Three-Minute Fiction Round 9: Tell Me

NPR All Things Considered Flash Fiction Contest

This time the rules are simple: 600 words or less and it has to be about an American President, real or imagined. The judge of this round is author, Brad Meltzer.

TELL ME

“Tell me.”

“Sir, we can wait…”

“No. Now.”

“Yes, Sir. There have been three more explosions reported since… well… Paris.”

“Good God.” He sighed heavily.

“Details are spotty, as yet, but it appears there was one at a train station in Barcelona, another at an apartment block in Riga and a third in Venice. Combined with the hotel in Paris and Trafalgar Square, that’s five separate explosions. In each case an international political figure or diplomat appears to have been the target.“

“Where is the Secretary of Defense?”

“In the air over the Atlantic. He will land in less than an hour.”

“Call the Cabinet together. We’ll meet in one hour.”

“Sir, under the circumstances...”

“Call the Cabinet. And we will not talk about Alice except as a casualty.”

“Yes, Sir.”

Benjamin Daniels turned and walked slowly, purposefully, toward the bedroom he had shared for three years with his wife, Alice.  

Three-Minute Fiction Round 8: Unfinished Business

NPR All Things Considered Flash Fiction Contest
This time the rules are simple: 600 words or less and the first line, written by author Luis Alberto Urrea (The Devil's Highway, The Hummingbird's Daughter and Queen of America) must begin the piece. Here's what I did with "She closed the book, placed it on the table, and finally, decided to walk through the door."


UNFINISHED BUSINESS
She closed the book, placed it on the table, and finally, decided to walk through the door. After 74 years, she finally believed she could do it because she held a book, actually held it in her hands. After months of effort, today she had grasped the spine, opened the cover and moved the pages. Now she would grasp the front door knob, open the door and walk through.

She floated to the knob and reached out her pale fingers. The first three times they passed through the metal, the fourth time they touched. Slowly, concentrating, she closed her hand around the knob. “Turn!” She willed, focusing like she had on the book. “Turn… Turn….” But the knob wouldn’t move.

Naturally, she could pass through the door anytime she wanted. Since her murder, she could pass through anything: walls, furniture, people. She wanted to roam free of the house, out in the wide world. But, every time she left its walls, she felt a longing to be back again. She watched her family move away three weeks after her death. Six other families had been in and out of the house since then. She liked the boy who lived in the house now. But he would go too. Everyone left; everyone but her.

Unfinished business, the stories always said. She’d read them as a child, never thinking she would one day be a ghost with unfinished business. But what was unfinished? She’d never find her killer and she didn’t care to. Her spirit hadn’t followed her family. She was tied to the house. Sometimes she felt that if only she could open the front door and walk out, she could stay out.

She remembered the day she died in front of that door. The young burglar thought the house was empty. He went crazy when he saw her, hitting her repeatedly with terror in his eyes. He left her bleeding in the front hallway. She didn’t know how long she lay there. She heard the doorbell and then a knock. She tried to cry out, but the sound died in her throat. She tried to move, but she had no strength. She could not open the door. There was a UPS package on the doorstep when they found her.

She turned her attention back to the door to try again. She touched it and sensed its smooth hard surface beneath her fingers. She closed her hand. “Turn.” She repeated the word over and over in her mind, concentrating on the weight of the matter beneath her fingers. “Turn.” The knob moved the smallest bit. “Turn.” It moved again, a bit farther. Much later she finally heard the latch release. Hope rushed within her and moved the air around her. With laser-like concentration she willed, “Pull.” White light shone through the sliver of the opening, blindingly beautiful. She continued to pull. Warmth and calm surrounded and filled her as the light pored over.

Hours later a small boy rolled his train into the entry. “Daddy!! The front door is open.”

Those Camp Boys - Three Minute Fiction Round Seven

The train carried the usual cargo, pine from the East Texas woods. The engineer blew the whistle and progressed at the normal pace, so no one would suspect. They timed it perfectly. The train would arrive at 2:00 am while the town slept. Just a regular stop on a regular route.

No chains clanked, no shouts were heard. The men were far too far from home to bother protesting or attempt escape. They walked off the train quietly, in perfect Nazi file onto the East Texas soil and into incarceration.

Otto rubbed his head. He couldn’t make sense of the impossible path his life had taken. His safe, happy, simple life; playing along the Rhine; warring with his brothers among the ruins of Fürstenberg castle. When they all became soldiers, it made sense. Now, suddenly, his brothers were dead and he, after endless motionless days aboard ship and hidden in trains, was in Texas.

He did what he had been raised to do. He threw himself into the work. Each day at dawn he shoveled eggs into his mouth, climbed on the convoy and rode to the forest. He didn’t think. He chopped and hauled. At night, he slept like the dead.

When memories crept in — his mother singing over the stove, his brothers smiling as they waved goodbye — he imagined he had been taken to another planet. The townspeople who gathered at the edge of the barbed wire enclosure to catch a glimpse of a real-life Nazi helped keep him in this frame of mind. Emotion, and certainly hope, was purposeless. There was no escape from this planet — no reason for anything other than breath and work, until her.
_________ ... _________ ... _________

After a few months, the townspeople weren’t afraid anymore. Their sons were in Germany. The Germans were in Texas. There was a strange symmetry about it. Anyway, “Those Camp Boys” were hard workers and kept the paper mill running. They were so polite and obedient; they couldn’t be the monsters in the newsreels. So, in November 1944, “Those Camp Boys” were “invited” to the Thanksgiving celebration.

Otto looked forward to a break from the monotony. He used the comb they passed around the barracks and wiped the dirt from his shoes. When they arrived in the square, they were told to stay to one side, seated and quiet. But the guards were also badly in need of recreation. Soon the guns in their hands were replaced by beers and dancing partners.

She was standing as near to the prisoner table as any girl in the crowd. Her face showed uncertain resilience, as though she were in the middle of a dare. She blazed into Otto’s consciousness like a gunshot and without hesitation he moved to her. She stood her ground, terror firing her eyes. He didn’t speak, just held out his hand. She searched his gaze for a moment and then put her hand in his.

Woody's World - Three-Minute Fiction Round Six

Charlie perches on a red vinyl stool belly-up to his usual, hot roast beef on white bread, smothered in brown gravy. Outside, the icy drizzle mimics fog. Charlie shivers and rubs his rough hands together. Vernon, his current boss and future father-in-law if he plays his cards right, sits beside him, scowling and poking at his mashed potatoes.

Though every table in the Story City Café is full, only the clink of forks and the occasional satisfied grunt breaks the silence. They’re the regulars – hard Iowa men at their midday meal. No need for discussion. Charlie picks up a newspaper and skims the funnies between bites.

The bell on the door rings out as a mother and child crash into the café, dripping and frenzied. Arms at his sides, the boy wails open-mouthed. His mother kneels in front of him and, brushing the water from his coat, begs him under her breath to be a good boy.

Forks still and the diners watch unabashed as she pulls her screaming son to the counter, plunks him on a high stool and orders a milkshake from the frowning café owner.

“Look, honey,” she pleads near her son’s tear-stained face. “You’re gonna get a milkshake! Doesn’t that make you happy?”

The howling continues.

“Don’t make him happy,” Vernon grumbles loudly to his mashed potatoes. “Make him behave.”

The color leaves her face as the mother looks from Vernon to the ground.

“Hey there, kiddo!” Charlie calls in a loud voice. He grabs the newspaper and makes his way to the boy, all eyes following him with interest.

“Look at this comic. It’s real funny.”

The boy quiets and looks where Charlie is pointing.

“It’s Woody’s World,” Charlie continues. “See, in this one Woody’s driving his truck and trailer but some oaf crashed into the trailer from behind. Otis, Woody’s horse, has gotten outta the trailer and is kicking the ever-living craaa….” he stops himself, “car like to dent it, cause he’s mad. And look! Here comes Woody and says to his horse, ‘I’ll handle this, Otis!’”

Charlie chuckles and looks up from the comic to see the child is wholly unimpressed, his bottom lip quaking, but his mother’s face beams with gratitude. Right on time, the milkshake arrives with a tall twisty straw that corks a new eruption of sobs. Charlie returns to his stool and the clinking and grunting resumes from all corners.

Later, after the milkshake is gone and the bell signaling the mother and son’s departure has quieted, Vernon mumbles, “Lemme see that comic.”

Charlie hands the paper over. Vernon reads for a moment, then, slowly, his face appears to crack and his lips bend. As he starts to snort, Charlie, watching in amazement, copies him inadvertently. Vernon begins to laugh, first in a hoarse chuckle, then in a loud belly-shaking guffaw, and Charlie follows suit. Soon the two are slapping each other and gasping for air, tears streaming from their eyes. Forks stop again as the diners turn to stare at the second outburst of the mealtime.

Their laughter finally quieting, Vernon looks over at Charlie’s plate. “You pert near done?”

“Yeah, I guess I am.”

Sliding simultaneously from their stools, Vernon and Charlie head to the register.
The price of the lunch special is always the same, but the owner tells them anyway. “That’ll be two bucks each.”

Charlie pulls two bills from his fold, but Vernon steps between him and the counter and lays down four bills. Turning to Charlie, he smiles and says, “I’ll handle this, Otis.”

Three-Minute Fiction - Round Five

Yes.. I entered again. This time the Judge is Michael Cunningham, author of The Hours and A Home at the End of the World. His requirements were that we begin with the sentence "Some people swore that the house was haunted." and end with "Nothing was ever the same again after that."

Here's my entry.

CONQUERED

Some people swore that the house was haunted. I didn’t care about that. I thought it was beautiful. Falling porches, shutters hanging by a hinge, white paint long since rained away. It sparked my imagination. It made me wonder who had lived there. What had they left behind -- in between the floor boards -- hidden in secret cubbies in the walls?

I had to know. So I committed my first crime at the age of 13. I trespassed, army crawling under the barbed wire and sneaking up the front walk while my little brother waited by the road. No amount of coercion could convince him to come with me. He was afraid of the ghosts. He asked me not to go, but not as heartily as he might have. I thought he felt sibling pride because I was so daring.

When I got to the door, I turned and waved. I didn’t notice that he had wondered dangerously close to the road. As I turned and pushed the door, I barely heard his squeaky, terrified voice asking me to come back. It wasn’t funny anymore. He didn’t want to be left alone.

The door gave way, screeching as its base dragged the floorboards. I stepped into the former great hall, like an explorer onto a new continent, I imagined. The staircase, partially missing, twisted up to the second floor in front of me. Two large rooms flanked the high-ceilinged hall. On the right, an old fireplace, ringed by ornately-carved tiles, held court in an otherwise empty sitting room. To the left, a single arm chair, its color and pattern obscured by dirt, sat in the middle of the former dining room. Beyond the stairs, stretched a dark hallway and at the end another door. Certainly behind that door lay all the mysteries the house was waiting to offer up. I moved down the hall, my mind on fire with excitement. I heard no noise from outside, only the boards beneath my feet and my loudly spinning thoughts.

The door was missing its knob. I pushed. It wouldn’t budge. I put my hand in the hole where the knob should have been and pulled once, twice, harder a third time. The door came out of its socket with a crack. I couldn’t hold its weight. It fell heavily on top of me, knocking the wind from me and showering me with dirt and filth.

Terror filled my heart and the fearless explorer was reduced to a 13 year-old girl. I choked on dust as I sucked for breathe and struggled to squirm out from under the offending door. When I was free, I didn’t pause to look into the room that had only moments before been my personal King Solomon’s Mine. I ran for it.

Still wheezing, I cleared the hallway, jumped the threshold and sprinted up the walk toward the road. I didn’t see Tim, but I couldn’t stop -- the ghosts were hard at my heels. I threw myself to the ground and crawled under the barbed-wire fence.

I stood, brushed at my clothes, wiped my face with my sleeve and looked around. “Tim.” I called, sure he had wandered into the bushes somewhere. “Tim!” I called louder and with twisting worry. “TIM!” I ran along the road. The fear I felt under the door a fraction of the fear now growing ever larger in my screaming brain. “TIM!!” On the other side of the road, I found the blood stain. Nothing was ever the same again after that.


Follow the link to read some of the judges favorites. He has not yet picked a winner. (Fingerscrossed!)
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105660765

The Truth

Adeline was 78 years old before she understood. And, boy, was she mad.

Jesus, I know you're not accustomed to being spoken to this way, but you're about to get an earful. And you can't run like Billy used to, cause you're everywhere. So sit down and take your medicine.

You are in trouble, Mister. Would you like to tell me why you made me wait until my knees won't bend, my eyes won't see and my body is a roadmap of wrinkles to figure this out? This little nugget, I could have used when I was 24 with three babes under three, thank you very much. This smidgeon of information that would have come in handy when I caught Andy rolling in the barn with that Schmidts girl. Might you have whispered in my ear when my Alan got colon cancer and we lost the farm?

I've spent my whole entire life worrying. Worrying myself awake at night. Worrying so that my breath came too fast and my fingers tingled. Worrying and fretting out loud until my husband was ready for his early grave.
And now...now, you show me the truth. A truth that might have made all the difference.

No matter what, everything is going to be okay.

Stan's Decision

Celia loved the feeling of the weightless heat all around her, but she didn't know how she had ended up in the tub. She heard footsteps on the wood floor in the bedroom and turned to see Stan walk through the bathroom door in his undershirt and suspenders. She loved the way he looked in his undershirt and suspenders, his hair slick and black with gel.

"Did I drink too much again?" She cringed up at him from the tub.

"Yes."

"I'm sorry."

"I know."

She looked at her bright red toenails sticking up from the suds at the other end of the tub. She wiggled them to be sure they were hers.

"Did I make a scene?"

"Yes."

"Oh, Mary Mother... I'm sorry."

Stan shrugged and headed back out the door.

Celia scrambled to her feet.

"Stan."

He turned. Water ran in rivulets down her body. She didn't speak right away. He waited, looking down. He knew she wanted him to look at her naked, to feel desire.

She cocked a hip.

"Could you be a doll and get a girl a night cap?"

Stan's sad eyes flashed to Celia's face. Only then did Celia see the open suitcase on the bed behind him. Her languid smile turned to a grimace of disbelief.

"You're leaving me?!"

She stepped angrily out of the tub toward him. Her foot touched the ground for only a second before it slid on the wet floor unbalanced by the alcohol. She fell in a heap back into the tub, splashing water over the sides, drenching the walls and floor. She sputtered up, gasping for breath. She rubbed her eyes and looked for Stan. He was still standing motionless as water spread toward his wingtips.

Celia slapped the water with both hands in frustration.

"You're such a coward...," She began, but Stan turned, left the bathroom and shut the door behind him. He'd heard that speech before.

Curfew

Pete hid behind the broken fence, breathing in the darkness. Fear made his nerves sing and every sensation on his skin was like an electric shock; the grass under his fingertips as he knelt, the material tight against his knees. He knew they had seen him. He couldn't hear them from where he hid. They would be searching, quietly, calmly. They would find him eventually, why rush? How had he let it get so late? Annie. Oh, Annie Maddox. He would never see her again. Good reason to go, he guessed. If he had pulled away from her arms when he ought, would he be on his cot dreaming of her now? Who can say. These days, he might have been charged for trespassing in her sector just as easily as for breaking curfew. These days, any reason was a good reason to "detain" a Peg. He tried to slow his breathing and think about escape but his thoughts settled on Annie. Annie didn't care that he was Peg. When they met none of that mattered. It wasn't so long ago. Back then their sector schools had still co-mingled. Annie helped him up after the Lander bullies beat him. She brushed his leg. He could still feel her fingers knock the gravel from his bloodied knees. He heard soft male voices and a shuffle through the weeds. They would have dogs. It was only a matter of time. Barking. The dogs had smelled him. Barking, getting louder. He couldn't fight it, he stood and ran. Shouting. SHOUTING. One more breathe of darkness.

Accountable

I know that I'm not supposed to...but I am posting today because I just uploaded my flash fiction piece to the NPR Three-Minute Fiction contest - Round 4. The challenge in Round 4 was not to write about a picture (like in Round 3, see previous entry below) but to write an original piece of fiction with less than 600 words containing the words: Plant, Trick, Fly and Button, in any tense, usage or conjugation. Here's my attempt!!

Accountable

“Is this a trick? You can’t be serious!” I tried to chuckle but terror was growing in my stomach and sounded in my voice.

A man in a dark gray suit stepped between the goons looming on either side of me. I didn’t recognize his face or his voice as he said again, “Sir, you have to come with us.”

I planted my feet wide, crossing my arms. “I won’t be going anywhere with you,” I tried to sound firm, though it was quite clear that I wasn’t going to be given a choice.

The gray-suited man nodded and the goons’ hands were on me. I was forced roughly into the dull aluminum interior of the black van and shoved onto my knees. One of the thugs held my hands tightly behind my back. As we pulled away, I glimpsed my coffee mug standing ridiculously alone on the top of my white BMW.

The van flew out of the parking garage like an action film stunt, four wheels off the ground, heedless of traffic on all sides. I felt every excruciating bump hammer my kneecaps and reverberate up my skeleton. The pain only intensified the thoughts screaming in my head.

I’m not blindfolded. Shouldn’t I be blindfolded? As if this breach of kidnapping etiquette was somehow indicative of something.

Corner Office

I submitted this piece to NPR today for their contest "Three Minute Fiction." The contest required submissions to be 600 words or less, and written about this picture. Fingerscrossed!

I passed Kiko’s Koffee every morning when I worked at the bank. Some days I came in for a cappuccino, but I usually fixed my coffee at the office. I didn’t want to spend our money on coffee. Shelley and I were saving for a second home in Durango.

Now you can find me here every weekday morning. I get up at 6:30, like I did when life made sense. I stand in line for drip coffee and a paper. I take my seat at this corner table by the window and watch the passersby. They look rushed and stressed, in suits, lugging briefcases. They look exactly like I looked when I was one of them.

I thumb through the employment classifieds, but bank jobs are rarely advertised in the newspaper. When I got laid off, right after Shelley’s second diagnosis, I thought it was a blessing in disguise. It would give me more time to help her get well. I truly believed that the “financial downturn” would prove to be a finite blip, largely the invention of a Chicken Little minority. I could get a job again as soon as Shelley was out of the woods. We had our Durango nest egg. I could spend every penny on her care. Everything was going to be okay.

I did spend every penny on Shelley’s care, but everything was not okay. Similarly, the downturn was not a blip but a bona fide crisis. I lost the house at the very end. After I buried my wife, I moved in with my parents, destitute and entirely reliant upon their charity. Without the use of a time machine, I have stepped back in time 25 years. I’m single again, penniless, jobless and living under my father’s roof. Unfortunately, when the clock rolled back, it didn’t take my memory.

I call this table my corner office. “I’m off to my corner office!” I say to my parents, so they won’t worry about me so much. They know my levity is forced and sarcastic, but they take comfort nonetheless. At least I am trying to pretend I’m okay. They give me coffee money. I think that they need me to have a plan just as much as I need a reason to get up in the morning.

After I finish the employment section, I inevitably turn to the obituaries. Guilt seeps in as I read the remembrances because they give me some relief. For each person listed, there is someone like me, grieving and feeling like their universe is a silently exploding star. I imagine that we are all mutely waiting for gravity to pull our pieces back together.

My eyes skim the pages, stopping at pictures of smiling faces. I remember when Shelley’s smile was among them. She looked so alive. The caption might have read, “Local teacher raises 2nd grade reading scores,” or even “Local teacher saves kindergarten class from fire,” but not “Local teacher loses battle with breast cancer.” Never that.

I leave Kiko’s at 9:00 and head for the library and the second installment of my “workday”online job searching. I leave my paper behind for someone who could use a little something for free. It feels good. It’s a small charity that I never showed to people like me when I was a hurried passerby.

I leave it open to the obituaries. I want the next person to look at the smiling faces too. In this way, I give the dead one more person to bear witness to their lives, which, I suppose, is another kind of small charity.

Seven Days in Prison

Day One:
Yesterday was the last day of the rest of my life because it was my first day in this cell. No more appeals. No more denial. This is my new home and I am as good as dead for all the living I’ll be doing in it.

I used to have a stainless steel subzero, now I have a stainless steel toilet. I used to sleep under goose down on Egyptian cotton. This bed I sit on might as well be sheeted with sand paper. No one will be visiting me, after what I’ve done. And I’ll be best not to talk to the other guys in here. My crime was heinous, I know, but somehow I think these men are more the “heinous” sort than I am.

I didn’t really mean to kill them. I just didn’t want them to live, together, happy, in my house. Taking that life away somehow turned into taking all life away – I got a little over zealous, but I guess I don’t have to feel guilty about it anymore, I’ll pay for it in here to be sure.

Day Two: The food in here sucks but it’s the only thing that breaks up the time. No one makes macaroni and cheese like Molly did. I never appreciated that. Guy next to me at supper commented on the piss poor state of the mac. I agreed with him. Maybe we’re friends now. I don’t know.

Day Three: That guy’s name was Burk. Saw him again today when we got to walk “outside” in a fenced-in cage open to the air. He’s been here 3 years. I didn’t say much, didn’t want to scare him off. Just lent against the cage with him. It felt a little less lonely. Still, I think I’m gonna lose my mind in here. Every night I go to bed thinking I’d rather have been sentenced to death. This is a purgatory worse than Dante could have imagined, to breath for no reason. It’s like being kept alive by machines. I wish they’d have just pulled the plug.

Day Four: Learned to make holes in license plates today. Riveting…get it? Burk made that joke. He worked next to me. He said if I was good I’d get library privileges soon. I’ve never been much of a reader, but I guess I could take it up. What else is there to do? I asked him if anyone ever killed themselves in here and he said all the time. He said - Most everyone here is here for life. The only choice we have is how long that’s gonna be.

Day Five: I wonder if I’ll see Molly when I die. We said that we’d love each other forever. But then she changed her mind, took my money and my house and got with our financial advisor. So I guess she won’t be waiting there when I follow the light. Probably especially not since I killed her and that weasel with her.

Day Six: The guard who shuts my door at night is stupid. He goes door by door with his gun sticking out his holster like an invitation to a desperate man. It’d only take a quick hand. Reminds me of the last time I held a gun. Why didn’t I turn it around then?

Siren Song

She remembered the sirens when the war began, bursting the silence of the night two or three times a week. Her mother yelled from the kitchen for all her children to hurry to her and they gathered, tightly packed, in the broom closet that was the most interior room of the house. Belma often fell back to sleep standing up on these nights, supported by the bodies of her female family members, numb to their terror, which long ago had switched in her brain from dreadful and wrong, to normal and consistent.

She could no longer go to school because of the bombings and because she was Bosnian. She was not allowed to go outside under any circumstances. Her mother had heard what happened to woman and female children the Serbian soldiers rounded up. Her father and older brother were fighting with the resistance. They were alone, 5 women in the house. They kept the lights off and all the curtains drawn so that it would look as though the house were deserted.

It had been months since the sirens had stopped. Now there was no warning when the bombs began to fall. After the first few shells exploded, they would rush to the closet together, in a choreographed dance that had become second nature.

Belma rarely slept at night anymore. Inactivity during the day did not tire her young body and her mind would no longer wind down and turn off. Instead she lay on her back and stared into the blackness listening for the whir of missiles, trying not to hear the sobs of her mother and the barking of the wild dogs in the street.

It was happening again. She heard the sound of falling from a great height. She felt the house shake with earthquake force, heard splitting, fracturing, crumbling. She moved robotically to rise from her sunken mattress but she could not see the walls caving in around her. She raised her body but her arms were pinned and crushed beneath the house’s collapsed weight. Pain screamed in her brain with such unfamiliar intensity of feeling that she was overcome and lost consciousness. Blood soaked the bed and pooled on the floor around her.

The Fall

Her mother stood in front of the light of the window, a featureless shadow. Her outline against the blinding sun and lace almost more terrifying than her severe and eternally disappointed face, her tightly wound hair, her long sinewy neck. Claire could see the earrings shine as they dangled gaily from her mother's long fingers, casting colored prisms on the walls of her bedroom. It might have been beautiful, even magical.

Her mother stepped forward. Claire took an instinctive step back. Though she still could not see the expression on her mother's face, the tilt of her head communicated her usual exasperated "Oh, Claire..."

The band struck up a rondo downstairs. The guests shoes on the wooden floor echoed through the house. Claire's heart, already racing with dread, beat even faster. Her mother reached her, took her chin in two fingers, turned her head to the side with a snap and let go with a pinch. She took Claire's earlobe and without hesitation pierced the earring post through the flesh. Claire winced, her mother scowled into her wet eyes and held her gaze, daring her to cry. Claire took a deep breath and steadied herself. Second turn, pinch, pierce. Blood smeared on her earlobe and pulsed through her hearing. Her legs buckled. Her mother held her arms in a vice as if to support her, but rather to catch her gaze once more and impress upon her with a look the weight of the occasion.