Enchanted

I have to get her out of my head. She needs out; she's unattainable.

I don't know if it's modesty, reality, or both. Love might be blind, but like is a pheromone induced hallucination.

I think if I was more experienced, less shy, more over less self defeating I'd have a chance, but even circumstance is an impervious engineer.

So out with you; my head has no more room for more daydreams. I've had too many daydreams to find any real affection.

Only...sigh. How do you drown a feeling? Especially one so close to your heart. Such a triumphant feeling, the kind that chides you when you're angry, whispers in your ear when you're feeling low. How do you say no to the charitable spirit that haunts you?

You wait every night for the next best thing to knock on your door. But maybe she knocked on the wrong one. And even though you never told her you were waiting for her, she leaves the room but never your head.

-Dan

Allegheny

Maybe it's just the irony of the situation. Maybe it's just the lack of learning that happens at this school. I can't say I belong here, I certainly can't say I enjoy here. For what though? What possible finality is it to say I belong anywhere else? There is no perfection, but what's so wrong with striving for better?

If only indecision didn't cost 40,000 a year.

-Dan

Faith and Reason

I'm thinking of joining the Unitarian church. Partly, I think the sense of community would be theraputic to my listless head.

Secondly, I want my kids to grow up with religion. Because, religion is grounding and perhaps we can't fly just yet. I've floated. Floating on down life's bends; it's hardly memorable.

Without prayer or devotion, I pledge faith in the absurd. I'd rather the poor sucker(s) I force into this realm to at least have that.

-Dan

The Final Portfolio

The following posts are of short stories submitted for the Writing Fiction 206 class that I took last semester. I have been meaning to posts these here but I think I was just waiting for a restless night on the eve of a major life changing exam to finally do it.

Do not let the word "final" in "final portfolio" fool you though, these works are far from finished. That being so, I make no promise to finish them. Let their drafts rest here, a snapshot of what is and was. Maybe there's a good life lesson in their limbo too.

-Dan

Records

After every race he came home and queued the VCR. It never struck me as weird that he recorded his own races; it seemed like the natural thing to do.

He never said that he wanted to watch the races with us, but still we never watched them live. We would ignore the fact that our father was racing at over 200 miles per hour while we played in the backyard. We waited to watch his races with him.

So we didn't see him fireball. I doubt that any of us really wanted to, but I saved the black tape anyway. He didn't leave much behind, so it was sort of a small memento.

"I'm really sorry Jake."

As I grew, I began to realize that Dad didn't come home to watch his races because he enjoyed watching them with us; he was watching for little flaws. He was watching because he couldn't put the race behind him yet. I don't know if he ever did.

He didn't leave much behind to begin with, big things mostly; a big TV, a big computer, and a huge checking account. I decided he just didn't own small things; he was not the type to dote or dwell on anything small. I think he was the largest thing he knew of.

To be honest I liked my original draft better (it might be posted here, I don't know). This one might be stronger in a literary sense, but it strays from the original feeling that had motivated the story in the first place. Fun fact, this story originated from fragmented dream.

-Dan

Loss

"I want to watch you get old," he said to me while we were dancing one night. He was earnest too I realized, he wanted to watch me wrinkle like it was the leaves turning brown. From that instant, I wanted to watch him get old too.

There was an ache in my heart then, it told me that I wanted to be near him that day when he would die. I wanted the bleak emptiness of loss. I wanted it to be real and not the distant hollowness of just another lost soul. I wanted to more than feel hollow, I wanted to know what it was like to be full, so that the emptiness was real, the tears truly bitter with loss. I wanted to be lonely when I died.

And realizing this I found myself nearer to him. We made love in the bedroom, and I moved in.

I made him breakfast in the morning, and sometimes we watched television in the night.

We took our oaths with little necessity; it was mostly so he could start sleeping around. But his lust faded with his looks, he was always faithful in his heart.

He looked to me from the tattered sofa, and his eyes went weak at the knees. He fought back tears briefly, as long as he very well could, but he began to cry softly. His lip quivered.

"Katelyn," he uttered so desperately, "I loved you." And then he stopped crying, he wiped his tears slowly as he sniffed.

Through sad teary eyes his mouth was wrinkled in a smile. He looked into my eyes, my lips a sad purse. We shared another moment; we shared our last moment where our pasts came to fruition, where our lives came to a halt. With a swollen heart I saw his chest shrink as all of the unimportant stuff came out. His stomach dissolved and his lungs heaved and dissipated. In his last move he bent down and hugged me in a loose ferocity. In his arms, he shook like he held a nothing, guarding it from the wind. When he closed my eyes he was gone forever leaving me with nothing but the gentle breeze.

He used to hold me and though we'd be motionless, we'd be dancing again. I was alone like so many years ago but empty too. So empty and complete.

I like this one's take on love. It might be my take on love, but inexperience might forsake me. Too much weed and lonliness inspired this one.

-Dan

Cruising

I rode a hero of mankind. I was like a lion soaring across the Serengeti upon the two twirling wheels of my Huffy. I was king of the mountain (and the jungle while we're at it). I was invincible and insurmountable, but like in fiction, it was somewhere between the fueling station and the destination that I realized I was incapable of being capable.

I knew I was in a difficult situation, I surmised a path of danger. There was a mile of highway or two miles of confusing cul-de-sac, either way I sailed my bicycle into a stash of open boxes next to a dumpster. Since I had no lock, I hid it. God help it through these bleak hours I thought. I rather liked the two-wheeler, but perpetuated freedom was at stake.

Still, of all the times to amble and stumble-aimed home, 3 am was dire. It was dark and cold, November is a frosty month, and not the enjoyable kind either.

But me, I was more concerned with the blue and red of the law, the kind that mulls over the streets looking for something I just never understood. See, I took the highway home since the lineless roads were confusing and a moreover convoluted path. Navigation was not a skill I possessed at this precise moment, but neither was wit for that matter.

While I walked over the brush of the sidewalk-less route, I realized that there was something unstable about the empty highway in the dead of morning. No motion resounded save for the careening beams from the frozen moon and the thawing street lamps. I thought that there was something ominous about the grey asphalt under a black sky, like a photograph without the contrast.

Freedom was not yet free at these volatile hours and it was like walking through a snow globe without any snow, a pointless nothing. I had no idea why I walked the stupid tundra of regardlessness besides the fact that I shouldn’t go to sleep in the cold. Life was a token of whatever.

As if the bleakness wasn’t encompassing enough, something stirred over the horizon. Suddenly engines were thundering, and no matter how common my common sense, my feet kept moving along the open sidewalk.

Duck, slow, compose myself! I needed to be tamed, I needed to regale myself in the 'what ifs.' My feet had a rhythm, I'm sure, but rhythm was a word I couldn’t understand at the moment. I knew my slovenly disregard for straight walking was a sure-fire ‘kick me’ sign taped on the back of my head.

In sightless moments, blazing speed flew by my dazed and filmy eyes. And, as such is the facet of momentum, it became the police vehicle that was perceived in a hopefully not so mutual realization.

He answered with a u-turn executed with the admirable finesse of a driver who could do such a thing next to the sign that forbid it. He revved. And then, to the horror of all the hope and light-heartedness in the world, he hit another u-turn, completing the full circle of absurdity that had become my night.

It was like a bad dream you never expect. Something out of a story; something out of a 'who-dun-it,' or a 'why-me.'

Like a snail perched next to a platter of es-car-go he slowed slowly to my left. I pretended not to notice his hot glare, the one that every copper has behind his badge.

"Hey there!" he gloated! He might of hit me with his vehicle but there really was no point. I wasn't a deer trapped in his headlights, no, I was already under his wheels now.

So I went for broke: "Yeah, hey! --How's it go'in?" and who would have thought I had it in me.

"Highways are a dangerous place to walk, son, how'd you like a ride to your destination?"

It was deceitful, I was sure. You could tell it in the eyes you refused to look into. Power pulsed down these black roads and he owned it all, now in the dark more than ever.

"Hop in. Don't be a fool either boy, this is a gesture!"

I had proved I was not a foolish man many times before, but there was no depth in that, and I was certainly not a quick thinker. I flopped into the cruiser like a bad apple, it was welcoming, and it was damned cold outside.

"You can call me Chuck, and well, I can't stand to see ya have to walk through this bitterness, not on a slow night like this anyhow. Now where do you need to go?"

"Just off of Cliff, Franklin Street, officer Chuck." it was all the natural I could muster as things got out of hand.

"You know, these are some real comfy seats," I exuded in honesty; they were thick with spongy comfort, a treat and respite. There was nothing stopping me from taking it all in now. If I were truly in the barrel, I would swim while I could. Mercy was the son of empathy I rationed, and even Chuck here knew what empathy was as he had just rescued me from the cold.

"Yeah, the cars are the best part of the job," he exchanged the pleasantry as he pulled into a speed. I couldn't think of anything to say though, and I think it was my silence that put me off guard. I was resigned.

More time passed, him in his navigating, and me in my brain. Finally and suddenly he had something for me. "I’ve got something to show you," he winked slyly, like a haughty thief. He knew something I didn't, something hidden and treacherous, and he loved that I had no idea what was coming next.

He reached underneath the hulking radio. I can't imagine knowing much about car radios, but it doesn't take a fool to recognize that this radio was well equipped. Something about its dials made me question everything about myself, something about its buttons made me consider just what my reality had become. But he didn't reach for the radio at all, it was the panel under the radio he had long considered.

"Have you ever been in a police car son?"

"Once before," I lied unwittingly forgetting the fifth, "but not like that! I was a free man and I rode in a way that is, sort of, but not exactly, like tonight."

"Well, I, didn't mean it like that, I mean, let me share a thrill with you, a thrill that only those who have been in a police car in the early morning hours know. Something really fierce--do I take this road here?"

I nodded and looked down at my cellular phone, it glowed an eerie green haze. There was a film of alcohol blocking my sharp-sighted vision from picking up the exact shapes and sounds. I noted that it was 3:84 am.

Mr. Chuck was grinning in a way that made me question his sagacity. I no longer trusted him as a full grown adult. I wanted to tell him that this was not Christmas morning, I wanted to yell at this awful absurdity. This was anarchy, and then he flipped the switch.

Lights blazed the environment surrounding. Potent variables flicked out of darkness and into those unreasonable shadows that flashlights make.

“Bleeeeeroo! Bleeeeeroo!”

It was dizzying and nauseous, but the moment I felt it hit my stomach I realized that stakes were too high, and that these seats were too springy, too nice, too perfect, to redeem my stomach on.

"These hours are too tame to resist the fun! Can you blame me...wait, well I can’t believe I missed it, but what is your name?" why it was Larry, though through all of our introductions it completely slipped my stupor.

"Larry, friend, and it certainly is eye-opening."

"Hah! I knew you'd enjoy it Larry," he sighed relieved and I felt the nausea swell up higher, skipping my throat and swamping my cortexes. The scenery blended and each house lingered on my cornea long after we passed each. He was content with the radio playing now. He was content to let bygones be bygones. But was I?

As we finally pulled up by my house I tried not to imagine all the different insides that weren't quite right. I stayed composed without a crutch, like a compass on a pole glued to North.

"I had a time and a half, Chuck, sir…and you know, I’ve never consorted much with the boys in blue, but I'm feeling sort of, indigo myself,” I gave him a drunk smile, “presumably there is life in your kind yet…And thanks, again."

Chuck shifted it back into drive, and even though his feet were idle, the car slid past as he gave one final tidbit:

"Just remember the next time you see an officer, men are men, boy."

An amalgamation of all the times I walked, biked, and drove home drunk last summer. This piece was ambitious at first, and here and there it still is, but I didn't have the skill or ability to be ambitious throughout and maintain the character or narrative in any sort of comprehensible way. The police are a ripe subject for literary analysis today. Do you remember growing up with them in reverence? Were you a junior deputy when you were younger? Maybe you loathe their tactics and goading power in your worldliness. Perhaps you're just sympathetic when you realize the stigma against them has cost innocent men their lives.

There is something wrong, something horrifying, and something fascinating in the way police exist today. This story scratches the surface of a subject that I one day hope to be able to take on. Today, I fear I don't have the talent to climb such a mountain though.

-Dan

Mysterious

The cold hard truth was that it could have been anyone at the party, and that's what scared the mayor. It was his own town that had stolen from itself and the only way to find the guilty party was to accuse and investigate all the victims. It was an awful situation.

There were leads of course. Like the notorious shoplifting mother, the one whose clothes kept getting nicer even after her husband had been laid off. Things like that make you wonder about a person's character, and about yourself too. When everything hits the fan, would you be any better than a shoplifter?

Bruno, the chief of police surveyed the scene and the victims accordingly. He noted everything that was out of place, every eyebrow and every twitch.

But even with the notorious Sally Swift-fingers sitting on the Victorian armchair with her teacup poised, the mystery was far from solved.

"Do you have any information on the missing item, miss?" Bruno asked her coarsely.

She shook her head slowly and gave a slight but modest shrug so as to not disturb her beverage.

In the next corner there was the pack of adolescents snarling. The town's winning soccer team was invited to the party in possible error. They had all the ball handling skills and unfeeling brutality to take first, but were too young to have any of the charisma or honesty to appreciate it. Anyone of the Thompsontown Tally's could have been the cute culprit.

Bruno took a long time gazing them down. He didn't need to say anything to get them to crack. He focused on each one until each one was reduced to a parent-pleading child under his x-ray eyes. One even broke down into tears and swore he'd never do something like that, never.

I think a lot of people suspected that Frank had it honestly. Everyone knew about the poker games that went on in his basement, and the mayor of all people was real low on chips. But, me, I never suspected the mayor. He was desperate, and I may have voted for the other guy, but he was dedicated to the town. Plus, there were so many other easier and less noticeable ways to steal from the town.

Another partygoer was the librarian Mary-Ann Walker. Mary-Ann was once a sophisticated brat. She was the kind who didn’t need preschool, who read at a fifth grade level at three all while learning how to multiply and divide two before she knew what four was. She was potent among all the variables as a kid, but as an adult she was as discontented as she was brilliant. No one fawned over her ability to solve complex problems any longer. She had all the craft and none of the empathy. If I was leading the investigation, I would have marched Mary-Ann into the interrogation room long before I made any kids cry.

Bruno didn’t think the same way as me though. He hesitated on Mary-Ann for only a second before skipping her altogether, he had caught a whiff of something else. I was clearly out of my league.

He walked over to me solemnly now. He wasn’t going to make me cry or ask me politely for that matter.

"Was it you?"

I conceded that the truth was good to share, so I decided to tell him like it was:
"Yeah."

By far my weakest piece. I wrote this because I needed more pages. I started this after the deadline for the portfolio had passed. What brought on the subject, I can't tell you. This one has no previous drafts and I highly doubt that it will have a second. It's kind of cartoony, which is a success in a way since that's unusual to my style. I think I just wanted to surprise the reader with perspective, but it's weak, among all the variables.

-Dan

Cityscapes

Way back when I first met Harold, long before he started to drink my whiskey and long before he disappeared from the bar scene of Merrimond, I was content. It didn’t seem to last after I met Harold though, he managed to change everything.

In this city though, things are always changing. Sometimes I think that the longer you live here, the more the city has already changed who you are. I didn’t always used to serve drinks even. I used to sit on the other side of the bar. I used to drink; I used to fight. The way the city’s gears go and grind, it’s haunting to realize you’re just another cog in the machine.

For Harold though, it wasn’t such a big deal. Harold for one never submitted to the notion of cogs or machines for that matter. Harold was rebellious in the only way possible; Harold was a pacifist. Sometimes there’s a person who you couldn’t describe with all the words in the dictionary, but not Harold. Harold was a pacifist.

Harold always talked so softly he could put a baby to sleep. Sometimes he would rattle off an epic tale that the bar would forget because the words were just too soft to commit to memory. He was soft and idealistic in an enviable way.

I remember the first time he came in my bar, it was just Karl and me that day, and we talked about the newest tax reform the mayor levied.

“They’ve got it all perfect this time Karl.”

“If that’s what you think, then they’ve gotta be doing something right.”

When Harold came in he sat down before the door closed behind him and lit his joint. He didn’t even wait to order his whiskey before jumping right in.

“What do you like most about your monotony?” he asked me so callously. He didn’t even know my name, but I guess Harold thought some questions were more important to ask first.

I told him I had no idea what he was talking about. Turns out even pacifists had their way of riling people up, especially Harold.

He apologized and ordered his whiskey.

He had hit it that first day we met, and from then on I could never shake off Harold’s insight. I think it wasn’t until the second time I met him though that he started to bother me. At first he was a customer, but slowly he became a regular. Harold became a constant in the monotony of my weekly grind. But even when I started to despise him, I still let him smoke his joints in my bar. After all, he was right.

Things settled in the most horrifying of ways. With the help of Harold’s insight and influence, the bar began to discuss more surreal subjects to pass the hours. Sports eluded us and the TV got dusty in the corner of the room. Harold eventually made every alcoholic a philosopher.
Everything was changing, but even that was going to change, and once again Harold would be at the heart of it all.

It started with the kind of morning where habit could steer the whole thing from when you turn on the neon signs to when the lunch crowd started to get things busy. It was the kind of day so sickeningly ordinary, it begged you to forget the fact that you lived in a city that wanted to tear your soul out. So ordinary it taunted you, like nothing happened yesterday or the day before that even.

It was a relatively quiet morning as far as Monday mornings go. There were regulars and the business folk getting their pre-work insobriety going, and then there were the alcoholics and the laid-offs. It was quiet despite the small crowd; groggy men enjoyed their solitude.

Harold came in and sat in his usual patched up stool. In the dim light he was peaceful, or maybe it was just the thought of the shot of whiskey in front of him, full. He was troubled. I saw it on his face when it was lit by the haze of dawn as he sauntered in.

“Murphy, we’ve known each other a while now, huh?” His words were disturbing but his voice was melodic, “I’d hate to say you were my closest companion.” He sat there brooding over his words as he contemplated his whiskey. He knew he had hit a nerve with me, sometimes I began to think he did it just for fun, but not this time.

“Look Harold, I’m not in the mood for your shit today.”

“You’re never in the mood, Murphy,” and even upset he spoke so calmly anyone would have sworn he was talking about a cloud or maybe even a marshmallow.

“You’re never in the mood for anything but serving drinks. But today, I need you friend, I need some support.”

Me and Harold had a good thing going for the last seven years, he paid me to serve him whiskey and lagers, and I liked it that way. I didn’t like to know about the men I served. After awhile, you don’t want to know about the people you’re poisoning. It was unfamiliar was territory I didn’t explore with any customer, much less the one I had to serve every day. Maybe I should have listened to him though.

“Now come on Harold. Just drink your whiskey.”

“Murph,” he whimpered unnerved, “I can’t seem to fight for anything. What good is someone who can’t fight?”

“What do you need to fight Harold? Hell, the fact that you’ve never spilled a drop of blood in my bar may be the only reason I like you at all.”

“Fighting and being able to fight are two different things my old friend, and that’s the problem I have today. How can survive if I can’t fight? It’s like that overpass graffiti on 7th and Point. The teenager who loved so much she climbed a skyscraper to ask for someone to ‘find a cure.’ Now it’s one thing to not understand words like manifest destiny, but I’m dealing with something completely different.”

Philosophical discussion was par for the course for Harold, but this was far more personal than anything he had ever said in my bar. I still hadn’t put the pieces together when the door to the street swung open so the morning light could sprawl.

“What’s good Murph?” I pulled away from Harold to fix Karl his drink.

“Harold here is having a tough day.”

“Already? But it’s only 7, now whatsa matter Harold?” Karl slid off his long overcoat and hung it on the tree next to the booths. Harold sniffed the air lightly to gather himself.

“Well, Karl, the world’s out to get me, and I don’t think I’ve got a chance.” Karl wrinkled his nose in sympathy and mystery.

“Sounds rough kid,” he sipped his gin and we both listened while the ice shifted and clinked. Karl was old and sage-like, the epitome of success. He hunched over his drink in his tailored suit with his white halo of hair, and he thought:

“This world makes you shit diamonds sometimes, you know? But no one ever said hard work and pain is untouchable, no one I’d trust anyhow.”

“What if I can’t shit diamonds Karl?”

“Then you ought to start learning how.” Karl took a hard sip of his gin.

“I’m having some real trouble finding motivation today, I can’t shit diamonds, I can’t shit coal, and maybe I just don’t want to shit rocks to begin with.”

“I suppose you should count your blessings that your line of work doesn’t require any motivation then.”

“Yeah, well, that’s what I thought too.”
Harold resumed his inspection of his whiskey shot as me and Karl exchanged confused looks.

“Harold, what’s going on?” I could hardly believe that the words came out of my mouth. Harold was surprised too and suddenly he was rejuvenated, if only a little.

“I don’t think you’ll believe me, but I’ll tell you both anyway to get it off my chest. My freedom is at stake and some suits are looking to make me a patsy; they’re old friends if you will.

“But that’s not the problem even. Motivation has always eluded me, you two can attest to my apathy I’m sure, but now that it’s all at stake, well, who am I to not give a shit? There’s the conundrum, here’s my life defining moment and I’m spending it sober in a bar.”

“You know, I never quite understood you Harold. Everyone’s gotta pick battles, but you don’t seem to pick any do you?”

“I guess were on the same page then.”

Suddenly then light was everywhere, fumbling in, drunk off the fumes of old men and alcohol. Harold paled, and slowly the dull din of the morning drunks calmed to silence.

Silhouettes of black nothings liquefied gradually into wholes. They emerged from behind the sun but still ahead of it the entire time; they denied it. Circumvented the only godforsaken sun.

The two brown men stood motionless, and maybe they were there the whole time. It was like they condensed out of thin air. Their features were hollowed out as the door set itself back in front of a horizon.

I don’t recall their features as remarkable, but Harold sped his lackluster heart. He readjusted himself and took his shot before raising two droopy fingers towards me. I brought him two more.

He forced me to ignore the two men as I poured more whiskey, and I was grateful. Something about how the suits on these men didn’t stop to be hung up on their pegs bothered me.

The one stood unremarking, but the other slanted his lip in a perplexing uncertainty.

More shots were poured, for Harold, and he took them slowly. He sipped his whiskey once or even twice before the last fatal throw back. He would slam each down with a 'tap'.

Harold got drunk in the limelight of the bar. Every man regardless of sobriety focused on the electricity in the air.

"Harold, you mother-fucker the jig is up for good.”

I think for a second we all doubted Harold. For a moment we didn't recall the last distraught of a man half its size, and seven years is a little too long to know any one man.

It only made sense to be discouraged; it only made sense to act off-guard.

At least before Karl pulled out his noose and tied the John up by his neck. It was Karl in his tailored suit, his arms wrinkled and tired but now bulging with muscle and vigor, it was Karl with a unsuccessfully gasping man between his elbow and ribs who jarred a deep seeded hatred from all of our respective bowels. The absolute reality of this surreal moment shook us to our very cores and the finale commenced.

His eyes bulged sympathetically.

“Leave Harold be,” he said plainly and absurdly. The suit was wrinkled under Karl’s elbow now, and the trance subsided. He was a man after all. When Karl let him down two alcoholics and a man who was laid off the week before stood up in warning. I think the suit got the message; he sat collecting his breath and losing his posture while his partner stood with his mouth ajar.

Neither felt the need to threaten any sort of power, whatever power they had been appointed had been stripped.

Things never were quite the same after that. Harold didn’t talk as much, and soon after disappeared forever. No one knew what had happened to him, but everyone was sure the suits had nothing to do with it. In the end I didn’t stick around to figure out how the city finally got Harold.

The contentment that the city had once given me and then brutally took away from me, I just didn’t think I’d ever get it back. The week he disappeared was the week I moved to the ocean. Sailors didn’t like to talk about complacency when they drank.

When I think back to the city though, I don’t think about the bar or the men in suits, I think back to the leaves on the only willow in the city that I passed every morning. I think back to their sad take on the ordinary, and I think of Harold. Maybe it’s pessimistic, but I think Harold had it right. You need the empty to make the glass whole.

This is the big one, the one I worked on all semester. I have countless drafts (though this the only whole one), countless notes and pages with different directions, different characters, completely different plots and ideals. It started as a dream (like most of my pieces actually) and then became a two page introduction for one of the first assignments of the course. It was good, I liked it, but it had no direction. It never really found it.

Ideas coursed through my head and I let it sit. When I sat down to write, I wrote a paragraph for this story. Harold never came into light though, and neither did Murphy. They were cardboard cutouts lacking depth. Outlines of something beyond what my imagination could concieve. They never became real people for me, and in the finality of deadlines, I had to go with the one plot I had concieved months earlier. My inability to advance plot and my inadequacy with dialogue is really persistent here.

Even so, there are successes here and there, there is something truly awesome in these lines, and I intend to find it one day.

I'm not sure what my obsession with fighting power for the sake of fighting power is. There's no doubt that I'm discontented by the thought of tragically unfair abuse of power, but if I can't even portray it well in writing, then what am I so scared of? In many ways Harold encompasses my directionless dillema. If only he was more than just a cardboard cutout.

-Dan

Jerry

"Jerry, you're like a fortune teller, tell me my fortune."

Jerry was not a fortuneteller at all actually, he was just an old asshole with a loose mouth. He had no grasp on the future, he just happened to be right in one particularly famous incident.

"Well then, how did you know? You must be psychic," Frank pushed on.

"You're an ass."

"He really is psychic!"

It was a tense scene, a room filled with men called on to put the murder case to rest, and somewhat surprisingly, it was a wonderful turn out.

Years of unkempt use left the church hall grimy. They stood and sat on wooden planks that splintered here and there. The room had chairs scattered about without any form, and only a few of the men decided to sit. Most were flighty and ready to disrupt whatever proceedings were to follow.

Sid walked in with the pastor behind him. Spines rolled into place at the sight of pastor Mike. The devil was close, they all felt him burning on their necks. They all felt the eyes on their backs, but they hid it under blank faces.

"Let's get down to business," Sid said in the center of the room, "I don't want to be here any longer than we have to be."

"I still don't get why the hell we're all here."

Pastor Mike was agitated by the general agreement, "You know damn well why we're all here, Mac. Somebody here knows what happened to Harry, and murder is not just a crime but also the worst kind of sin. This town needs to repent, this town needs justice."

Everyone looked at each other honestly, Jerry looked at pastor Mike with uncertainty. The pastor looked them down one by one. He looked in their eyes, in their heads, but he saw nothing but men.

"I don’t think it was any one in this room, and I think you know that Mike, no one really knows,” Jerry reasoned with the pastor. He didn’t have to be psychic to know how Harry died.

Jerry thought back to the night before, to the drunken assembly and all the brash decisions that followed. He thought back to the floor where his vision was blurred by the sticky blood that dripped from his eyebrow.

"You know Harry, there is probably a good moral here."

"Don't fuck with me, that's a good moral."

"No, that's definitely not it."

Harry punched Jerry below the eye. His head hit the tile and bounced without effort. He was too old for a hit like that.

"Respect your elders, now that's a good moral," Jerry sputtered through blood.

Harry punched him again, and raising another blood-stained fist he hesitated. Harry started to cry. His fist missed Jerry's head and he used it to stagger to his feet. Harry started to walk away in uncertainty.

"Now look here! Christ be with us on this faithless night, no one is leaving here until we repent!"

Sid looked uneasy and turned towards Jerry, "what about you, Jerry, what do you know about this mess."

"Me? Well, why me?”

"You’re the one who knew Harry was going to bite it. Care to explain how you knew? "

"Well...It was sort of a lucky guess."

It was really a stupid thing to tell everyone, something Jerry regretted. There was no way of knowing the faux pa would blow up like this, and it was a situation like this that Jerry had failed to anticipate when he dislodged the words from his throat.

"What about the fight you had with him last night."

"He split my eye open but couldn't give the final blow. It was just another bar fight Mike."

"Well, what precipitated the fight?"

Jerry paused, now questioning Mike's worldliness, "Harry was always a fucker," he responded rather flatly, and that was really all the explanation he had to give. The men agreed with little nods, double blinks, or turned lips. Jerry went on without necessity, "Harry was a bad man Mike, he stole wives, he was that shadow in the alley that was always finding fights. Harry drank too much, fucked too much, and he fought too, too much."

In the end everything came down like the steel bat that left an earthquake of crick-cracks! It was only the oak that had folded like pine. The table collapsed in on itself leaving four legs attached to nothing but splinters.

Sid turned to Harry now with the table defeated, soon there was a bat coming towards Harry's head with dire certainty. In this moment, in this one frame, the men knew nothing. Harry went out. Harry went down.

Pastor Mike turned away from Jerry satisfied. There was no escaping the guilt any longer though, Jerry started to cry.

Started as a page in a notebook about people on a bridge. Jerry, a young(er) cynical asshole dropped a rock onto a car, and I don't remember the rest.

My professor liked the intensity of it at the end, the power it evoked. I don't think I noticed it until I read it again. I think it's too disjointed to really deliver at the end honestly. It's hollow and not the kind of hollow where I just didn't explain it well enough, but hollow in the way that I honestly didn't have a story to tell. It's like a hat without a head. Oh well...

-Dan

Courage

When Donnie was about to leave for college he decided that he wasn't ready to leave. He told himself that it was just cold feet, and that he’d be ready in the morning.

He went jogging before dusk, when the August heat began to cool down for the night. There was a place a couple miles away that he wanted to see one last time.

He had forgotten how to get there, so he was afraid as he sauntered by the suburban sprawl. Sure, there was the school, the creek, the pond, and the meadow, but after all of that it got hazy. There was the damp justified forest, with the diverging paths that always led somewhere. It was overwhelming and he started to remember why the place was so special.

There were a lot of dark openings and the little carved paths didn’t necessarily have to lead anywhere. It was a maze of fallen branches and exposed roots while all around him 20-foot birches, elms, and maples slowly digested him.

This place would be worth it though, he had decided. Elephant Rock would make sense again. All of those courageous days that it represented so perfectly would be reasonable once more. He could overcome insatiable odds just like on that day years ago.

"Stop here," were Terry's words, and Donnie looked forward at the horizon. He saw canopies never ending, the top of a giant broccoli tree. The leaves bursted into a coalition of friendly green that sparkled perfectly in the breeze. Terry was right about the grove above the branches, it was magnificent.

Because he could never ask his mother why she wouldn't let him walk home from school, just a quarter mile from his own living room. She didn't have to know that he scraped his knee in the middle of an empty forest that day, she really didn't need to know anything anymore.

Terry and Donald rolled ranch dressing down the cliff to see the splatter of white redeem the ordinary. The ketchup bottle that they found in Donald’s basement was used to portray their convictions, crunching a costly spray of red on the chalk of a stranger’s tennis court. To be more endowed than these two misguided teenagers was criminal, so they avenged. Forged hopes and childish idols plagued an elegant in-ground pool now, and them no longer.

There on this rock confining walls disintegrated and freedom abounded. There were no curfews, guardians, or limits, but even so, the mosquitoes were relentless.

Donald decided to get the hell out of there. Searching for the light, he found an opening where the pounded dirt pointed to respite. He exited the forest to Suffolk Road where Elizabeth's house dwarfed him across the perfectly paved street.

He walked towards home taking Bristol Street. When he made it back he started packing, stupidly content with his courage.

The next morning he got on the plane and climbed jagged clouds. He had almost found Elephant Rock one last time.

This is the most personal story of the bunch. It started as a poem that I wrote freshman year of college but I think it's stronger as a flash fiction. It was too long as a poem anyway.

I don't know if there is any more I can say about this one. My past is haunting with lessons I can't seem to learn.

-Dan

Wings on the Wind

This is for Diane.

The undefinable Diane and all of her nuances and absurdity. For her awareness I could not stand, and for her shallow smiles that haunt my memories.

She could be any color she liked. But she defaulted to blue.

On rainy Sunday mornings she couldn't wake up, except when an orange butterfly found shelter on her window sill. The gray billows cascaded down around her glossy wings like bullets, but she didn't flinch.

All she had that morning was her shallow smile. Last night didn't love like it should have, but nothing haunts like the present--I understand that now.

I want to hold her against the wind and tell her it would have been alright. Or at least escape with her into the bleak black night.

Turned out the butterfly was dead. Her delicate finality must have been brief, thus unheeded by the wind and rain. She was frozen already like figments of an overactive imagination or a sepia stained memory.

-Dan