Appropriately, that hung next to his last article before the little holiday in Phoenix. The result of an all-nighter on March 15, 1987, swilling Nyquil and Robitussin in that fleabag on River Street in Savannah, Georgia. Two nights before the second largest St. Patrick’s Day celebration in the damned country and you couldn’t buy a bottle on Sunday. He still read that column from time to time and wondered what he was trying to say, who Agnes was, and what happened to the goat. Below that, the shot from the ’91 Grammys with Neil Young and Joe Cocker. What a pair to be stuck interviewing sober. The living, breathing semi-coherent personification of better to burn out than fade away, and a gravel-voiced bad impersonation of John Belushi. So, Joe, how long did it take you to write, ‘You Can Leave Your Hat On?’ Wait, let me jot this down. I don’t want to miss a freakin’ word. He slammed his chair back down on the floor and swiveled around to face his old Royal typewriter. Wished he were still working on that thing. He could have the satisfaction of yanking the blank paper out and balling it up on the floor with the rest of the night’s abortions. He remembered the first article he tried to write on his old Apple IIe. Man, he fell in love with that spell-check and search and replace crap. Turned out a brilliant phosphorescent green narrative of Pulitzer class commentary, turned it off and went to bed, and slept the sleep of the righteous and just. Got up the next morning and learned all about saving your work on those five-inch floppy disks. Before you turn it off. Well, those days were sure as hell gone, he thought as he swiveled back toward the twenty-one inch, 256 color, blank screen of nothing in front of him. With his tower system, laptop, PDA, and Blackberry, he could file his story at the touch of a button from anywhere. He could screw the pooch at a hundred terabytes a second, whatever the hell that meant. Old Billy Gates could explain it to him. Should have asked him in that interview in 2000. Guess he was too giddy at having survived the end of the world. Boy that was some smug son-of-a-bitch. ‘Course if he could turn his hobby into a hundred billion dollars, he’d be smug too. Despite that one season on the Denny’s Pro-Bowling tour, there wasn’t much chance of that. He flipped idly through his old-fashioned Rolodex looking for a possible interview. Glancing at the clock again, he gave up on that idea. “Hey, Hillary, I know it’s one a.m., but could you spare a few quotes – it’s my last column.” He could wait until the morning, but there wasn’t any point in calling up his contacts if he didn’t know what he was going to ask. And this was the last one. He wanted to go out with a bang, not a thud. After that, there’d be nothing left. He wondered how long before he would quit waking up on the 15th each month in a cold sweat. The same nightmare every time. He wakes up absolutely sure that he hasn’t filed a story and has nothing to say. Kind of like now, he thought, tapping on a few keys.. It would take some time to get used to not having any deadlines to face, though. The life of a retired writer. Hunter S Thompson didn’t raise the bar very freaking high on that one, did he? Most people looked forward to sleeping late then hanging out all day in their underwear, but he already had that action nailed down pretty damned good. Maybe he could take up fishing. Sit on a cold, wet lake bank and try to fool a fish into biting his hook so he could drag it out of the water, asphyxiate it, and then cut it up for food. Nah, he’d just run down to Esca and order the catch of the day. As long as they let him run a tab. How fast would his celebrity status last? But all this crap about retirement wasn’t getting it done. He still had one more column to write. 2500 words. He looked back at the screen and noticed he had typed one. Today. Today, what? Today was the first day of the rest of his life? Today was the day he wrote the greatest article of his career? Today was the last time he would do anything meaningful, spending the rest of his days as a pathetic has-been? End up on some damned Whatever Happened To show with Danny Bonaduce and Gary Coleman. I don’t freaking think so. He banged the backspace key five times. He pushed back his chair a bit and stared at the screen again, the spark of an idea coming to him, just as it always did. He swiveled around and took a long look at his wall again; the stories he had written and the famous and infamous he had interviewed. Finally, settling once again on the picture of him with Neil Young, he swung back again and faced his nemesis – the word processor. He placed his hands over the keyboard and paused there a moment. He knew from past experience, once his fingers touched the keys, they would not stop until the column was done and the story was told. He rarely wrote a second draft. When he typed his byline at the end of the piece, he pushed the send button and that was it. Slowly, he allowed his fingers to come to rest. asdf jkl;. Taking a deep breath, and glancing at the clock once again, he began to type: I hope as you sit there reading this article, you will take a few moments to mourn the passing of one of the more prolific columnists of our generation. He died alone in his apartment at approximately 3 a.m. on the morning of January 15th, taking his own life after writing his final piece…. |
| The
WCA's The Writers' Choice Awards |
| Here's how the members of the
ACWclub voted for their favorite entries: First place: #10 Second place: #5 Third place: #3 Fourth place: #1 Fifth place: #8 Others receiving votes: #7, #9 |
Here are all the entries, posted in the order they were received.
| Deadline Lisa Jacob maulkin1@cox.net |
#1 of 14 |
| 1640 words | |
| “Mark?” The gangly young man stirred and yawned into the phone’s mouthpiece. “No. Just his voice. The brain’s not kicked in yet.” “Mark,” implored the voice on the other end. “Wake up, c’mon.” Mark set down the phone next to him and sat up in bed. With a mighty yawn and stretch, he opened his eyes to the dark room, severely dark because of the blackout curtains. He picked up the phone again. “Okay, Max, I’m here. What do you want now?” “John will have our heads if we don’t come in on time today.” “What’s the worst he could do?” As soon as he said those words, he realized the worst he could do, and the vision wasn’t very pretty. “I’ll be ready in an hour.” “See you then.” The phone clicked off on the other end. Mark put the phone back on its cradle, yawned and stretched again. He went toward the bathroom, pushing aside his uniform hanging on the shower rod, drying from being washed in the bathtub. The cuff tabs, black with their silver lettering, were still damp, but he could live with that. He shaved with cold water – he was lucky the shower worked once a week. He took many of his showers at the barracks, it was more reliable. As he winced with each pass of the razor, he hoped that he could get to North Main Street and see some of the young girls that passed for hookers there. They would do anything for a can of stew these days. “Max.” As he climbed into the passenger side of the car, Mark nodded to the man who had called him. “Is there any coffee around today?” “Maybe at the generals’ barracks. You want to go there?” He glanced out the grimy window of the car. “I’m sorely tempted.” Max chuckled. “If we do, they’ll make us work, you know.” “Better than patrolling the streets, don’t you think?” Max tugged at his collar. “This gets you power on the streets. Over at barracks, it just pisses them off.” Mark smiled, “All the better.” They headed toward the barracks, which would have their orders of the day. As soon as they walked in, the three men in the waiting area glanced at them. They would salute if they were of a higher rank, but Max and Mark weren’t, so they remained sitting. “Angel,” Max said to the female secretary, “What do we get to do today?” Just as he said that, the door opened and a man stepped out. By looking at his collar, all the men in the room knew he was a colonel, so they jumped up and saluted. He wore insignia that showed him as a member of the one of the more civilian-based section of this army. “I need four men to accompany me,” he bellowed. Mark and Max immediately jumped to attention. Two of the other seated men were selected, so all four followed the colonel out toward a waiting truck. “You all can still handle a rifle, can’t you?” They all nodded. Mark had marksman lanyards somewhere in his apartment to prove that he could hit a stationary target at 200 meters. “Good. You’ll get the rifles at the site.” “Site?” one of them asked, but the colonel had turned away and headed toward the front of the truck. Luckily it was still fall, and even though the air was crisp, it wasn’t that cold. The back of the truck was not comfortable as they were bounced around, so they really couldn’t talk to each other. Mark regarded the two other privates, dressed in black uniforms like their own, except Mark had an extra pip on his collar and could very well order the other two around – in theory. It never happened in practice. The truck stopped and the men all put their hands to their heads to stop their rattling brains. The colonel came out of the passenger side and the driver came around to put the tailgate down. The four men stumbled out. The colonel watched them gather their bearings. Mark noticed they were in the middle of a forest, and they had crossed the border into a country that no longer existed. “Sergeant, get these men rifles. Follow the sergeant.” They followed the sergeant toward another truck. He jumped in and tossed out four rifles, which the men caught on the fly, and four bags of ammunition. Mark was surprised they were full. Then the sergeant beckoned them down an almost non-existent path to a clearing. At the opposite end of the clearing was a huge mound of dirt. Mark noticed the mound had been created by the digging out of a pit. Six other men were in the clearing, all of them in different states of inebriation. Vodka bottles littered the area at feet of the other men, who stared at them with glassy eyes. “Four of you, out.” Three stumbled toward them, another walked a little better and clamped a hand on Mark’s shoulder. “I hope you believe everything they taught you at school,” he said, and headed down a different path. Mark watched him, a confused look on his face. “Send them in,” bellowed the sergeant. Three other privates, holding bayonets at them, escorted ten people forward. Three were old men, two of them had old women with them, the rest were women, and one looked pregnant. There was some jostling, and they all turned their backs to the men with the rifles across the way. They stood facing the pit. One started screaming. “READY!” roared the sergeant who had guided them, and muscle memory kicked in as all ten of them raised rifles to their shoulders. “Aim at the one in front of you! Fire!” Before he realized it, he fired and shot the head off the old woman in front of him. He blinked, stunned he had done such a thing. “Take a drink, boy,” said another man next to Max. “I’m fine. Who are these people?” “Who cares, they’re unfit to live.” The private waved the bottle at Max. Max pushed the bottle and the man away. “Yeah, well, you wait until you’re doing this for three hours and see how you feel after that.” Three hours? They’d been here for three hours and already were this drunk? “More coming,” said the sergeant, and the next group came forward. The lieutenant that stood just outside the clearing who ordered the people in started yelling at the sergeant. “Don’t you know that we have a deadline to meet? And you’re taking your time dicking around.” “Ten men, ten people, ten rifles, ten bullets. One bullet can’t go through two people.” “You’re wasting them on children,” he snapped, pointing to a child that didn’t look more than five years old. “What else do we do with them? They’re too big to suffocate.” The lieutenant by his insignia, looked down at the child as if it was a piece of rancid meat. He wrinkled his nose at it and looked almost ready to kick it into the pit. “We could just wring their necks like chickens.” “Need a lot of strength for that,” said the sergeant. Mark knew he must have blanched, and some of the other men did also. One turned away and threw up his vodka. The lieutenant instead kicked at the mother’s knee, and she went down. Another sergeant picked her up by her hair and dragged her toward the pit. They set the child – a girl by her long hair – right in front of Mark. The child looked at him for a moment, and he turned away from her, busying himself with watching his hands load the bullet into the rifle. He had no children. These were people unfit to live. He had his orders. All he needed to do was shoot her right through the head. It was only 40 yards. And she would have her back to him. He shook his head. IT would have ITS back to him. “Ready!” Mark turned and raised the rifle. Long brown hair cascaded down her – ITS – back, and she bent forward slightly. “Aim!” Mark kept his eye on her – ITS – head. A clean shot, that’s all he asked. “Los!” Mark squeezed the trigger and the girl’s head exploded like a melon. However, an old man on the end didn’t go down. “Schweinhund, you missed!” roared the lieutenant. “I’m not gonna clean up your goddamn messes!” He walked over to the man, held a pistol to his head, and shot him, then kicked the body into the pit. The lieutenant turned to the drunk man on the other end, aiming his pistol at him. “Next time it’ll be you. Nobody miss or I’ll be here all day!” The next group was already being led into place. “There’s 3,000 of these I have to get rid of, and I’ve only got today to do it. I don’t have time for misses!” As the lieutenant moved out of the line of fire, Mark turned to the SS soldier next to him. “I’ll take that drink now.” |
|
| Deadline roger@cowboylogic.net |
#2 of 14 |
| 868 words | |
| As a youngster I could never resist stumbling up or
down a creek or stream. I could never get my brother Brad to follow me. This
was probably because I was constantly in hot water when I got home because of
the cool water of a summer stream. I suppose what caught my imagination more
than the water, was the thought of what new sights I’d find around the
next bend. Yes. The big draw was the unknown just around the corner. When I look back at my youth, one of my biggest peeves was the borders created around me for all the right reasons. Among these boundaries were safety, schedule, routine, duties, school and my family. That is why it was strange I ended up working with a tie around my neck. Customer Service was challenging and gratifying. I had become damn good at it so I was now teaching others the art. The problem was, it is an art. You have to have the customer service gene or you cannot learn the trade. My biggest headache nowadays was that eighty percent of the people in the customer service trade should be undertakers because they needed to work with customers who would not complain about their service. For the last eight years, I have taught a vast array of mindless chair warmers who work for a paycheck, not for satisfaction of a craft well done. Of those eight years worth of classes, I could count on one hand the alumni I would hire in my own firm, and of them I would demand three go get more experience first. As disheartening as this is, my deepest pain is the carefree wanderlust I have so deeply buried. I traded it for one deadline after another. I gave up freedom and curiosity for a life of study in the fine art of dying from career suffocation. Last month a twenty seven thousand dollar check that was written for my last corporate class bounced and when I called to find out what happened, a bankruptcy lawyer answered my call with a sad explanation about why I would not be paid. It seemed that Brad, the chief executive officer I trusted most and his receptionist, Amanda were now ensconced in a Swiss villa, with a nice little nest egg to help them enjoy European life. It seemed my twenty seven thousand had migrated East with six and a half million other dead presidents. My mind wandered back to the creeks of my childhood. Thirty six years ago my sneakers were wet. Move the clock ahead fifteen years and I was wet behind the ears. Several more calendar pages pulled from the wall and I was swimming in the fast lane. One month ago I took the biggest soaking of my career. Today as I stepped from railroad tie to railroad tie on a Swiss railroad bed, water squished past my toes with each step of my soggy sneakers. From a park near Gimel, I had just waded down stream for ten and a half kilometers, free from a deadline for the first time since I was eight. A few minutes ago, I noted the small power boat tied under the trestle, I had stepped from the creek, climbed up onto the rail bed and headed North East along the scenic lake Geneva shore. Life was beautiful. In a tangle of hot sheets last night with the CEO’s maid, she unwittingly confirmed the couple’s afternoons were spent in the beach house while she cleaned the villa and most of the day they spent on the deck overlooking the lake. Wrap around deck and lush landscaping. Perfect. I pulled the picture of the beautiful villa at Mont Sur Rolle from my vest pocket, amongst several other papers. Nice place, I shuffled the papers to bring the picture of the CEO and the receptionist to the fore front. Nice looking couple. I took a cursory glance at the will next where Brad had me listed as his only inheritor. Then I looked at the image of the Villa on the high side of the tracks and the beach house on the water. Finally I rechecked my schedule; it seems I should be in a three day Customer Service seminar in London at the moment. The last bend in the tracks is right up ahead. The five fifteen will be along in twenty eight minutes, so I’ll have a good five minutes worth of train track racket before I make my way back to the small boat at the mouth of the creek. I feel the Glock M-27 in my vest pocket, take another look at my Swatch to be sure my timing is perfect, compare with my last three wet runs and smile. Today carries with it my last deadline. Tonight the little boat under the train bridge will deposit me neatly in Thonon Les Bains. I have only to say goodnight to my brother Brad and Amanda now. I smile and whistle softly as I watch the heat waves lift from the summer heated rails ahead. Behind me a few miles I hear the horn as the train leaves Gland. |
|
| Deadline Vernon Schmid www.vernonschmid.us |
#3 of 14 |
| 1022 words | |
| The sun was unforgiving. The dust of the street was
nearly as white as the cotton shirts worn by six pallbearers carrying a
homemade wooden coffin on their shoulders. Each step they took in their
tire-tread soled huaraches puffs of dust rose around their feet marking their
silent shuffle toward the hard cemetery ground outside the colonia’s
perimeter. A family in black stood by the open grave in mourning, bright paper
flowers in hand, tears staining the widow’s cheek. The man from the north watched them from his seat on a hard bench in the square. He had come from visiting a woman in the colonia who had asked him to spit into a cup. She then took her finger and stirred the sputum, looked at him and sadly shook her head. When the interment was complete, he was still there sitting on the hard bench watching the men in battered straw hats lower the casket with ropes. Then they picked up their shovels and began to fill the grave. Watching them, he listened to the sound of hard lumps of dirt and stone hitting the coffin until the depth of dirt striking the wooden casket was muffled. Then there was no sound at all. Once the grave was filled, the men used their shovels to pat the dirt and stone into a neat mound. Then they placed the shovels over their shoulders and followed the grieving family back to the colonia leaving the bright paper flowers on the grave. The man got up from the bench and walked unsteadily toward the zocalo in the center of town. He passed Hernan Cortez’s old summer palace and an open market where vendors hawked their wares to tourists. He stopped to look at a silver medallion portraying the Virgin of Guadeloupe, fingered it for a moment and then paid the vendor two American dollars, put the medallion in his pocket and walked slowly toward the center of town. It was Epiphany and children were laughing and playing on grass around the tall statue of the revolutionary leader, Father Hidalgo. Smiling, he watched them share the gifts found that morning in their sandals. Then, he turned and went into a bank. When the clerk asked how much money he wanted to exchange, he told him all of it. He had no more use for American dollars. He took the thick pile of pesos, rolled them up and stuck them down into his pants pocket. He thanked the bank teller and exited into the bright sunlight. Outside, he sat down on the sidewalk with his back against a cool gray stone wall. He stretched his legs out before him enjoying the shade of a bougainvillea with deep red blossoms growing up the side of the wall. Leaning back, he watched the children play and then he began to doze. In his dreaming, he remembered his own childhood in a far away place called Kansas. It was Christmas and the snow was deep. The wind whistled its cold threat as if daring anyone to come outside. He was looking out the window with its drooping tattered curtains. All he could see was the bleak white landscape with stark tree limbs covered with ice. He listened as some of them broke under the weight of the ice and crashed to the ground. He was smelling the odors from the barn where he helped milk the cows earlier that winter morning, when someone nudged his foot. He opened his eyes. A small, dark-eyed girl stood before him holding a black rag doll. She held it out and said something in Spanish. He understood the doll was supposed to bring him good luck. She was giving it to him, she said, because he looked as if he needed it. He took the doll, thanked her and watched her run away to play with the other children. When the shade shifted and the sun began to beat down on him, he felt the nausea returning. He got slowly to his feet, walked a few feet along the sidewalk and began to cough. The children heard him and stopped playing to watch him lean against a building holding a stained handkerchief to his mouth while he coughed into it. In the other hand, he held the black doll. When he finished coughing, he left the town square, passed by a serape vendor before coming to the entrance of a tall cathedral church. He knew Franciscans with a Bible in one hand and a Toledo steel sword in the other carried out conversion during the days of the Spanish conquest. He knew enslaved native people built the cathedral in the sixteenth century. However, he did not think about those things as he walked slowly up the path leading from the street to the cathedral. Upon entering the cathedral, he was struck by the coolness of its shaded interior. The walls displayed a mural depicting the martyrdom and sainthood of Felipe de Jesus, the first native of Mexico to go abroad and study for the priesthood. Japanese Emperor Hideyoshi crucified him in 1596 along with 26 other friars. The man smiled as he remembered the story then he found a seat on the front pew facing the altar in the dark interior of the church. He no longer looked at the mural. His eyes focused on the altar. Beneath its cold native stone lay Don Sergio Mendez-Arceo, Bishop of Cuernavaca, once called by his colleagues “The Red Bishop” for his love of the poor. The man sat for a long time looking at the altar before rising and walking to the door where he placed all his pesos in the poor box. Then, he stood looking out into the park-like garden surrounding the cathedral before returning to the hard pew where he had sat before. He held the black doll on his lap and watched tourists enter the cathedral, snap pictures, glance quickly in his direction and then mumble and whisper as they gazed at the mural. He noted they did not look up at the large bronze figure of Christ with arms outstretched that hung from chains above the sanctuary hovering over everyone as if to say he cared. He heard the shuffle of tourist feet as they left the cathedral and then it was silent again. Smiling, he held the doll tightly on his lap. Then he dozed. The shadows darkened and he did not hear the soft tread of the sandals of the priest in brown robes. He did not feel the priest touch his shoulder. |
|
| Deadline lee10@host365.com |
#4 of 14 |
| 1731 words | |
| She didn’t need a mirror to know that her face was
pale and gaunt and her cheekbones too prominent; in contrast to her eyes, which
had sunk into deep, blue-purple pools. She’d been plump once but had no
shape now, following her double mastectomy. Her neck was scrawny but she put on
her favourite gold chain nevertheless. With the tip of a finger, she felt for
the small hole in her ear. Once located, she slid the gold, hoop-earring into
place. She did the same with the other ear. She was tired and emaciated by her
illness but was determined not to give in to despair. She wound a blue, cotton
scarf round her head, and tied the ends in a knot at the back. It failed to
disguise her lack of hair but it matched her shirt. Whereas most of the people in her lane took the long way round to reach the shops, she’d decided she would take the direct route despite being exhausted already by the effort to get dressed. She was angry and she was defiant. She would look the enemy in the face, the better to plan its downfall. She clicked the garden gate shut and stood with a hand resting on the top bar while she recovered her breath. It was a beautiful day, one of those gentle, warm days of summer that are all too infrequent. But still she felt cold and shivered. “Not enough meat left on your bones, old girl,” she muttered as she turned towards the village. She had to stop often to rest, breathless after only a hundred yards. Then she would sit on someone’s garden wall. She didn’t think anyone would mind. They all knew about her and her illness; they all knew about the illnesses of another fifteen people in the community; they all knew about the deaths of twelve more. The road passed the field in which the telecommunications mast stood. It was 82 ft tall and seemed to tower over the village, where the community huddled in the shadow of death. There was nowhere to sit near the field but she wouldn’t have stopped anyway, however tired she was. She stumbled on as quickly as she was able, her knees stiff and her gait awkward, conscious of the presence of this alien object with any faltering step. The mast had been erected in the field next to the village green, against the dark backdrop of Abbey Woods. The mast blighted lives. A giant, malevolent Darlek, it dwarfed the dark-grey service building that squatted next to it like a brooding handmaiden. Colours were bright in the clean air and early afternoon sun. Cows grazed in the field, knowing nothing of the radiation menace that everyone believed was pouring from the mast. The pond on the Green was full of noisy ducks, and moorhens aloof to their neighbours’ squabbling. But there were no children on the council playground. The swings hung on grey, rusting chains, unused for many months since the rumours of the mast’s invisible menace had hardened in people’s minds to known fact. The mast was a killer and no one knew where it would strike next. She turned right into the village High Street, joining the stream of people going in the same direction. Like her, they all bore the same expression of determination on their faces. “Afternoon, Marcie,” a woman pushing a pram said. “How are you doing?” “I’m fine, Jane. Fine.” She didn’t look fine, but Jane knew better than to pry. They passed shops with CLOSED signs in the windows and entered the village hall. It was nearly full already though the meeting wasn’t due to start for another thirty minutes. A seat had been kept on the front row for Marcie. She was one of the prime witnesses against the accused. On the stage, the Chairman of the Parish Council was chatting to his Vice Chairman. The Clerk sat at a table, shuffling papers nervously. He wasn’t used to such a large gathering. Parish Council meetings rarely attracted more than the occasional person with a complaint about a pothole in the road or some such trivial matter. In which case, the problem could be turned over to the Highways Authority. In this instance, everyone knew that the buck had stopped here. More people arrived. They had to stand at the back. Whispered comments rustled along the rows. The Chairman, Colonel Hinks, looked at his watch, took his seat next to the Clerk, banged the table with a gavel and addressed the parishioners as soon as a hush had fallen over the assembly. “Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome. Unfortunately, as the total Membership of the Parish Council has resigned en bloc, the scheduled meeting cannot be held.” The audience was stunned and the ensuing silence seemed to go on and on until... “Er?” “Yes, Mr.Hartley,” the ex-Chairman of the Parish Council asked. “Did you want to speak?” Mr.Hartley may have wanted to speak but his words would have been drowned by the sudden uproar that swept round the room. That one, ‘er’ seemed to have unleashed the voices of everyone assembled. The Colonel allowed them time to turn to their neighbours and discuss the news at length and at the top of their voices. Then he held up his hand. The volume subsided somewhat. “Mr.Hartley. You wanted to speak.” “Yes,” Bill Hartley, village butcher, stood up. “If you lot have quit, who’s going to represent us now? Who’s going to fight for us?” “That’s a good question, Bill. As you know, we’ve tried all the legal avenues. The District Planning Authority said the mast didn’t need planning permission so there was nothing it could do. The County Council said the mast was on private land so there was nothing it could do either and the Parish Council had no powers to do anything.” There were murmurs of agreement. “The Regional Assembly ignored our letters altogether. The Health Authority said there’s no proof that what we say is true and the telecommunications people say they have done studies to show that these masts are harmless.” The murmurs turned to loud grumblings, which washed over the hall before subsiding, reluctantly to give Colonel Hinks the floor again. “However….” The susurrations died away to nothing. It was so quiet that if a butterfly had gently closed its wings, it would have been heard. “Jim here”, Mr.Hinks indicated the ex-Vice Chairman, “and the rest of the Council were determined not to merely let matters rest...” He looked round the room, then smiled down at Marcie, “…because we have so many damned good reasons not to!” The stamping, whistling and clapping that followed this pronouncement shook the old building to its foundations. Dust drifting down from the ceiling was caught in a ray of sunshine that a grimy window couldn’t keep out. The Colonel glanced at the Clerk, who thumped the table with the Council gavel to gain some sort of order. “By the way,” the Colonel said, “our Clerk has also resigned his position, so there is no one of authority here this afternoon.” One or two people looked round. David Grimble, the village undertaker and ex-Parish Councillor, shrugged his shoulders, starred straight ahead and tried hard not to look smug. “And P.C. Eadie has sent his apologies. He is on a course in the city today. We are on our own.” He let this sink in. One or two people shifted uncomfortably in their seats, unsure of where this meeting was heading. Marcie folded her hands in her lap and tried to look serene but inside, she was screaming, Yes, you bastard. Finally we’re going to do something about you! “If anyone is unhappy about the people taking action,” the Colonel continued, “they may leave now and nothing will ever be said against them.” There was a shuffling and a rustling but no one stood. “Good,” the Colonel smiled. “Now, let’s get down to business.” Business took over three hours. No one had to repeat all the arguments for taking action. Marcie was one of the reasons why something had to be done. “It’s too late for me,” she said simply but pointed to Jane’s baby, “but there’s others who must be protected. It was agreed. Action would be taken in three days time. It was acknowledged that something on the scale planned couldn’t be kept under wraps for very long but it was hoped that the results of this meeting wouldn’t get out before then. The weather forecast for ‘D’ day, Thursday, was good and it would be light enough by 3.30 am, so if all the machinery and other items could be assembled in time, the days of the mast were numbered. The local landscape gardener promised to bring along his three JCBs and the appropriate manpower. It would need deep trenches to undermine the mast but he was convinced he could do it. Obtaining steel hawsers and strong pulleys might have been a problem but Joe Tolley, the builder, had a brother-in-law who worked in the docks thirty miles away. He was sure he could get him to, “liberate”, whatever was needed. He dashed away with his mobile phone trilling to make the necessary arrangements. “You can park the JCBs in my pony field,” Marcie offered. “It’s next door to the field with the mast in it but its hidden from the road. And the rest of you with your 4 x 4s, if you turn up at my house by 2 o’clock, I’ll have the kettle on.” The plan to pull down the mast needed a great deal of fine-tuning but after three hours, Marcie had had enough. The pain had returned and nearly all her strength had been depleted but she was determined to walk home, the way she had come. “Do you want a lift home?” Marcie smiled at the Colonel, a grimace that fleetingly crossed her skeletal face. Thanks, Colonel. I can manage.” Marcie struggled through the crowd. Several people offered to drive her home. She refused them all. She was determined to face the mast. She was determined to have the last laugh; if she could only hold on for another couple of days, because the damned thing was also condemned, like her. And when they pulled it down, maybe then she could rest in peace. |
|
| Deadline Darryl Brooks DarrylBrooks@comcast.net |
#5 of 14 Runner-up |
| 1490 words | |
| The deadline was fast approaching. January 15th was
less than two days away and he still sat and stared at a blank monitor. He had
been writing his monthly column for twenty-nine plus years and never missed a
deadline, but 25 hours remained and he had nothing. Not a spark. It’s not
as if there weren’t enough current affairs on which to write. President
Ford, Saddam Hussein; hell Britney Spears fell asleep New Years Eve. There was
a headline screaming for print. He knew what the real problem was. It was that -other- deadline. January 15th he would also post his last article before retiring. He had begun his career in that post-Vietnam and Watergate heyday of the late 70’s. His first article was framed over his desk, “The Day The Music Died.” Elvis and Lynard Skynard. The Iranian Hostage crisis, Lebanon, Granada, Desert Storm – he’d covered them all. From Carter to Clinton and now Bush II, the sequel. He had written about wars, politics, entertainment – even those silly-ass stories on Y2K. Now, what was he going to do? Finish that damned book? Twenty-seven thousand words and he still had no idea where the hell the plot was headed. Did the world need another book about some ex-military guy saving the world from terrorism? Maybe he should just scrap the thing and start over. Three-hundred something articles, he ought to have something he could turn into a book. Or two. It’s not as if he didn’t know how to handle idle hours. One column a month for thirty years hadn’t exactly filled his calendar. Outside of speaking engagements and public appearances, he still had plenty of time left over to wreck two marriages, and write six articles from inside a rehab clinic in Arizona. And for what? To end up sixty years old, in a three-room walkup above a dirty bookstore, with a view of the airport, staring at a blank screen. He watched as the little clock in the corner of the monitor clicked over to 12:00. Okay, one day left, and no ideas. He picked up the remote and began clicking through the stations again, searching for inspiration. Letterman, Leno, and Law & Order repeats. Christ, there ought to be a Law & Order channel. People never been to New York probably think people trip over dead bodies every time they go for a walk. He turned off the tube and threw the remote in the corner. Leaning back, he propped his bare feet on the windowsill and stared up at his wall of shame. Pictures of him with celebrities and politicians he had interviewed. The one in front of a New York nightclub with his arms around Boy George and Joe Strummer. No memory of that night other than the picture, his column, and the rose tattooed on his ass. Appropriately, that hung next to his last article before the little holiday in Phoenix. The result of an all-nighter on March 15, 1987, swilling Nyquil and Robitussin in that fleabag on River Street in Savannah, Georgia. Two nights before the second largest St. Patrick’s Day celebration in the damned country and you couldn’t buy a bottle on Sunday. He still read that column from time to time and wondered what he was trying to say, who Agnes was, and what happened to the goat. Below that, the shot from the ’91 Grammys with Neil Young and Joe Cocker. What a pair to be stuck interviewing sober. The living, breathing semi-coherent personification of better to burn out than fade away, and a gravel-voiced bad impersonation of John Belushi. So, Joe, how long did it take you to write, ‘You Can Leave Your Hat On?’ Wait, let me jot this down. I don’t want to miss a freakin’ word. He slammed his chair back down on the floor and swiveled around to face his old Royal typewriter. Wished he were still working on that thing. He could have the satisfaction of yanking the blank paper out and balling it up on the floor with the rest of the night’s abortions. He remembered the first article he tried to write on his old Apple IIe. Man, he fell in love with that spell-check and search and replace crap. Turned out a brilliant phosphorescent green narrative of Pulitzer class commentary, turned it off and went to bed, and slept the sleep of the righteous and just. Got up the next morning and learned all about saving your work on those five-inch floppy disks. Before you turn it off. Well, those days were sure as hell gone, he thought as he swiveled back toward the twenty-one inch, 256 color, blank screen of nothing in front of him. With his tower system, laptop, PDA, and Blackberry, he could file his story at the touch of a button from anywhere. He could screw the pooch at a hundred terabytes a second, whatever the hell that meant. Old Billy Gates could explain it to him. Should have asked him in that interview in 2000. Guess he was too giddy at having survived the end of the world. Boy that was some smug son-of-a-bitch. ‘Course if he could turn his hobby into a hundred billion dollars, he’d be smug too. Despite that one season on the Denny’s Pro-Bowling tour, there wasn’t much chance of that. He flipped idly through his old-fashioned Rolodex looking for a possible interview. Glancing at the clock again, he gave up on that idea. “Hey, Hillary, I know it’s one a.m., but could you spare a few quotes – it’s my last column.” He could wait until the morning, but there wasn’t any point in calling up his contacts if he didn’t know what he was going to ask. And this was the last one. He wanted to go out with a bang, not a thud. After that, there’d be nothing left. He wondered how long before he would quit waking up on the 15th each month in a cold sweat. The same nightmare every time. He wakes up absolutely sure that he hasn’t filed a story and has nothing to say. Kind of like now, he thought, tapping on a few keys.. It would take some time to get used to not having any deadlines to face, though. The life of a retired writer. Hunter S Thompson didn’t raise the bar very freaking high on that one, did he? Most people looked forward to sleeping late then hanging out all day in their underwear, but he already had that action nailed down pretty damned good. Maybe he could take up fishing. Sit on a cold, wet lake bank and try to fool a fish into biting his hook so he could drag it out of the water, asphyxiate it, and then cut it up for food. Nah, he’d just run down to Esca and order the catch of the day. As long as they let him run a tab. How fast would his celebrity status last? But all this crap about retirement wasn’t getting it done. He still had one more column to write. 2500 words. He looked back at the screen and noticed he had typed one. Today. Today, what? Today was the first day of the rest of his life? Today was the day he wrote the greatest article of his career? Today was the last time he would do anything meaningful, spending the rest of his days as a pathetic has-been? End up on some damned Whatever Happened To show with Danny Bonaduce and Gary Coleman. I don’t freaking think so. He banged the backspace key five times. He pushed back his chair a bit and stared at the screen again, the spark of an idea coming to him, just as it always did. He swiveled around and took a long look at his wall again; the stories he had written and the famous and infamous he had interviewed. Finally, settling once again on the picture of him with Neil Young, he swung back again and faced his nemesis – the word processor. He placed his hands over the keyboard and paused there a moment. He knew from past experience, once his fingers touched the keys, they would not stop until the column was done and the story was told. He rarely wrote a second draft. When he typed his byline at the end of the piece, he pushed the send button and that was it. Slowly, he allowed his fingers to come to rest. asdf jkl;. Taking a deep breath, and glancing at the clock once again, he began to type: I hope as you sit there reading this article, you will take a few moments to mourn the passing of one of the more prolific columnists of our generation. He died alone in his apartment at approximately 3 a.m. on the morning of January 15th, taking his own life after writing his final piece…. |
|
| Deadline Michael Pelc michaelpelc@yahoo.com |
#6 of 14 |
| 894 words | |
| Thunk! another minute gone, a little less eternity than there used to be, and Mickey D's fingers are flying over the keys like there's no tomorrow - 'cause there isn't, and there won't be, and maybe there never was - still, it's a minute closer to the deadline now than it was a minute ago, and the words keep slipping off the paper and landing themselves in an incoherent heap somewhere down deep within the bowels of the Smith Corona, glopping themselves together like a great big pile of sticky stinky spider poop, and the clock doesn't know enough to stop itself, so it belches out another metallic Thunk! when the minute hand jumps all of a sudden like that, hopping from the little black clock-face dot it's been resting on for the last fifty-nine point nine-nine-nine seconds and leaping its mindless way on to the next, and the clock and the deadline gang up together on Mickey D and give him constipated finger syndrome - the kind where the poopy words won't come out - so he self-administers another dose of Dr. Jack Daniels' Literary Laxative ("a Pulitzer in every pint"), but the long, thin minute hand of deadlines and death hasn't been keeping up with the Madison Avenue trade journals the way that it should, so it lets loose with a farty kind of Thunk! just like that one, though it didn't smell any fartier than the one before it except that it emanated from a different place on the clock face where it had the intestinal, intestine-less fortitude to maintain its position within the universe of everything that never was, which is so unlike the words that Mickey D still can't get to stick on the paper no matter how hard he pounds upon the keys, and he's pounding on 'em harder and harder because he thinks that'll make a difference somehow, but the words keep slipping off the empty white corasble bond of life to the one-noted tune of a clock that keeps sweet-farting Thunk! and making Mickey D curse the day his fingers were ever born and wishing he could kill the monster that invented time in the first place, but he hasn't got the time to do that right now, and the time-inventing monster should be at least halfway eternally grateful even if he never does get around to sending a thank-you note for having his long dead life spared the ignominy of a double-dip, chocolate chip double death musical extravaganza scored in double time march time to the a cappella accompaniment of the monotonous beat of yet another unavoidable Thunk! from the cocky clock that's never too busy running out of time that it can't take the time to take a break - maybe even just once in a while - so Mickey D can shovel the fallen down stinky spider poop words off the desk where they've glommy-glopped themselves in an enormous mound of semi-visible nothing that he can't see around before Lizzy gets home from work and wants to know just what the hell it is Mickey D has done with his day, seeing as how the corasable bond is as empty now (whenever that is) as it was this morning (whenever that was) when she walked out the door to the tune-less tune of a clock that kept singing Thunk! in such a unique, indistinguishable and yet recognizable way that it made Mickey D think it was laughing at him - as though it knew all along what was coming, and furthermore, that it would be oh, so most perfectly content, thank you very much, to just bide its sweet, old, infinitive-splitting time waiting for the climactic moment to arrive when Lizzy would come scream-eagle screaming back in through the door at the end of a proverbial long, hard day, and Mickey D would try like a no-brain to explain how it wasn't his fault that the words weren't sticking where they were supposed to, and just as Mickey, sweet Mickey, picks up the stinky poop pile to show Lizzy what it is that he means exactly, he suddenly remembers, at the nearly very last moment, just as the clock executes another Thunk! that Lizzy never existed in the first place, not even in the days before Mickey D got the clock that likes to laugh at him, and he wonders if maybe he can make everything work the way it's supposed to again with a bit of glue to keep the word poop on the page so it can pretend to be literature they way it's supposed to pretend to be, except that it would probably take too long, what with the deadline soon to be upon him in no time at all - besides, Lizzy went and hid the glue on him back when Mickey D confused her in his mind with some other character he'd written about once who also always never existed when the next Thunk! farts its way along in syncopated rhythmical mythical time that's nearly immemorial now and makes Mickey D forget all the Lizzies he never knew, so he reaches in the drawer anyway, groping for the Elmer's, and wraps his worthless wordless fingers around a Smith and Wesson blue-steel barrel glue gun, and he knows, sure as shootin' that that dreaded, dreadful, deadful sound is gonna be coming around again just as regular as clockwork and the tune on Arlo's guitar, and he ... BLAM! which is a long way of getting around to saying that, if it weren't for the clock in Mickey D's head, then maybe sweet Mickey would never be dead - though if, indeed, he never were dead, then alas, his epitaph would never be read, and children everywhere would go straight to bed without ever knowing The Itty Bitty Deadline Ditty of Sweet Mickey D, for you see he was a different kind of guy, that Mickey D, not at all like you and me, for all sweet Mickey ever needed in order to be was to be Thunk! |
|
| Deadline RUBY ASTARI author81@gmail.com |
#7 of 14 |
| 1950 words | |
| It's three weeks before Aida's seventeenth birthday.
The celebration will take place in C-Cafe. All the invited guests who
are coming must be cool, especially Niko --- the object of my secret affection
whom I can only gaze at from afar. This sucks! I mean, how come it doesn't?
Niko's handsome and popular. He's tall, athletic, and also has a friendly smile
for everyone around and a star status in our school's basketball team. Many
girls --- especially the slim, pretty, and also narcissistic (the kind most
plain Janes usually envy) --- are head over heels with Niko. Am I still sane enough to compete with all of them? It's true that Niko's blessed with kindness. He's always friendly with everybody --- even a fat, curly-haired girl who often gets stupefied with disbelief every time he greets her. To be honest, I often feel stupid because my usual response isn't more than a shy smile. Just seeing his wide smile is already a nerve-cracking moment to me. His perfect white teeth make him fit for a tooth-paste commercial. Okay, okay. I guess I must be realistic. No matter how nice Niko really is, a popular hunk like him deserves to be with a much prettier girl, doesn't he? I've seen lots of movies portray that before. Is there really a place for people like me? Damn it. Why am I feeling this low now? As a great best friend, Aida often scolds me whenever she notices me feeling this way. She believes that everyone has their own potentials and specialties. Well, she makes sense. Then why am I staring sadly at the black dress hung by my closet door? It's a simple black dress I bought quickly yesterday at a store inside a mall, although a number smaller. When I first tried it on, it felt slightly suffocating. But unfortunately, they don't have anything bigger than that. This is clearly a fashion cruelty! They only care about skinny people, while people like me have to order for special sizes. But I've already fallen for that dress and was way too stubborn to search for alternatives. Now I regret that a little. But I still want to wear that damn, beautiful dress to Aida's birthday party. I know, I must do something about this. --- // --- It's two weeks before Aida's seventeenth birthday. The celebration will take place in C-Cafe. All the invited guests who are coming must be cool, especially Niko --- the object of my secret affection whom I can only admire from afar. When will my courage come and support me --- even to just have a light chat with him? Maybe later, when that black dress really fits in me --- without me having to suffocate and suffer. Well, then I must stick to what I've already started. After that, I'll be brave (and sane) enough to compete with the other girls in their effort to attract Niko's attention in school. But wait. Come to think of it, do I really want to be grouped with a bunch of those aggressive girls? No way! Thankfully, I'm still sensible enough. Besides, they're actually already pretty enough to attract attention and even be approached by any normal guy --- without having to be aggressive. Since they are, that's a bonus advantage for happy guys --- because it'll save them time to make a move. What about me? Ha, even when I stay still, nobody will come. If I'm being aggressive too, they might run. Besides, who's not going to run scared when a she-rhino is after them? "Hi, Jen!" said Aida that afternoon, sitting by my side at the school's cafeteria table. We just finished our exhausting P.E. class. "Hi, Da!" I replied, before gulping my cold, mineral water in a plastic bottle. Then Aida snatched the bottle from me and finished the rest. She knew I wouldn't mind. Besides, I was also busy reading my Anthropology textbook. We'd have a test at the end of the school hours. "I'm hungry. I wanna order a bowl of noodles and meatballs," Aida announced. "Do you want some too?" When I just slowly shook my head and smiled, the short-haired girl looked startled. "Why? You usually eat that after P.E. Aren't you hungry too?" "Not right now. I'm bored," I reasoned. I didn't want to let one of my favorite food ruin my plan. "Really? I've noticed that you haven't eaten that again in a week. Unusual," Aida commented, looking even more confused. "Are you sure? You were so active in class and surprised Mr.Edo." Oh, Aida! If I eat again after working out, then it'll be completely useless. I'll only regain my weight again. "You just go on, order first," I urged her. "If I suddenly want some too, then I'll join you later." "Are you sure? No regrets??" Aida asked again. "Our break will be over in five minutes." "Go," I told her, waving her away. "Poor Mr.Amin. He has to lose one of his loyal costumers." But Aida finally gave up and left me. I saw her coming to Mr.Amin's stall, then stared back at the pages of my Anthropology textbook with a sigh. Aida's very lucky. Since she was little, she's always been skinny like Paris Hilton (but thankfully, she doesn't share the same attitude --- so that's why I'm still friends with her.) Whatever she eats --- and no matter how much --- will not make her get easily fat. Although she too is pretty and popular, Aida's also very kind and not a snob. Just like Niko. I used to think the two of them would get together, because they're as fit as a Hollywood couple. But, it turned out that Aida liked older guys. Her boyfriend Fahri is a junior college student. They met at a French course outside school. How romantic. Meanwhile, I haven't heard Niko having a girlfriend o even just a crush on any girl here. Well, lots of girls are desperately seeking for his attention, though. But, from what I've noticed so far, he only treats them fairly as friends. Nobody's that special. Well, I once had a crazy assumption that Niko might be...gay. But it's not nice to have such prejudice over a kind, gorgeous guy who's still not (seen) dating any girl exclusively. Besides, that possibility really scares me. No way! Oh, well. It's better to concentrate to my plan. Who knows? When I get to lose weight until that black dress fits me well, I'll look far more attractive than just a walking pile of meat. Maybe Niko will get to notice me more (unless if it turns out that he's really gay...okay, let's not jump to that assumption again!) --- // --- It's only a week left before Aida's seventeenth birthday party. The celebration will take place in C-Cafe. All the invited guests who are coming must be cool, especially Niko --- the object of my secret affection whom I can (still) only watch from afar. He's getting more and more handsome everyday! He looks really amazing. Especially with a pair of white wings on his back, making him look like a handsome angel in a movie. Wait. I think I'm only imagining those wings. It's impossible, because Niko's only a human (a very good-looking one, of course!) I blinked. Right. There are no wings on Niko. He's just a normal guy! (But, even if he had wings, I'd never neglect him. I think he'd look so cool, like Warren The Archangel in "X – 3:The Last Stand". The strange thing is, during break, Mr.Amin stared sadly at me in the cafeteria. Why? Was it because I stopped buying noodles from him anymore? Oh, I guess I was also hallucinating. He had no reason to feel that sad, because other kids still bought noodles with meatballs from him. Something growled pretty loud in my stomach. Damn it, what kind of monster has inhabited and grown in there? Probably a bunch of aggressively mutated worms, since I've been way too stingy to feed them properly. I think they're really angry with me now. I don't know just what they've been doing in there that seriously hurts my stomach. But, thinking of the black dress I've been wanting to wear to Aida's birthday party strengthened my will again. I must remain strong! "Jen, why are you so pale?" asked Aida worriedly. She touched my forehead. "You're very cold. Are you ill?" "Hmm, no...I'm just tired," I quickly denied. Thankfully school was over for the day. "I just wanna go home and get some rest." "But, you still can come to my birthday party next week, can't you?" asked Aida hopefully. When I nodded (despite the headache), that girl smiled with relief and gently patted my arm. "Very well. Just go home and get some rest. Sorry I can't drive you home as usual. I'm having a class with Mas Fahri." "That's alright." I nodded with understanding. We parted. Just as I walked out of the school-gate, I accidentally bumped into a tall figure running straight at me. Before I was about to fall, a pair of strong, muscular arms had quickly caught me. "Sorry," he said with panic. When I saw it was Niko...oh, my God! I'd wanted to faint right there and then. "Jenar, are you okay?" Okay, what should I say? My painful stomach has been giving me a hard time to concentrate lately. I was happy but also very much anxious. His warm touch made my knees go weak like jelly, but I also didn't want him to let me go. If possible, I'd have liked the two of us to stay that way. "Jen?" "Oh, I'm okay," I quickly replied, then smiled at Niko. Well, he finally released me. But he still seemed concerned. "You look unusually pale." Unusually? Did that mean he'd been noticing me too?? "Are you sure you're okay?" Before I got to answer that, suddenly Biyan --- one of Niko's fans who was tall and slim with full, sexy lips like Angeline Jolie's --- showed up and came to Niko. She aggressively grabbed the guy's hand. "Nik, I need to talk to you," she demanded. She flashed a cynical glare at me. "Come here!" Niko was speechless. Then he only stared at me helplessly as he was being dragged away. I could only shrug with an ironic grin. What a lousy bitch! What makes her think that only girls like her deserve to talk to Niko? --- // --- Tonight's the celebration of Aida's seventeenth birthday. The guests who show up in C-Cafe are cool people, especially Niko --- the object of my affection. He's looking very handsome. He's also smiling at me. He's noticing me! He's admiring me!! Oh, it must be the black dress I'm wearing. Finally, after three weeks of working out and diet, the damn dress fits me. This is really amazing! They're all admiring me. Aida the birthday girl is looking so lovely in her maroon dress. But why does she look so sad when she's staring at me? I'm also stunned to see Mom standing by her side. What's Mom doing there? She's coming to me and touching my forehead. "Jenar..." And I woke up in an unfamiliar room with white walls. I saw Mom and Aida, both looking worried. Nobody was wearing party dresses. I saw a plastic bottle of clear liquid hanged on the IV pole on the left side of my bed. The tube went down to my left arm, with the needle sticking into the back of my wrist. I stared at the two people in front of me. Aida pouted. "Da, your birthday..." "It was last night, you moron," she groaned. "I've expected you to come, but then your mom called to tell me you fainted while trying your dress in your room. You're lucky enough you didn't fall into coma with very low blood pressure!" Really? Damn it... |
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| Deadline Kimber Lee Cole Morgana260@aol.com |
#8 of 14 |
| 2763 words (Not eligible for judging due to word count, but author requests critiques) | |
| Everything was smaller; none of it the same. He was
ill-served by memory as the house and barn came into view. The shabby old wood
siding on the house was cracked and almost uniformly colorless under the
brilliant autumn sun. The once lovely veranda battled rose bushes that grew
huge and tangled, wrapped around the spindles of the railing in a death grip.
Dry leaves, in a rainbow of colors, blew across the worn decking and piled
against the house in mounds. The barn’s roof was half collapsed and one
door hung askew, a single hinge held stubborn, refusing to let the door drop to
the dusty ground. It was hard to believe that the old place was still
inhabited, but it was—it had to be. Ian MacShane lifted his canvas sack; it was feather light, almost empty now, though it had never been full. The yanks were kind enough to supply him with the sack, a few apples, a hunk of bread and some hardtack. Nice of them, he thought darkly, he’d only needed to cross six states to get home—it took him three months to make the journey home through the scarred and bleeding South--the Georgia left in Sherman’s wake. He cupped his hand to his mouth and gave a loud ‘halloo’. He expected one of the dogs--they’d always had dogs--to answer; but the silence remained—loud in his ears. Ian trudged up the tree lined drive, noting the numerous stumps among the remaining tall, ancient oaks. They could have been cut down for firewood by his family, or burned down by Yanks. He couldn’t tell and it didn’t matter—not now anyway. He’d seen too many stumps--trees and men--in the years since he’d left home at nineteen. The front door hung open, the dim interior cool and inviting. He knew not to expect much, but there would be something to eat—there always was. Months on the road made had him an unassuming guest, likely to eat whatever was to hand and not complain. What the war hadn’t taught him about being picky and starving for it, Yank prisons had. He stopped just inside the door to give his eyes time to adjust to the dark. Dropping his sack, he called out. “Da? Mama? Is anyone home?” There was a small noise overhead, then light foot steps on the stairs. Something hurtled out of the darkness and threw itself at him full force. He struggled to keep his balance as skirts, petticoats, and masses of red curls assaulted him. He swiped his hand across his face—her hair straggling into eyes and mouth. “Jenny? Is it you lassie?” He unwrapped her arms from his neck and set her down gently. “Where’s Mama and Da? Jenny? Where’s wee Jamie?” His sister didn’t answer. She sat down hard and dropped her face into her hands. He realized she was crying and tried to tip her face up to his. “What is it lass? What’s wrong?” The war; he thought, that’s what’s wrong. How absurd to ask anyone such a question in these times. He stopped thinking, comforting his sister--more important now. Jenny cried harder--her eyes and nose streaming as she tried to answer. “Gone. They’re gone. I’m the only one left Ian. Mama ... the filthy Yanks ... they ... oh Ian!” She dissolved again, sobbing like a child while he held her and rocked her, his single arm tight around her shoulders. “How long?” Ian patiently waited for her to cry herself out before asking again. “How long have ye been here alone Jenny?” “I don’t know.” It was early summer when they ... when they died. A few of our boys happened by two days after it ... two days later and dug the graves. I couldn’t do it Ian. I wasn’t strong enough.” Her voice broke, her guilt plain on her face. “Da was out in the pine stand where you used to hang all those pretty bird houses you used to make. He spotted them first and yelled for Ma to hide. He told her to hide me and Jamie and herself but it was too late. Ma sent me down cellar but her and Jamie wouldn’t come. Jamie grabbed up Da’s fowling piece and Mama took the shotgun, they were running for the front door and that was the last I saw of them. I heard the yellin’ and I could hear Mama screaming. Da was shouting at the Yanks and there was so much gunfire. I covered my ears, I couldn’t stand it—to hear them--maybe dyin’ and me safe in the cellar. I came up thinkin’ it was all over and I saw them ... dead, mama and Jamie and Da. The Yanks were still in the house, some of them were anyway—there were four of ‘em in the pantry and they ... they grabbed me. I fought ‘em Ian. I did! But there were four of them and I ... I couldn’t get loose ... they ... Oh Ian I don’t want to speak of it. Its over now isn’t it?” She touched the empty sleeve that fell from his right shoulder--her eyes filling again. “I thought you were dead too. I thought I’d die here by myself and have no one to miss me. I’m so glad you’re home Ian!” She threw her arms around his neck again, sobbing into the tattered remains of his uniform. Jenny’s eyes were red and swollen. Her bones showed stark against her pale skin. Ian remembered his little sister as he’d last seen her—plump faced and dimpled--dressed in full, swishing skirts. She was a rail thin ghost of herself and it pained him to look at her. He tried to think about the coming months. He wouldn’t be able to work the fields, even with a horse or mule, his missing arm made him useless—he could be dead and not be more useless than he was now. They sat at the scarred wooden table in the big kitchen, a pile of onions and a few small, green potatoes between them. She was near starved and there was no food but what lay on the table. He tried to find out how she’d survived these last months since their parents and wee Jamie had been killed, but she retreated into silence every time he asked. His mind skittered away from the obvious conclusion but he refused to allow himself to dwell on it. Such thoughts led to madness—he concentrated on her face. Hopelessness overwhelmed him and he struggled to bury it. *** He’d left a thriving plantation, the house full of family and servants, the fields full of singing slaves and buzzing insects. The trees along the drive had been tall and majestic and cool in summer. He remembered building his first tree house in back of the barn, and falling out of it too. His father had set his broken arm and his mother had fed him sweets to distract him from the pain. His brother Jamie and his sister Jenny were always laughing in his memory. His mother’s face peaceful and content as she bent over her mending. His father was a stern Scot, but a loving father. He’d been proud when Ian went with the other boys to fight off the Yanks. Now the fields were empty and overgrown, the house echoing and deserted and lonely. Jenny told him there were still a few scrawny chickens in the chicken coop and one old sow, wondering the yard and fending for herself. Jenny hadn’t had the heart or the strength to slaughter the pig and the hens were more valuable for their few eggs than they’d be for the little bit of meat they’d provide. She’d maintained the kitchen garden as best she could and there were some greens to harvest still. Other than that, there was nothing. “Where have you been all this time Ian?” Jenny held his hand as she spoke, not wanting to stare at his empty sleeve. “I fought at Petersburg—after that the Yanks took me.” He glanced down at his missing arm. “I fell. Ye’d think I’d have a braw fine story to tell about losing my arm, but it was a fool accident. I scraped it fallin’ down in an old smithy. It was Just a wee scrape mind ye . . . but it festered and the boys had to leave me--Yanks were right at our heels. They took me layin’ in the dooryard of a farm I was resting at. The Yank doc took my arm off two weeks later on the way North. I was held in one of the camps. I tried to make him leave it—what good would I be to ye with but the one arm? The doc didn’t listen though, had me held down while sawed it off—didn’t even offer a wee tot to see me through. He saved the whiskey for his own boys.” Ian didn’t say more. He wouldn’t speak of the horrors he’d seen in front of his sister. She was Innocent of battlefields. He was deeply afraid that she wasn’t ‘innocent’ in the important ways anymore. She fried the onions and potatoes and made some chicory coffee. He didn’t mind the bitter brew—to him it was a fine meal. He hadn’t eaten anything for more than three days so the simple meal was, to him, ambrosia. His own body was skeletal and weak from years of deprivation and starvation. *** Ian and Jenny lit two candles and sat together in their mother’s parlor talking of old times, good times--neither of them wanting to talk of the present. They remembered picnics and parties, friends and family, horse races and hunting. They laughed together as they told and retold family stories. Ian asked if his bird houses were still in the pine stand back of the ice house. Jenny told him she thought it was. He asked if she’d go with him to see it in the morning. She nodded, happy at the prospect. They were startled by what sounded like a huge wind slamming the front of the house. Jenny sat back down and sighed. “It’s the sow, she burrows under the veranda at night and I swear she slams herself into the house just to scare me.” Ian smiled and took Jenny’s hand. “Lets get to bed lass. We’ll go look for my bird houses tomorrow morning, and then I’ll see what’s to be done.” Ian walked his sister upstairs and kissed her goodnight at her door. He found his way to his old room and lay down, not bothering to undress. He was tired, so tired. Jenny needed him, he knew that. It was just that he’d thought of home for so long now, seeing himself wrapped tight in the arms of his family. Seeing his father, strong and whole, telling him what needed doing and that he’d be all right. He’d dreamed of his mother holding him—letting him cry, letting him heal. *** The sun woke him shortly after dawn. No rooster crowed. No dog barked. He heard the pig grunting somewhere under his window and the birds were singing. Of course the birds had enough to eat and needn’t worry about clothing or shelter—so they could sing as if the world hadn’t fallen apart, as if his family hadn’t died. As if his sister hadn’t been outraged and dishonored, her future stolen from her. He felt the loss in his bones. He ached for his family and for the life that was gone and could never come back. He ached for his sister. He ached for the loss of her childhood—her innocence. The floor boards under his feet were cool. He wrapped the quilt around his shoulders and went downstairs, hoping Jenny was up already. He found her in the kitchen, skillfully cooking an omelet with two eggs and not much else. It smelled delicious. “You’re up early Ian. I remember you liked to sleep ‘til Ma near towed you out of bed.” She smiled at him over her shoulder and motioned for him to sit down. She’d set a place for him, their mother’s china and silver—what was left of it, sparkled on the bare table. “And you’re cooking. There’s a sight I never thought to see!” He ducked as she threw a wooden spoon at him and laughed with her when it missed. “We’ll eat and then we’ll go find my tree. What do you think? Do you feel like a walk?” Jenny nodded happily. The world had lifted from her shoulders at first sight of her brother and nothing could spoil her mood. She promised to find something to pack for lunch and sent him off to get dressed. His old clothes were in the cedar chest in the upstairs hall and there was water for shaving and washing. They set out in the cool autumn morning; happy for the moment, with each other and the day. They talked of the past, the happy past. They talked of the day and the colors of the leaves. They talked of everything but the future--and the war. Neither one thought there was a future after the war. Certainly there wasn’t any food to bide them through the coming winter and no work to be had either. He had promised to think what was to be done and he had... Ian led the way to the pine stand where his tree house still stood and all the bird houses he’d made through the years still hung from the boughs of the tallest pine. They opened the basket and had their meager lunch there, under the tree, the ground beneath them a soft thick layer of pine needles. Ian looked at Jenny’s face as she talked and laughed. Her hair was clean and shone like copper pennies in the sun. Her snub nose and cheek bones sprinkled with freckles. She’d been born here in Georgia. Ian had been born in the highlands of Scotland and emigrated with his parents when he was seven. His father bought this land and built the house with his own hands. The cotton fields had just started to make the plantation profitable when war broke out. Jenny was talking to him... He listened and he laughed with her. His heart broke as he thought of the life that should have been hers. There was nothing for her now--nothing for him. They sat together under the tree, watching the sun move overhead. It was well past noon when Jenny laid her head in his lap and sighed. She looked up at her brother’s face and said; “I’ll just take a little nap Ian. Do you mind?” The sun warmed her face and she smiled at him. “Looks like this is the last of the pretty days. I can smell the snow comin’. Do you smell it?” Ian nodded. He smiled into his sister’s eyes and brushed the hair from her brow. “Take ye a nap, wee Jenny. I’ll be here to guard ye.” He thought of the birds that had lived in the houses he built. Mostly sparrows; whole families lived in this tree—in his bird houses. Not anymore though. The Sparrows fled. She closed her eyes and soon he recognized the slow, regular breaths of sleep. He looked at her a long time before he took out the knife he’d carried for almost five years. In the highlands it would be called a ‘dirk’—here it was a knife. Ian stroked Jenny’s face with the tips of his fingers. It was awkward with only one arm but he knew he could do it. There was no other way. He’d not see her dishonored, or begging by the road ... or worse. She was his responsibility. He grasped the dirk in his fist and drew it quick and deep across her throat. Before he could stop and think; he jabbed it into his own throat just below the ear and dragged it across to the other side. His hand dropped and his fist fell open. The knife glittered in the sun. Ian watched his blood mingle with his sister’s as it ran like a river and soaked the ground beneath them. He watched as the sun set for the last time, warm under the red-gold rays. A birdhouse fell from the branch above him, startling him, and landed with a soft thump--breaking open on the ground. He saw dozens of gold coins spill out and scatter on the ground. His eyes were glazing over but he had just time enough for one last thought. As the sun fell out of sight, he closed his eyes and muttered; “Aah ... Christ” Ian’s father hadn’t left his children unprotected. He’d just missed his deadline; dying before he could tell them... |
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| Deadline Gary Jugert garyjugert@yahoo.com |
#9 of 14 |
| 2276 words | |
| Watching Mattie scrape her roaring chainsaw through
Craig’s body should have sent me a clear signal she never loved him. She
didn’t plunge the blade like they do in the massacre horror films; rather,
she carved with it. She selected the entry points with care and hacked off only
manageable sizes for her step-sister Blaine to drop into plastic garbage bags.
Her precision work seemed more like surgery than dismemberment. It’s almost embarrassing to admit how I never suspected a thing. I thought she loved Craig and I imagined at the time the terrible pain she must have been stuffing deep down inside of her fragile psyche as she minced him into bits. But with the aide of perfect hindsight, I now recognize her lack of emotion as detachment. She honestly did mean to make it easy for her sister. Cutting up her old boyfriend didn’t cause her agony or joy. She saw it as a task to be accomplished to meet the goals of her real plans. I can remember watching her work and wanting her to go faster so we could silence the chainsaw, put everything away, and disappear. The buzzing and the sound of it bogging down as it shattered its way through bones and organs nearly drove me out of my mind. I kept peering out of the old barn into the driveway of the farmyard fearing I might see a glaring onlooker out there under the lights. But nobody was there. Or so it seemed. Dressed in her sister’s cheerleading outfit from high school, Mattie kept the blade running, revving the engine up before easing it onto an elbow, a kneecap, Craig’s neck. Just as the blade cleared its path at the other side of the deceased body, she would ease off the throttle and the engine sputtered back to a purr. When she finished with Craig’s body and Blaine put the last of him into a pull-tie bag, Mattie wiped some of the blood away from her face and spoke loudly enough to be heard over the idling engine. “Do you want to switch jobs?” Blaine considered for a moment and then said, “You’re already covered in blood; it makes sense for you to do her too.” Mattie shook her head in agreement and began on the other body. She squeezed the throttle and repeated the process on the dead woman. Blaine returned to her bagging duties and I began lifting the bags into the back of my pickup truck. Thinking back on it, I must have been completely unhinged. I can remember feeling a sense of pride at my helpfulness. What would those two have done without me? My chainsaw? My pickup truck? Without me, they’d be murderers. With me, they were two siblings cleaning up a mess. And what a mess they’d made of this year’s Halloween. And it hadn’t even really begun. The sun disappeared below the horizon as Mattie finished her handiwork with the woman’s body and Blaine finished the bagging. I knew we needed to wait until darkness before we pulled out of the barn with two dozen white plastic bags of human body parts. I covered the bags with the blankets we’d used to bring the bodies out to the country. To my mind, no amount of camouflage could disguise the contents of my truck; to me it was a hearse, but to others, the contents probably looked like any other pickup truck full of junk and trash. In the barn, blood and ground flesh coated the decaying wood and lay thickly splattered on the ground. Mattie looked like a character from a low-budget horror film with blood covering her from head to toe. Even Blaine ended up with red hands and smears of human remains and dirt on her legs and clothing. The work took all our efforts and sweat ran over our bodies. “We are never going to be able to clean this mess,” I said, kicking at the dirt and making a silly attempt to cover up one of the bigger blood pools on the ground. “We need to burn the barn down,” Blaine said. “We’ll start the fire right here with some gasoline and it’ll burn so hot they’ll never be able to tell anything was here.” “Oh sure,” I said, surprised with the shrill angry tone in my own voice, “a barn that’s been here a hundred years suddenly leaps into flames for no reason. That won’t cause any suspicion. They’ll never investigate something like that.” “Look Gerald, we’re all frustrated and angry, so cut the sarcasm,” Mattie said. Her voice hammered me back into silence. “It’s Halloween. Nobody will be surprised if some farm kids light a building up tonight. Besides, it’s a barn. It’s in such bad shape it should have burned down decades ago. We’ll burn it. Go grab the gasoline for the chainsaw.” I retrieved the red plastic tank filled with gasoline. We’d used a small amount to run the chainsaw, but plenty of gasoline remained to douse the barn and incinerate the blood and gore surrounding us. I splashed the fuel on anything I thought might burn and gave a triple dose to the area where the most blood had spattered. It seemed obvious nobody used the barn on a regular basis. Dusty junk, hay, newspapers and other assorted bric-a-brac tossed haphazardly around the building provided me with an abundance of burnable material to start the fire and I drenched everything I could with gasoline. I was careful to avoid splattering my cape with gasoline in fear I might end up being a candle myself. When the jug drained dry, I tossed it off to the side and faced the next challenge. What would I use to ignite the fire? My question answered itself when I heard Mattie click open her Zippo lighter and the familiar “clink” announced the final hour of the decaying barn. “You see,” she said, “being a stoner prepares you for some things.” She flipped the flame to life, leaned over and touched it to the liquid and we watched the flame race along throughout the inside of the barn and lap its way up the sides of the walls and engulf the old tires, a forgotten Pontiac, and cigar boxes filled with rusted nuts, bolts and nails. The fire burned most brilliantly in the middle of the building where I’d drowned the worst of the blood splatters. With surprising speed the heat and flames ate away at the evidence we’d dismantled two human beings. “We’ve gotta get out of here before the truck catches fire,” I said, turning to the two girls. Blaine, smeared with blood and wearing her sister’s clothes, looked angry and defiant as she watched the fire eating its victim, but Mattie, dressed in her sister’s cheerleading uniform and spattered with more blood than any ghoulish costume designer would have used, smiled at the inferno in front of her. The flames made her eyes sparkle. She looked gleeful. We climbed into the pickup truck smelling of blood, sweat, dirt, gasoline and smoke, and pulled out of the barn with only a crescent moon watching my old Ford. Or so I hoped. Were there any witnesses watching us? We pulled onto the highway bringing our horrific cargo as flames ate away at the old structure. We met nobody on the highway as we began our return into town, and I drove transfixed by my rear view mirror. In it I could see the fire lighting up the night. First the fire exited the windows, and then engulfed the roof, and just as I lost sight of the building, it leapt into a marshmallow roaster’s dream. We drove silently the rest of the way into town. I calculated in my mind how many mistakes we might have made and how much work remained to be done to escape this double homicide. I pulled into the first condominium complex on the edge of town, and Mattie’s head world around angrily at me. “What are you doing?” “The dumpster. They always have dumpsters in these complexes,” I said. “No no no. People go through those dumpsters. We need to use restaurant dumpsters. Nobody ever looks in those, it’s too gross.” She was right. We needed to make sure nobody ever examined any of the bags in the back of my vehicle. So we began a late night tour of every restaurant dumpster in the area. We sought out busy restaurants with easily accessible trash bins. I would pull the truck up, Blaine would jump out of the shotgun seat, grab a bag and hurl it over the side of the bin and we would quickly drive off into the night. Her trash-throwing skills played a key role in several miss hits and she’d be forced to go pick up the bag from the side of the can and try tossing a leg, or arm, or quartered torso a second time. After more than an hour, we still had half the bags to go and Mattie switched seats with Blaine to finish the route. We hoped to finish without an incident, but behind Paisano’s Italian Restaurant, one of the fancier joints in town, Mattie tossed the bag and headed back to the Ford at the same time the wait staff opened the back door to head home for the evening. A cowboy, a witch, a clown, a belly dancer, an alien, and a guy wearing a colorful poncho and carrying a sombrero and an accordion exited the building. The half dozen employees seemed stunned by the visitor wandering around in the darkened parking lot and they stared quizzically at the blood-soaked cheerleader. Mattie glanced at us, then at them, then back at us. Finally she held her fingers up like bird talons and hissed at them. “Oooo, scary!” the belly dancer said as she burst into laughter. “Psycho cheerleader. Nice job.” “Thanks,” Mattie mumbled before climbing onto my bench seat and pulling the heavy door closed with a bang. We discarded the last bag shortly before midnight and returned to the dorms. The girls jumped out at their building, and I drove off to the parking lot. I felt a huge relief when I found my building virtually abandoned. Tonight was the biggest party night of the year at colleges across America and nobody would have been caught dead in their dorms. I grabbed a towel, some blue jeans and headed off to the showers. I stripped off my vampire costume in the community bathroom, stuffed it into yet another plastic garbage bag and stood in the shower wanting the hot water and soap from the dispenser to remove more than just dirt. Some part of me wanted to be cleansed of the last twelve hours. If I could have found a soap to scrub away the last year of my existence, I would have drenched myself in the magic elixir. I settled for a half hour of hot water pouring over my body alone in a silent communal bathroom. When I turned off the water, I couldn’t help but sense somebody watching me. I peered around the cavernous tiled room as I toweled off, but the only suspicious thing I could find was myself looking back at me in a dozen different mirrors. I eased open the squeaky bathroom door and walked out shoeless and shirtless carrying a wet towel and a plastic bag. I headed back to my room down the long vacant hallway with a nauseous feeling in my stomach. My phone was ringing; it was Mattie. “Where have you been?” she asked in a demanding tone. “In the shower.” “You need to come over here and help us get rid of this stuff,” she said with a condescending hiss. I pulled on a sweatshirt, socks and shoes and walked across the courtyard in the dark to the girls’ building. Big snow flakes began falling in the last half hour and had already begun to accumulate, but after my nightmarish day, I could barely feel the cold or even notice the wet dollops of snow hitting me in the face. Blaine buzzed me into the building and I hiked the stairs. Inside their dorm room, it smelled like cleaning chemicals. The floor, the walls, the desk and even their books and other personal items glistened like new after a thorough scrubbing. Each wore shorts and athletic shirts, but despite their comfortable almost sexy attire, their faces looked crazed with worry. “We’ve cleaned and bagged up everything,” Blaine said. “You need to get rid of this stuff for us, please.” I felt a hint of resentment. Why should I help them clean up this mess? I didn’t have anything to do with it. Of course I knew I couldn’t divorce myself from anything at this point and I picked up the bags and vanished into the snowy night to find one last restaurant dumpster. I went back to my room carrying their bags, grabbed my own bag of trash, and then trudged out to the parking lot. I heaved the evidence into the back, fired up my old rattle-trap, and drove off into the night. I found myself starting to lose control of my emotions and I fought back the shakes and tears. During the last year, associating with those two girls led me to so many questionable choices, but tonight I’d gone so far beyond anything I could ever have imagined I feared for my own sanity. I knew I’d crossed a line. The kind of line you don’t ever uncross. A dead line. |
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| Deadline LGVernon@aol.com |
#10 of
14 Winner |
| 1869 words | |
| I see them. The dead come—came—with the territory, and have never left. They don’t tell you about that at the academy. Oh, they tell you about death, all right. They just don’t tell you about the dead. And even during the darkest, most drunken moments of those off-duty, late-night choir practices, no one ever says, “Hey guys, I see the dead. Do you see the dead?” But we all see them. I haven’t worn a Sam Browne in years. Probably couldn’t buckle on the one that hangs in the back of my closet if I wanted to. It’s dusty with age, like me, and the leather’s dry-rotted. I used to keep it spit-shined—back when I wore it. I used wadding polish on the brass of the keepers, and on my badge and on my nameplate. Now the kids I see in uniform—all of them look about nine to me—use Velcro keepers to hold their gear in place, and most times it’s not even leather; it’s that Kevlar stuff that’s become so popular. They don’t wear real badges anymore, either. They’re sewn on. Embroidered. Seems kind of candy-assed to me. It’s hard to read them, sometimes, when I get close enough to a cop to look. But when I scan past the newfangled uniforms, the shorts, the bicycles, the fancy equipment, the sewn-on badge, and the tiny, tapered, politically correct baton, and look into their eyes—really look—I know they see them, too. Resignation, not fear, is what stares back at me. Once in a while I talk to a cop. He or she’ll size me up at first. Oh, I know what they’re thinking. Old, shriveled. Couldn’t know a thing about what I do. But then we mesh. We know the same neighborhoods, know that kick of adrenalin at the sound of a siren, speak the same lingo; we’ve both felt the tingling intuition that tells us the nice mama with the two kids we just talked to would kill us if she could. Putting on the suit changed us both forever. We walk into a room the same way—looking at hands, waistbands, ankles, faces, and exits. We size people up, skeptical of every story, every excuse, every bulge, every twitch. We laugh and joke, like cops often do. Then, soberly, we shake hands and we know. We’re closer, sometimes, than kin, as we exhale regret. The dead are always with us. Even when we’re wrinkly-assed and gray, and not cops anymore. First in line—my line, anyway—are two ladies. Blue-hairs we called them, then. You know what I mean. Sixty-five, carefully curled hair, bulletproof stretch pants and striped tank tops. They were walking with their husbands. Both men had retired a week before from the same factory after forty-five years on the job. The four of them had been friends for life. It was just past dusk. They’d been down the highway to a coffee shop and were strolling back to the RV park and the brand-new, identical, motor homes they’d just bought, when a couple of big Dobermans lunged at the junkyard fence they were passing. The ladies jumped away—into the street and into the path of a Camaro—and were killed instantly. I was twenty-one, and probably looked about nine to the husbands, if they even noticed. What got me most were the shoes. Both ladies had been knocked right out of their canvas low-cuts. Impotently, I picked up the pink sneakers and handed them to one of the husbands. He stood there, clutching them, then silently handed one pair to his buddy. At that moment, I felt about nine. What do you say? How do you make it all go away? Those old ladies—probably younger in death than I am now—smile at me. It’s alright, officer. It wasn’t your fault. Next is the young Northsider. They call them gang-bangers, now. He was sprawled on the floor of his apartment, leaning against the wall next to the sofa. He’d been stabbed twice in the chest. Tiny holes. Not a drop of blood. An ice pick lay on the threadbare carpet. I knelt next to him. He was breathing, talking, alert. I called for an ambulance and started taking notes. “Who did this?” “Fuckin’ Eastsiders, man, who else?” “Did you know them?” “Yeah.” “How many of them were there?” “Two of them. I’ll kill those pinche’—” “—Who stabbed you?” “Ramon . . . Ramon Cisneros.” “From over on Third—that Ramon Cisneros?” “Y—yeah.” I scribbled, then talked on my radio, telling dispatch to put out the APB. “Was he in that old brown Pinto he drives?” “I don’ know, man. I was here, asleep. I wa . . .” And, just like that, he was gone. The ambulance arrived right about then, and they started CPR on him, but there was no bringing him back. Later, at the post, I learned that the ice pick had torn the bottom of his heart, his aorta, actually—just a tiny tear, but big enough for him to die while I was getting what I needed to put his killer away for a very long time. Not that it did him any good. He ambles along in his gray corduroy pants and his wife-beater, right behind the ladies. He smiles at me, too. There’s a tattoo on his left chest—a bleeding heart, with the name Amelia underneath. Pretty ironic, if you ask me. Anyway, those were my first three. Then comes the drunk who hanged himself when he arrived home and found his wife had had enough and split. His fourteen year-old son found him. He’d come by after school to tell his dad that he wanted to stay with him, not his mother. There are probably a dozen or more heroin addicts who tripped south from LA to get some 'good' stuff in our border community, and died in their cars, in restaurants, one in a phone booth, and often, very often, in bathrooms—because the smack was just too good. It hadn’t been cut with baby powder or corn starch or any of a thousand other products it gets stepped on with as it makes its poisonous way to the City of Angels. And so they died, with belts around their upper arms and syringes still stuck in their flesh, gasping their last in the tiny spaces of gas station bathrooms—writhing in the urine and the toilet paper incumbent with such pristine surroundings. There are children, wives, husbands, parents—killed by the ones they loved. There are accident victims and croakers—elderly who die of natural causes in their homes, the police who find them their only mourners. There are drunk drivers, and their passengers, and the others they took with them all in the name of a good time. There are six teenagers, still in their tuxedos and poufy formals. They’d left the prom for some late night kanoodling and were speeding down a dirt road in a station wagon, when the driver lost control and the car ended up on its top in an irrigation canal. Their parents reported them missing in the middle of the night, but it was daylight before we spotted the car, its wheels sticking partially out of the water. The kids tried to get out. They really tried to get out. But the car was wedged, side-to-side. They couldn’t open the doors. You don’t want to know the rest. There’s a beautiful baby girl, two months-old, who has a place in line. It was an early Christmas morning when I got that call—a frantic mother couldn’t awaken her only child. The door to the apartment was ajar, but there was no crowd. No one. Just a young Mexican woman, standing quietly in her nightgown in the middle of her low-income living room, waiting for someone to come. A secondhand crib dominated the space. “Ayudame’, por favor,” she whispered. Help me, please. She gestured toward the crib. I was across the room in two steps, and knew immediately I was hours too late. The infant drowsed in death, a tiny knitted cap on her glossy black hair, her fat little fist still against her mouth, her eyes half open. But first rigor had already set in. There was nothing I, nothing anyone could do. I think telling that poor woman—whose husband was far away in the Central Valley, picking lettuce—that her first child was dead, was the hardest thing I ever did. She had no one. No one. And was | |