Category: Short Story

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In The Queue

wildwatercoveThe park is packed with old men in high-waisted trunks, harried mothers chasing wee ones, and artificially tanned teenagers enjoying a last hurrah before school returns like a drunken sailor getting home at dawn. Water rides loom far overhead as far as the eye can see, behemoths that curve and twist into pretzel shapes, and spit out screaming riders at alternating intervals. Over the PA system Suzanne Vega’s “Tom’s Diner” booms loud and proud as groups of people relax on beach towels and folding benches, reading books, sunning themselves, or eating late lunches.

At the park’s signature ride — the highest enclosed water slide on the premises — the line appears to be a quarter mile long, as excited riders grab their tubes and latch onto the end of the writhing queue. Somewhere near the middle of the line Kara stands impatiently with her single tube in hand, her face red in spots where she has forgotten to apply sunscreen. She keeps looking behind her as if something will appear if she turns around enough times. Nothing appears.

Ben is two spaces ahead of Kara in line. He also carries a single tube, and it is at first unclear if the two even know each other. Ben stands listless as he stares straight ahead. In front of him in line are two girls, probably 16 or 17 years old, the one blonde and the other brunette. When she’s not looking behind her, Kara is looking ahead, scowling at the two girls. The brunette wears a stylish swimsuit cover-up, but the blonde has on a barely there bikini that reveals more than half of her tanned posterior.

“Stare a little harder, Ben,” Kara says under her breath, punctuating the comment with a drawn out sigh.

From behind a short, squat girl, who also has red spots on her face, shows up carrying a double tube and breathing heavily. Kara doesn’t take her eye off the blonde as she acknowledges her friend by taking one of the tube’s handles. When the other girl spots Ben ahead of them in line she smiles, an ingrained reaction that quickly changes when she too notices the blonde. Continue reading “In The Queue”

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Ten Years in One Night

How did I get here? I got home last night in a drunken haze from whatever party came after the party I actually got invited to. At least I thought I was home, but this bed feels strange, hard and lumpy like old oatmeal, and my eyes are slow to open. When they finally do I can see a ceiling fan blurry above my head. It’s whirling around so fast I wouldn’t be able to make out the individual blades even if my vision were normal.

My back hurts, too. Not a shooting ache but a dull one that usually comes from having slept on it wrong for too long. When I passed out I must have landed awkwardly on this strange bed, or perhaps it’s a futon. I slowly sit up in bed and force my eyes open more than just the slits they were. I stretch my arms above my head and notice they seem to have lost some definition. Instead of my firm biceps I see some give to them, as if gravity is fighting to drag them down, and is doing a good job of getting it done. It doesn’t compute.

The old, threadbare slippers I’ve had for years that don’t fit me anymore are gone from the foot of the bed, not that I thought they’d be there anyway, but I have to find out where I am. And suddenly I hear a noise behind my back, like a muffled thump, and I turn to see what’s over there. To my shock the thump I heard is identified as a small, mousy woman with stringy brown hair who is on the floor on the other side of the bed. I find my glasses on the side table and slip them on. When did I start wearing glasses?

Everything comes into focus then — the woman, who has obviously just been woken up by her fall from the bed, the ceiling fan above my head, and the sounds of running feet in the hallway outside of the closed door.

“What the…” says the woman in a gruff voice, obviously startled by the fall.

“Who are you?” I respond, still out of it myself.

She looks at me as if I’ve grown a second head.

“Don’t get started this morning, Murray, not until I’ve had my cup of coffee,” she says, dragging herself up from the floor. I notice she is naked, and I quickly look away, first because I don’t know her, and second because she is older. Quite a bit. By at least ten years. And those ten years have not been kind. Continue reading “Ten Years in One Night”

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A Firm Hand

firmhand“That’s not even remotely what I meant,” Christian said before turning away. The others were left to wonder what he did mean, even though it had seemed pretty clear to him at the time. None of them were brave enough, though, to open their mouths and ask him that one simple question, so one by one they exited the room. After they were gone Christian finally allowed himself to breathe — deeply in, and shallow out. It was already a tough Monday.

When he inherited his father’s massive real estate business, he hadn’t known he was also getting three of the crankiest vice presidents in the bargain. It was hard to come into work each day knowing they talked behind his back as constantly as the sun shined down from above, but he couldn’t let them win. If there was one thing his father taught him, it was never let others determine your mood. Control every situation, even when you’re not really in control of the situation.

He sat down behind his mahogany desk and was immediately swallowed up by the expectations that sitting there entailed. It was behind this desk that many of the firm’s most lucrative deals were made, what seemed like a dog’s age before he was even born. The desk had welcomed several famously rich individuals throughout its many years, none more memorable than Nelson Rockefeller himself shortly before Watergate. It was a history that Christian had studied intensively as he prepared to take over the reins of the Hand Group.

They put words in his mouth, too, he had finally surmised nearly two months after his father’s untimely death from emphysema in the fall. As winter rolled in for good, Christian realized he had to make a stand or he would be seen as ineffectual, something that would have made his father roll over in his grave. If there was anything Jonathan Hand craved, it was the symbols of power that he wielded with an iron fist until the very day he died. But Christian didn’t have the innate ability to crush others like bugs in order to get what he wanted.

“Your two o’clock appointment is in the lobby,” his assistant, Brian, buzzed him over the intercom. Continue reading “A Firm Hand”

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Me & Siobhan

SiobhanIt was ’93 and me and Siobhan were doing nothing. We never did nothing on lazy summer days on the avenue, waiting for the rain to drive us back inside. And it rained a lot that summer. It seemed like we were always tiptoeing through the raindrops on our way to nowhere. We would skip in the puddles like we were six years old, but we knew better. It was our last summer together, although we didn’t know it at the time. The summer of us.

The new movie theater had just opened up halfway down the longest block on the avenue, and there was a Taco Bell in the plaza downstairs. It cost three bucks for a matinee and we had money from our allowance burning holes in our pockets. Plus it had air, and air was in short supply on the avenue, even in summer. Ma said it was on account of black folk being our own air conditioners,what with being dark and all. I never got what she was saying, and I sweat like a hog, but none of it ever got us air. So I learned to use a piece of paper like a fan and not complain.

Siobhan lived three houses down from us, in a building that was s’posed to be abandoned. Lord knows how long that sign was in the yard out front. But her ma said it was wrong, and one day she painted over it with white paint left over from the rehab center’s new rec room. Said it made the yard look special, but all I thought was that she should have just pulled it out of the ground. No matter. We never spent time over there anyway, on account of her ma being a drunk. I never asked about it, and Siobhan never said nothing about it, but it was as clear as day. Continue reading “Me & Siobhan”

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Evolution

The stone was ice cold, frigid to the touch, exactly like the other ones that went on for miles in every direction with no end in sight. Between the cracks in those stones, however, lived infinitesimal creatures who had no heartbeats and yet were still alive. They existed in the arctic temperatures like ticks on … Continue reading Evolution