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1.

"Look, dammit, all I am sayin' is that you should reconsider this. That's all. Just think twice, okay?"

"Ya know, we have known each other for like, forever. And yet, I am havin' trouble remembering exactly when it was that you turned into a freakin' nancyboy. When was that, do you remember? Or does your wussiness erase your memory, too?"

"Very funny. What I have been tryin' to get through to you, nitwit, is that he is not someone that you mess with, okay? He is what is known as 'a one-call guy.' With one phone call, he can ice you. Period."

"Ya know, you watch too many of those direct-to-video movies on cable. You actually believe some of that shit."

"Imma tellin' you, man, fuckin' with him will only lead to trouble. I've seen it before."

"Look, I have the story. I have the corroboration. I have the facts. I am not putting this in some desk drawer. This could really make my career, dude. And you are not goin' to scare me into keepin' it in some file folder."

"Whatever, man. Just don't say that I did not try to warn you if you wake up with two broken kneecaps. Just sayin'."

"Lookit, I gotta go and file this with my editor, okay. I'll see you later at Shorty's for a few drinks."

"Okay, man, but please, be careful."

"Yeah, I'll be real careful. See ya later."


2.

The exposé, which connected the city councilman to a prostitution ring that the district attorney had been trying to crack for over a year, ran in the next day's paper. From the minute that the paper hit the streets, and its website, the phones chirped and the email inboxes lit up. The district attorney held a press conference at 9:00 a.m., vowing to pursue the case in light of the new information. At 10:00 a.m., the councilman held his own news conference, denying all of the allegations contained in the story, and vowing to fight to clear his name of any wrongdoing. The district attorney also put a team of four detectives out to tail the reporter, and note his every movement.

The councilman left the city on a previously scheduled trip to Washington, DC to lobby for additional federal aid for the city's homeless initiative. He was filmed by a local television station boarding his flight to the nation's capital. Later, an affiliate television station in Washington interviewed him on the scandal as well as the purpose of his trip.


3.

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The sun shone on the hill, casting the last light of the day. As the fiery orb sank below the horizon, the lone figure on the hill stirred from his watch. The valley had been quiet that day, and the grizzled warrior stifled a groan as he moved for the first time in hours. His eyes travel over the horizon, taking in the sunset. He stood there for a few moments, waiting for the sun to settle behind the mountains on the far side of the valley. As the light disappeared and the shadow cloaked the valley in darkness, Merk turned and began his trek back to the castle. It did not take long for his mind to wander.

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I don't normally do this, but this is something that I started today, and I just wanted to put it up here and get some reactions, some comments. I am not at all sure where it is heading, both in terms of plot, characters or resolution, nor do I know at this point if it will just be short fiction, a novel, or even a screenplay. So please let me know what you think. Thanks.

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Three years ago, the car had come round the corner. Three years ago, it had been a Wednesday afternoon. All the children had gone to the park; most of them with their parents, or in the company of friends. She had been at work though and her daughter, who was six years’ old at the time, had to cross the street on her own. The car had rounded the corner at approximately ten miles an hour. It had been fast enough. All the girl’s schoolmates had come to the funeral. The first of the dreams came two days later:

The car is turning the corner. Her daughter is crossing the street. She herself is now floating up in the air. She tries to swim or crawl downward but remains in the same position, whatever she tries to do. She is forced to watch what will now unfold. The front of the car becomes a glittering of knives. Her daughter looks up, reaches for her, says something, screams. Even before the car hits her daughter, blood comes pouring from the child’s mouth. In the two, three heartbeats before the collision, the girl looks straight at the driver. She, the woman, the mother, the dreamer, watches through the girl’s eyes. She is watching herself: She is the one behind the wheel, the one who is killing her daughter.

(She wakes up to the sound of her own screaming. She is cold and sweaty.)

That was the first time she had the dream – and more followed: Each time, the same dream. At first,  she dreamt three or four times a week, then once a week, then once a month. Now, three years later, she had the dream, about once in every three months. Time forgets at times but never forgives – and once in every three months was still enough. She and her husband finalised their divorce, one year after the accident. He did not dream but he could not forget either.

She walked alone, through a cathedral of guilt and hate. She hated herself, hated the car, her work, her husband, at times. Sometimes, in the bleeding of night, she even hated her dead daughter, who still visited her in these dreams and who kept accusing her mother of causing her death. The divorce had almost come as a relief.

She moved to a small apartment, at the edge of town. It was an ugly place, but functional and anonymous. She didn’t work for the fashion magazine anymore, where she’d been a senior editor, and where she’d once held hopes to become the editor-in-chief. Through a friend who worked there, she had gotten a part-time job at a daily newspaper. People there knew of the accident and they’d been happy to be of some assistance. So, now, from time to time, she travelled to places where the other journalists didn’t care to go; sometimes, because pursuing a particular story was deemed to be boring; sometimes, because it was seen as dangerous.

She had watched the Pope, from great distance, eight times already. She had gone to Brussels and the UN headquarters, for more times than could be borne by most people. She had been to the Kongo, and to Ruanda. She had seen the wars, the famines and the fugitives of too many nations. She had talked to politicians and NATO generals. She had interviewed war lords and nuns, Red Cross doctors and the mothers of children who were dying of AIDS. She had listened to all, she had seen it all and she had written the stories she was sent to cover – and she still dreamed of the car, of her daughter.

Now, she was in Cairo, to cover yet another international conference: Something to do with the Middle-East peace process. The paper wanted the story and wanted some pictures, so she had gone. It was summer and Cairo was a swirling sea of stone and stench and an all-permeating heat. It was chaos: The gates of Hell, come tumbling down. It didn’t touch her, though. She just had a job to do.

She walked everywhere she needed to go to. She didn’t travel by car, if she could in any way avoid it. Roads knew too many curves and corners. There were too many children, forever crossing the street – and the cabs of Cairo took these corners with much more speed than the comparably sedate, ten miles an hour that had been enough to kill her daughter.  So, she walked and was accosted by men, women and children. Everything was for sale; all was on offer but she didn’t buy anything. She didn’t want anything. She just walked on. She walked to the congress centre, in the morning; she walked back to the hotel, in the evening. She drank tea on her balcony and she prayed to a God she had stopped believing in, three years ago: 'No more dreams, please, God. No more dreams.'

It was a Friday morning, now. The streets were relatively quiet but the heat and the stench still ruled. She walked to the congress centre, as if deep in contemplation, dreaming up the usual, uselessly whirling scenes and scenarios: 'What if; if then; if only…' She walked but without real purpose. She observed, without really seeing anything. She wanted nothing. She was nothing. She was a walking noise, a hurtful shadow, that could not escape its bounds.

Then, she heard a child laugh. She knew that laughter. For the first time in years, she felt her stomach clench with something that resembled hope, that felt like life. She heard the ringing and pounding of her own blood. She felt the sweat on her body. She felt the heat. She felt a change. She had been in Japan, after a big earthquake had hit Tokyo. She had been forced to take a taxi from the airport: It had been the only way to get to her hotel. When she got out of the car, there had been a furious aftershock: One last ripple, running, almost bolting, through the skin of the earth. It had been an awesome experience. This, however, was altogether more miraculous and all-encompassing.

The child laughed, once more. The woman didn’t know anything any longer but felt all. The street, the city, the whole world was now a strange music, an unknown dance. She walked – she couldn’t walk. In the next minute, she died ten times but each time her heart resumed its beating, like an old, stubborn clock, in a haunted house. She felt time, like some insane river, running back, up the mountain. The child laughed.

The crooked stones beneath her feet carried her forwards. The laughter was much closer now. She was carried around the corner. She saw the child. It was a girl of three or four years’ old. The child was dragging a plastic spoon through a small pile of sand. She was sitting, with her legs spread in front of her. She was wearing a short and dirty dress. It looked as if the girl was playing on some invisible beach, as if she could feel the cooling wind on her face, could hear the seagulls, could see the fishing boats returning safely home. The child looked intensely happy, and thoroughly at home.

The woman looked at the girl, who played in the dirt. After a while, the child looked up and smiled at the woman: Self-assured and trusting. The smile was the smile of another girl. The eyes were the eyes, before that corner, before the car. The woman sat down. She started to cry. The girl laid a small hand on the woman’s arm and kept smiling at her. Then, she said something soothing, in Egyptian. The woman shook her head. Then, she smiled back at the girl. She felt everything, everything... The girl laughed.

The woman now lives in Cairo. From time to time, she writes an article in a local, English language newspaper but she doesn’t travel anymore. She has enough money to get by. Her parents, who were moderately well-to-do, are dead. She was their only child and inherited all. Her ex-husband pays some alimony. The sale of her old flat generated more than enough money to buy her an old but large apartment, here, in the centre of Cairo. She has enough to live on. She doesn’t need much anyway. The girl lives across the road, with her mother and two other children.

Each month, the woman gives the mother some money: The amount an Egyptian worker would earn in four weeks. The girl wears new clothes now but she’s still the same child that can hear the waves and the gulls and the fishing ships, deep in the hot and dusty, stone heart of Cairo. She still plays in the street.

Sometimes, a cab screams by but the woman is no longer afraid of such things. The girl is safe. The woman almost never leaves her old apartment, that has a small balcony. For hours and hours, she stands there and looks down upon the street, where the girl is playing. Sometimes, the little girl looks up at the woman, and waves. The woman is learning Egyptian now, and she has long and hesitating but all-encompassing conversations with the child. She hasn’t dreamed of her dead daughter, for months now. She is happy.

 

"Fuck you, you lyin' bitch."

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Life is often filled with events, situations, circumstances that you never expect; that catch you unawares, off-kilter.  Chemistry being what it is, it seems like we might be a bit more prepared for serendipity, but as for myself, not so much.  It is not really anything I am equipped to improve on:  I am often socially clueless, and have been my whole life, best as I can recall.  I rarely know that signals are being sent, much less what the hell they are intended to convey.

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The thing about them, the most important thing at least, is that they keep coming back, no matter how much abuse is heaped on them, no matter how many bad things happen to them.  Okay, they aren't indestructible, but they are pretty hardy little warriors.  And another really important thing is that they have a terrific self-defense system in place, and no matter how careful you are, they are going to fend you off if you attack, and you will be left bleeding:  every time, without fail, no matter what precautions you take.  It is also worth noting that they propagate profusely, and spread like a wildfire.

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While starting to collect all my short stories, I came upon this one, my very first, written in 1971.  I tinkered with it in very small ways, so it is essentially as written when I was a mere lad of 17.  I hope you enjoy it.

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            Fairly sure that she had abandoned him at last, he sat on the aged chaise-lounge in the brick-floored piazza outside the patio, looking nowhere in particular, and lit a cigarette.  He thought about her, about everything that had curled, and swirled, and covered their two lives in the few short months that they had been together, and again marveled at how this completely unexpected, unpredicted, unsought love had blossomed, bloomed, and surprised the hell out of both of them.  They laughed about it, not nervously, but hysterically.

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"Okay, you're a little loaded, and you're playing Dylan, which you play about as often as you play Neil Young, so I know something's up.  What's up?"

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Bouncing from the caffeine to the alcohol, and back again, and back again, again, he was resolute in his desire to write something IMPORTANT.  Still, it came in dribs and drabs, and was not at all satisfactory to him.  And satisfactory must be understood here in the sense of him being satisfied, no easy task, as every woman that he has ever known will gladly testify.

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"No, you can't."

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The morning mist rose slowly and softly over the fields and the hills, as the sound of the gong called all of us to assemble for class.  Being late, of course, was never an option for novices.  It would be dishonoring the Master to be late to listen to him and to learn the Bushido.  Without learning and training, we would bring dishonor on our families, but even more importantly on our respective Lords, who had chosen us to go to the Master for our training, to become bushi, a true warrior, hagakure, the samurai.

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(I wrote this one some time ago but I can't remember when exactly. So, I've no idea if I already posted this on TIBU or not.)

The elders were inside, deep down in their bunkers. They couldn’t bear to watch the sky during this week. However broad and deep this new sky was, all eyes would always travel to that one small pinpoint of bright light: the latest star to join the endless, silent choir of night’s bright passengers.

The children called this new arrival ‘The Cradle’. The elders couldn’t bear to watch it, or think about it, or call it by its older name. Those who had survived the Days of Reckoning and had survived the journey, stayed deep under the ground and tried not to remember.

Outside, a new and fearless generation watched the sky. They smiled. They remembered. Not the days of old. None of them had lived through those days. A few of them had been born on board of the handful of ships that had made it to this new home - but most of them had never known another place, another environment. None of them shared the grief of the elders.

  “Almost” one of the children whispered; “Almost time now.”

Inside their bunkers, the elders did their slow and grievous dying, second by second, hour by hour, day by day. None of them had truly survived the Days of Reckoning - not in any real sense of the word. They only seemed to go forward in time but they did not. The past’s strong gravity was slowly claiming them as its last victims. They were dying - and they knew that they were dying, and they did not care.

Outside, the children were waiting impatiently for the dance to begin.

  “Why are they so sad?’ one of the youngest asked.

  “Because they’re stupid.” another child answered.

The rest of them laughed at this. Most shook their heads in quiet bemusement. It was stupid. It was a beautiful day, on a beautiful world. A world not touched by old wars, old hunger, old evils.

  “But they gave us these!” one of the older children said, stretching her arms and raising them as high as she could.

The others followed her example.

  “Yes!”

  “Yes!”

  “Yes!”

Inside their bunkers, deep under the ground, the elders sat in silence. They didn’t need to see that bright new star to feel its weight, its incredible, intolerable weight upon their shoulders. They were slowly dying and if they still could have felt any of the normal, old emotions, they would have felt glad to do so. This was not their world and they had no future here. So, they were returning to a past, however dark it may have been. The past was theirs and they would reclaim it in the only way left to them - by dying slowly, second by second, hour by hour, day by day.

Outside, the children had begun to dance. A solemn dance: a dance of mourning. Even if they didn’t feel the grief, they did feel the need to honour the dead, and the dying: The elders, who had given these wings to the children; wings that now grew from their shoulders –  forever part of them, who were forever part of this new world.

While the elders hid inside their bunkers, their children flew and danced upon the air of this new, and forgiving, much lighter world. They flew; they danced; they sang their solemn songs - and they ignored the newest star, that burnt so brightly: The place the elders, before the Days of Reckoning, had called Earth.

Aquarius:  loyal, inquisitive, generous, ambitious, eccentric, moody, erratic, aloof.  So, she thought, that makes him either a selfless humanitarian or a sociopath.

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Stephen hated his jobs, both of them.  He would often joke that he didn’t know which one would kill him first.  At the end of the day, though, he reasoned it didn’t really matter.  Either one would kill him just the same, by sucking the life right out of him.

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