Category: Short Story

Posted on

The Terminal

Schiphol Gate D, Amsterdam, The NetherlandsThe terminal is huge. I should know. I’ve been wandering around it for the past hour, people watching. You’ve done it before. Don’t pretend you haven’t. It’s easy. Just sit down in a spot and pretend to be doing something else. Periodically check your watch, or study your fingernails, or even put on your sunglasses and pretend to be asleep. Then just listen to what’s going on around you. You’d be surprised at what you’re privy to when people don’t know you’re watching or listening to them.

But finding a spot to stop is tricky, because terminals work in cycles, just like anywhere else. Planes aren’t always taking off or arriving, but when they do either of these two things mad rushes ensue at different parts of the vast terminal. There are people running late who are dodging others left and right to try and make it to their gate. There are people who are hurrying to line up because they know how long it takes to board the airplane and they want to be able to relax in their seats as soon as possible. There are people who are waiting for others to get off the plane so they can embrace and appreciate a closeness that has been absent as long as they have been separated.

So I stop at Gate D44 because it’s not crowded with people in line for a flight or with people waiting to greet those disembarking from a flight. In fact, only two small groups of people are in the chairs servicing the gate. I glance briefly at the board and see that the next flight to Stockholm leaves from this gate in three hours. I sit down. I’m not going to Stockholm but I’m interested to see who is. This is the glory of watching and listening to strangers. I put on my sunglasses and lean back in my chair. I am directly across from the nearest small group of passengers, three people who somewhat resemble each other.

“I wish we didn’t have to get here so early,” the girl with blonde hair says. She is probably 15 years old, and already bored with the grand adventure. She is wearing a white t-shirt and short shorts. She pops her gum and I am reminded of when I used to pop my gum. Continue reading “The Terminal”

Posted on

Firefly Lights

police-lights-backgrounds-for-powerpointThe lights are obvious, their staccato rhythm mesmerizing against the gloomy backdrop of the highway at night. But they are alone, with no siren to punctuate the otherwise still air, as the old car eases to the side of the road. Steam rises from the car’s exhaust pipe, disappearing into the dark sky as it climbs. Sliding into place a moment later, a police cruiser blocks out the view of the old car as it sits idling on the shoulder, like an old lover tossed aside.

A man emerges into the shadow cast by the blinking lights. He gazes for a brief while at the passing traffic, at all the cars that ease across the lane line in the opposite direction, their drivers splitting their focus between the lights and their own destinations. It’s easy for him to forget the past when the present is so immediate, so sensitive. His cruiser purrs at his back, bringing him back to the moment, and the reason why he stopped in the first place. He approaches the old car, his long stride getting him to the driver’s door in four steps.

The man in the old car sits ramrod straight, but his back is crooked so it hurts him to no end to assume such a position. He just knows it’s expected of solid citizens, something he is not, but something he wants to portray to the officer who is approaching his vehicle. He checks out his eyes in the rearview mirror, and they sparkle with a pent-up mischief that might just be his undoing on this starless night, on a road he’s never been on before, in a county that detests his kind.

He has long, greasy hair that hangs limp past his shoulders, in the fashion he has always preferred, even after the lice were found to have infested that same hair some months back. In fact, he still itches from time to time, what he perceives as a ghost itch but what is in fact still lice doing spring cleaning in the nest on top of his head. There are beer bottles scattered across the back seat of his car, something he can do nothing about. At least it’s not light beer, he thinks, strangely proud of his manly attitude in the face of difficult questions to come. Continue reading “Firefly Lights”

Posted on

The Beginning of Hope

OldBlackManThe room is deathly quiet, save for the soft sound of sniffling in the corner. That’s where the baby is, asleep on the floor, atop her favorite blanket. There was no money for a crib, or a mattress, or even a pacifier to soothe the child’s sore gums, so he had improvised. It was something he had experience in, the improvisation, not the child. He is absurdly afraid of the child, which is the reason for the separation, the opposite corners.

The man is a study in contradictions, with his frayed suspenders and designer shirt that do nothing to hide his emaciated figure. Indeed he appears to be wasting away as he sits there staring out the large, clear window. He breathes a sigh of relief that the child is asleep. The previous night had been a long and harrowing experience, punctuated by screams that pierced the static air of the room. He aged a year in one night.

The woman left in winter, during the longest month. He knows because he marks it on his calendar, the old one that he recycles from year to year. It is missing April but April never seems to come when he wants it to anyway so it is not relevant to him. He cannot remember why she walked out the door, but he can remember the vacant look in her eyes, the ones that used to give back more than they took in. She looked at him with those strange eyes and walked out the door.

The baby shifts on the blanket and he recognizes this as a precursor to the child waking up again. He covers his eyes with one large dark brown hand, hoping to preserve this quiet for just a few moments longer, knowing that it is probably an impossible dream. He wishes he were the one who left. He had been thinking about it, of course. The child hadn’t been part of the plan for his life, no more than it had been for hers. But he cannot abandon it now. The stirring continues. Continue reading “The Beginning of Hope”

Posted on

What She Needed

His hands always drove her crazy. The way his palms slid smoothly across the inside of her arches sent shockwaves through her brain, every single time. The oils he massaged into the soles of her feet lulled her into a state not unlike sleep, where everything was balloons and cotton candy, a veritable smorgasbord of heavenly proportions. His ministrations tricked her mind into thinking only the two of them existed in the whole wide world, that none came before and none would come after. It was just them, in the moment, forever. Or at least until the half hour was up and she paid him the $50 bucks she owed.

Valerie almost never went into the mall by herself, preferring to do most of her shopping online, like most people her age. It took about two seconds for her to buy a few entire outfits, while still in her underwear, and all she had to do was use her credit card like it was going out of style. That turned out to be her problem, though, when every month the credit card bills would fall into her mailbox and put her into a mood. And of course when she was in a mood over money the only thing that could soothe her was another visit to Nails & More in the mall. It was the only reason she ever went.

Then there was Thad too, the man she was sort of seeing. He reminded Valerie of a hitchhiker who was always thumbing a ride to somewhere new because being stagnant was not in his vocabulary. It always surprised her that she could even call him her boyfriend, but he had allowed it just a few weeks before, and she even changed her Facebook status to mirror the sentiment. But she hardly ever actually saw him — he was always on the road with his band — which made it difficult to rely on Thad for support, moral or otherwise. And she needed him desperately right then.

It had hit her like a sack of potatoes when her boss called Valerie into the office to deliver the news, a surreal experience if there ever was one. Twenty minutes later she found herself wandering the small mall like one of those zombies she liked to watch so much on TV, aimless until she found the one place that felt to her like home. Continue reading “What She Needed”

Posted on

How to Trap a Leprechaun, Part 3

youve been leprechaundYeah, I totally made it to the Olympics, against all odds, but that was just the beginning. I kept reminding myself of what needed to happen as a part of my complicated plan to trap the leprechaun.

  1. Get to the Olympics. Check.
  2. Win the Olympics. In progress.
  3. Wave the gold medal around like some kind of lunatic.
  4. Locate the leprechaun attracted to the gold.
  5. Utilize LeRoy’s trap, whatever it happened to be.
  6. Get my 3 wishes.

Of course my mom had to make some kind of big fuss about all the time I spent in the gym working on my rhythmic gymnastics routine, but she went with me to all the competitions anyway. It didn’t help that she argued with all of the coaches and booed the other people going for the Olympic spots, but I pretty much blocked her out and kept the peddle to the metal. I had to get a special break from school for all the competitions, so I didn’t really get to check up on how LeRoy was working out, but otherwise things were going to plan.

And when all was said and done, I was invited to be the first male to compete in the discipline. I didn’t care about any of that, but my mom was pretty impressed by it all. The entire journey, though, was relatively easy, and it made me just a little worried that something big would happen to ruin my dreams of those 3 wishes. I did get a good sign, though, the day before we arrived at the Olympics. It rained all night. Continue reading “How to Trap a Leprechaun, Part 3”

Posted on

How to Trap a Leprechaun, Part 2

leprechaunThat’s where the plan fell apart because my dentist refused to promise me a gold tooth. Apparently you only get gold when you’re a gangster or something. No wonder not too many people claim to have actually caught a leprechaun in this day and age. If only more gangsters believed in the magic of the little green folk. Of course that still wouldn’t help me get my hands on one, and there is no way I could pass for a gangster, so that plan was out.

Anyone have a key to Fort Knox? Seriously, though, I knew I needed a different plan and one dropped right into my lap the next day when I saw that the Olympics was on TV. A strangely anorexic young lady was standing on a podium with a medallion around her neck, and I’d be a monkey’s uncle if it wasn’t gold! It took me about an hour to figure out what she did to get that gold medallion, but I finally found out. Thus began my rhythmic gymnastics training.

Luckily for me, you don’t have to be in shape to do it. I figured while I was learning how to throw those ribbons and giant balls the leprechaun would be busy finding other gold or sleeping. They must be awful sleepy sometimes with all the running around they do either rushing to hoard gold or trying to escape greedy kids wanting to capture them for wishes. So while my leprechaun friend was probably fast asleep I was in the gym throwing and catching a basketball and an old scarf. I could almost feel the gold in my grubby hands. Continue reading “How to Trap a Leprechaun, Part 2”