My informal education through books and writing.
She felt most at home
when she bathed in salt water,
and was flanked by green.
I’m in an honest and fully committed same-sex relationship with nature. Bite-sized poem to put my photographs to use again 🙂 – I miss this creative outlet to my creative outlet.
Woah, it’s has been a minute since I’ve posted a story. Here’s one inspired by way too many wasted Sunday mornings… I tried to make the title a little less obvious, and failed. Ah well.
Curtis roasted like a pig. He moved in a fever between two pots, holding a wooden spoon the length of his arm. The doors and windows of his small shack were open but the heat was unmoved. He looked to see the girl was still naked and sprawled out on top of his bed with a filthy rag on her forehead. The girl’s breasts spilled away from each other like two repelling magnets, a steady stream of sweat licked her from chin to navel. Her mouth was open and dry and it had been minutes since she’d blinked or sighed.
“Hey you. Hey, you still alive?” Curtis said.
The girl made a sound, something like a squawk and wheeze, and managed a few licks of her lips.
“I think so.” she said.
“Unlucky you. Why aren’t you blinking?”
“Oh… I wasn’t paying mind to whether I was blinking or not.” she said.
“You weren’t.” Curtis dashed a palmful of salt into a pot, “I thought I was cooking for a dead girl.”
Curtis took the joint from the corner of his mouth and passed the dregs to the girl. It was mostly ash, but it was familiar so she inhaled and held anyway. Even bare skin felt like one too many layers, she made herself as wide as she could to cool down. Arms and legs spread open so she looked like she was making snow angels in the sheets. And when was the last time she’d seen snow? Heat had built up slow then wrecked them all at once, writhed out of the ground like some vengeful spirit ready to drive them delirious – and succeeding. The girl was half blind and shriveled like a newborn pup when he found her stroked out in the dirt and sand, the poor godless and sun-bleached girl.
Curtis brought a bowl where the girl laid and she finally sat up at the smell. The bowl overflowed with rice and meat, two spoons for sharing. The chunks of meat were mysterious but they both guessed it was goat’s meat; fibrous and swimming in it’s sweetness. He watched the girl’s mouth work the steaming chunk and wondered how she could put her lips on something so hot without batting an eyelash. She caught his slack look and laughed a crack lipped riot saying, cool as anything, “Man, when you’ve been raised by the sun a little heat don’t hurt.”
The girl’s body looked like a heap of Himalayan salt in the distance. Curtis had watched her crawl on her stomach from noon til late, the cloud’s bellies burnt orange and only a few hours left before they’d disappear. If the girl was going to make it, she’d have to drag herself to salvation and prove she wanted it. To be out at this time of the day was a show that at some point she wasn’t sure she did, and Curtis didn’t have time for people who’d given up on themselves. The girl passed out on the steps to the smell of starch and boiled meat.
From the empty bowl of her stomach, Curtis guessed it had been weeks since the girl had eaten. She downed a mug of water and refilled the mug to cleanse her ruddy face, before starting on a plate of sweet bread rolls and jam. They sat on the bed and the girl appreciated not having to move to sleep, the meal formed a content lump in her gut. The solitary candle wisped around in a moment of breeze and they both held their breaths while it bathed them. Curtis pushed the empty bowl away from himself and wiped a rag on his mouth and all around his forehead and neck.
“Why were you out there like a damn slug?” he said.
The girl didn’t open her eyes but cupped the new pouch of belly in her hands like an expectant mother with little more than a peanut in her womb.
“I was trying to find somewhere cool I could lay a while.”
Curtis lit a fresh joint on the candle, the light sparked the girl up like an angel and blasted the rest of the room into void.
“Hm,” he said, “You can crawl all the way to Lakeland and not find a lick of shade.”
“I don’t know. My daddy told me there’s still some places where it’s cool and maybe not so crowded.” she said.
“And where’s your daddy at now? Nowhere good, I bet.”
The girl shrugged and took the offered joint into her fingers. She tried to remember the last letter she’d got from her father and retrieved a memory from a year prior. She waited as the ocean crept closer and swallowed homes in front of hers, before it finally knocked on her own door and swept her inland. She’d stopped believing her father was alive, but not that there was somewhere else to go. If there wasn’t, they would be alone in the dark when the curtain fell on Earth, leaving only godless souls to crawl on their bellies like blind snakes in a barrel, one climbing on top of the other for a chance at dying last. The girl looked at Curtis’s smushed face and missed when there was only man to fear, and the ground boar more than death.
Curtis poured cold water in a large bucket outside and the girl had a good go at washing herself. Her skin was virginal and free of scars; flesh like the smooth hat of a mushroom. He watched steam rise from the pool at her feet. The girl paused scooping water on her body, opened her arms and face and mouth to the black sky in a silent scream. She gave up bathing when a hot wind kicked up and coated her in dust.
Curtis had craned his neck to the clouds in a similar way but let out a primal scream with his own girl’s body laid in his arms and her looking up, too. The gaze was absent and her neck was cut and leaning awkwardly curious. It was done, but she didn’t fly into grace with open arms. Her body laid useless and Curtis left her there knowing this was their punishment and nothing would lessen the sentence.
The girl fell asleep as heavy as a child with a fever, her garish frame barely enough to make a real lump in the bed. Curtis sat up in bed beside her. She looked like a corpse, her skin opaque and veins ribbed up and down her arms and legs. He watched her and grew angry at her carelessness. Dragging herself through the rotten desert for what – she only had to take one look around and it was obvious; this was it and no magic man saved a place for her, or any of them, in the shade. You could live in a dream or with the steady footing and firm disappointment of reality, and he preferred the latter.
The sky was lavender and a steady heat of steam rose from cracks like geysers. The girl was gone when Curtis woke up and he saw her naked body merge with the mirage of wavering air in the not so far distance. She’d taken his boots, but they both knew he had no use for them. She would hear him call her name if he knew it. If he screamed it loud enough and knew he wanted her to stay. Soon the distance was too much and the heat too strong to see her without straining. He went back inside to the unmade bed, still musty and covered in her dirt, stripped the sheets and dumped them in the sink, running water on them until there was a stream of murk. The girl could have her shade, and Curtis would have his. The comfort that even Earth was mortal, and as long as there were sinners you could crawl for eternity and never leave suffering.
Is this a poem or flash fiction? I don’t even know. I hope you enjoy this fun exercise in bad language and other steamy things. And remember, any writing is good compared to no writing at all, right…? Thanks for stopping by. 🙂
Beneath the gallantry and fuckery,
as fun as she
(and she hopes he)
finds it,
it seems there should have been something else by now.
A slow dig in search of something palpable and wonderful,
electrical and whatever other adjective to describe the build up she feels when he
touches, kisses, works her legs open.
Boundless and burning, but oh is she misty!
So the tune of fuck you, what the fuck are we doing, and are we still fucking other people?
is overridden by the steady skipping track of a whisper to a dancing ear,
fuck me,
until neither have anymore fucks to give. They’re spent and everyone knows it.
And where were we?
The dig, that grueling chore of getting beneath the Earth’s crust, not nearly as attractive in the day time.
The slight unfurled mouth is now a gaping canal that sucks him in but the sun is up again and he wants out of this unholy rebirthing.
The sun is up and the beast run off.
But wait, what happened to the gallantry and fuckery?
What of those steamy windows of his old mustang where the girl’s head appears, disappears, then reappears like some magic trick that would get an illusionist fired?
His best trick is making the audience believe what he tells them,
that there is wonder and electricity and more beneath the fuckery.
But, what a thing it is to find the Earth is hollow.
The security guard hears the car long before he sees it. It’s low silhouette spits towards the parking lot and is the first to arrive, beating the sun that is barely risen above the hills, an arc of light in the blue-black sky visible then hidden again by fibrous rain clouds. The guard’s box is illuminated as the old two-tone Subaru pulls forward. He gets up and pokes his wide torso out of the warm box, the cold and wet coming in. His hands visor his eyes and motion for the car to go through. He squints to see the driver through the rain, the windshield wipers move too slow to clear the stream of water that casts a shimmer on the driver’s face, the wide set eyes constantly wavering. The woman smiles hard but the rain makes it look like she’s been crying, or maybe she has been crying. Her hand reaches from the car with a cardboard box and the officer takes it and smiles back, says his wife will literally kill him if he has another donut, that’s if his sugar doesn’t do it first, and waves the woman into the empty lot where she parks in a spot furthest from the entrance.
Adannaya turns the engine off and lays her head back, closes her eyes. The temporary black is the closest thing to sleep and the faint drumroll on the roof will do for a lullaby. The urge to cry rises again, from her stomach into her throat, but she takes another hit instead and fills the car with a smoke that makes the world look like it’s been covered with ground glass. She inhales until her lungs are at full capacity, holds even longer, then exhales smooth letting the smoke and everything else go. The car is warm and fragrant and smells like her home, seaside scented candles and peach flavored rolling papers in an overflowing ashtray. Helium-filled balloons bob about the car in a kaleidoscopic fog. She turns and retrieves a bouquet of sunburnt and bell shaped lilies, a stapled brown baggie of her mother’s prescriptions, the balloons nod their encouragements. The walk to the hospital is long and quiet save for slow footfalls across the graveled lot. Adannaya jumps once, but there’s not enough helium or hope to go anywhere.
Two men stood outside Walker’s open front door and he debated closing it back in their faces. Thinking Nilah had come to her senses and did in fact want to put that pretty mouth to work like Walker suggested, he answered the door with a grin and an almost empty bottle of vodka in front of his testicles. It was not Nilah, of course it wasn’t, but there was little to do now that he’d answered the door balls to the wind, a gamble in itself. The tall man, stoic with a constellation of dark moles on his face, held a rainbow-striped umbrella that would have been appropriate for a child to use. If he closed the door slowly enough, Walker thought, inch by inch until only his right eye was visible for a moment, then nothing at all, maybe the men would reconsider whether he was worth the hassle. But the second man, short and flat nosed, kept a boot dripping with water just inside the front entryway, a drenched cigarette in between his thumb and forefinger.
“It’s raining cats and dogs out here, Walker. Rude not to invite us in.” The short one said.
It was well past midnight, the only people who knocked on doors at this hour were crooks and hookers. Walker swayed with waves of drunkenness and poked his head into the long hallway where the two men stood. The carpeted hall was empty save for a smell of bleach and moist that was so powerful, forcing itself into every nook and cranny, it could have taken form of it’s own. Generators in the basement fueled the amber lights that flickered overhead, the faint chainsaw racket carried to Walker’s seventh floor apartment, itself illuminated by dozens of candles.
“I’ve got a girl in here,” Walker feigned a sleepy temper, looked at his empty wrist just out of view of the two men, “and it’s way past curfew hours.”
The short one gripped Walker’s shoulder, “There ain’t no girl in there, Walker, and ain’t never gonna be.”
They pushed past the door and the small man splayed out on the olive green sofa bed like a starfish on a psychiatrist’s chair, pulled a fresh cigarette from his shirt pocket and lit it, rolled his eyes in pleasure as he exhaled. The only art on the walls was a framed, life sized photo of the Collective that covered an entire wall so that the only window was closed in. The seven faces of the Collective members varied in degree of suspicion and followed anyone who walked in the apartment with intensity. They wore elaborate robes, a different color to represent each branch of the dictatorship. A half empty bowl of grapes sat on a chipped glass coffee table in the middle of the room. The sofa acted as a makeshift bed, filling most of Walker’s apartment where the living room, kitchenette, and bedroom were one and the same, except for where someone had made an attempt to add division, running old carpet into a 2×4 slot of linoleum in the kitchenette. The short one took another hit of his cigarette,
“Would you put some clothes on?”
“Last time I checked it wasn’t illegal for a man to be naked in his own home.” Walker walked to the back of the apartment and disappeared into a tall cabinet. He came out wearing a small red t-shirt and no bottoms, and sat in a sunken armchair opposite the sofa.
“It’s seldom I have guests so I hope this will do.”
The big one’s face was pinched so his eyes, nose, and mouth clustered in the center of it. He stayed mute and stood by the door with his hands clasped in front of him, still holding the damp umbrella in his hands as if it was the one job he was expected to do right. Walker wondered whether he was one of those invalids the state hired out for menial jobs. A soldier returned home far too mad to fit back into society, so had to resort to holding umbrellas over the heads of midget gangsters. He closed the front door but did not move from it.
“Let’s not waste each other’s time. I’ve been told you’ve been saying some things you shouldn’t be.” The short man said.
“Who, me? You know I know better than that.”
“But you’ve proven me wrong time and again.” Still reclined, he popped a sour grape in his mouth and rolled it in his cheeks. They sagged like old bulldog cheeks. The generator clicked off then on again. “Do you think I like my job?”
Walker flung his right ankle over the armchair and the two men stared, willing the other to back down first until finally, the short man averted his eyes.
“You tell me.” Walker smirked.
“I don’t, it’s frustrating. Day in day out, I deal with people who think they’re above the law, then they lie right to my face when we both know it doesn’t help none. And it ain’t right, Walker.” He tapped ash on the table and went on, “you tell me, what gives you the right to have me dragged me out here at midnight in the pouring rain, just to lie to me; do you think you’re above the law? Or are you just a inconsiderate, lying turd?”
It had been a stupid mistake which, like most mistakes, started with a date at the local bar and ended in criminal activity. Walker was a proud, loud alcoholic. One tumbler of gin after another, he poured his grievances to Nilah, a young secretary he’d convinced going for a drink together would be a good idea. That evening Nilah bowed over her drink while Walker stood like a street preaching Evangelist, his speech punctuated with burps, and proclaimed he would no longer accept the constant observation of the Collective because, no matter what they managed to convince other people of, he would continue to think the Collective was nothing more than a “collective nuisance”. Nilah said nothing but looked anxious. Downing the rest of her drink she asked a haggard bar woman holding a bored looking baby on her hip for another one.
Now Walker found himself sitting across from two of the Collective’s gangsters, struggling to keep his words straight.
“Liar is a strong word.” Walker said.
“What’s a better word for someone who’s been caught lying through their teeth?”
“Unfortunate, I’d say.”
“I’m doing you a huge favor. I would’ve come here solo if I’d been given a choice. But don’t make me have Big Herbert sort you out.”
“You mean he’s not here just to keep your pretty little head dry?”
It had been a few hours since Nilah abandoned Walker and he’d dragged himself home alone. Still happily in the middle of a drunken tip he had no plans of getting sober any time soon, although first seeing the two men at the door had straightened his vision slightly.
“Did you call the Collective a ‘collective nuisance’ or not?”
“I did, but only because I was trying to impress a girl.”
The short man motioned to Big Herbert who muddled over, his trunk-like body dripping water on the carpet.
“That big one’s dripping wet!” Walker jumped off his seat, “carpet cleaners aren’t cheap, you know.”
“Walker, you messed up big time tonight. We’ve made people disappear for much less than that. What do you think we’re going to do to you?” The short man said.
Like a puppet coming to life with a hand in it’s back, Big Herbert removed his coat, boots, and socks, and placed them neatly on the laminate passthrough of the kitchenette. It was then that Walker saw how big Big Herbert was, six foot five and at least 300 pounds, his foam textured hair scraped the comically low ceiling. Crouching down to undo the buttons of his mud colored khaki’s he pulled out an ill proportioned penis, aimed at the coffee table and urinated over all its contents, turning the bowl of grapes into a stomach turning soup.
“Hey!”
Big Herbert swayed left and right, peeing dehydrated amber on the glass until it spilled onto the carpet underneath.
“Hey you!”
“He can keep going on like that for ages, it’s amazing.” The short one watched from the sofa bed, kicking his legs like a blissful toddler.
“Make him stop!”
“He’ll stop when I’m good and ready.” He pointed the lit end of the cigarette at Walker, “I’m warning you now. You know you can’t go round saying and doing whatever it is you want. If we have to come back here, I’ll have him smash your skull without a second thought.” Big Herbert trickled his way to the front door dripping all over his own feet, and pissed on the Welcome rug. “We clear on that?”
Walker watched Big Herbert wizz merrily in a cracked flowerpot that started to overflow.
“Clear as crystal.”
“Good. I’d hate to see you get your brain tossed because you couldn’t learn how to shut up.” The short one threw a white envelope on the soaked coffee table, the edges absorbing yellow. “Report to the bureau tomorrow at 0800 hours. Don’t bring nothing but this letter.”
“Or else Big Herbert’ll take a shit in my bed?”
Finally, Big Herbert shook the last dregs on the plant, buttoned his khakis and dressed himself by the front door as if nothing had happened.
“Or else.” The words came slow and overpronouced. Big Herbert’s eyes met Walker’s for the first time. They were dark, glossy pinpoints that cooled blood. Holding his pointer and middle finger to his temple with the thumb extended, Big Herbert curled his lips into his mouth then let out a POW as his thumb bent like a trigger.
Walker locked the door knowing it would be little help against the men if they chose to come back. The envelope lay on the table growing more yellowed. Pinching a corner of the paper he peeped through to read what was already visible, Subject: Walker Damsen, Crime: Public Defiance, Sentence: At the discretion of the Collective.
I hope you enjoyed this short, ”upcycled” and edited from last semester’s creative writing class but could still use some fleshing out, I think. This scene was inspired by a scene from Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World (which I highly recommend), and an assignment where something unexpected happens. As usual, comments and feedback are highly appreciated. Thanks for stopping by! 🙂
Since Eric’s return it was rare for him to go out in the day time. He was mostly nocturnal, but on some occasions would stay up through the sunrise and, rather than go to sleep, take a pair of binoculars to the balcony in his bedroom. He sidled around a four poster bed too large for the room, the posts an inch away from the textured ceiling. The tops of his feet disappeared in fibers of high shag carpet. Furniture from at least three different bedroom sets filled the remaining floor space: a clean birch writing desk, an elm bedside table, a chest of drawers made of cedar wood that towered higher than most but came just underneath Eric’s nose. He was six foot two with the long frame and solid shoulders of a swimmer, the steady feet of a dancer. Something he attributed to years training in zero gravity where steady footing was the difference between taking one calculated step forward and catapulting yourself hundreds of feet until something blocked your path, or you carried on flying through eternity.
The room was purposefully overcrowded and claustrophobic. Eric had grown to find a snug suit full of pressurized air and the tight accommodations two people share in a shuttle, as comfort. How did you know you were alive if you weren’t suffocating just a little? A steady asphyxiation temporarily relieved by a deep sigh. On the balcony of his home, Eric was as close to the sky as he could manage without climbing onto the roof. On nights the moon was particularly grand he would lean a ladder on the edge of gutter hanging over the balcony. A blanket underarm and the rope to a pair of binoculars between his teeth. Shoeless, his toes gripped each rung. He would stay on the roof as long as the moon would keep his company. It was cold but the sun was bright, warming the previous night’s frost. Eric lived in a green bathrobe that hugged him from all angles. Sunglasses hung onto a playdough nose, the sides completely boxed in over his eyes. He placed the binoculars over his lens and focused on a shadowed fissure of craters down the moon’s face. Eric was brought to a familiar sense of eternity, a feeling of confrontation that he had in boyhood and most recently when he took his first steps on the moon. He stared at the sphere through bulbous eyes in search of it again.
He was twelve when his mother pointed to the stars where she saw afterlife but Eric could only see mortality. Looking at the stars, planets, suns, galaxies, all of which would continue to burn, swallow themselves, and burst to life again long after they were forgotten dust, the back of his throat closed. He pressed his mother, How can you be so calm? She scooped his chin in her palm, shook it gently, Why worry about that, boy? Little needed explanation outside of what faith deemed necessary for either of them to know.
While Eric was not religious, when his boot tossed dust and he saw the moon’s erratic surface through the dark tint of a sun visor he felt something that he could only compare to a religious experience. The same sense of awe and fear that came when he stargazed crept into existence again; the tightening in the back of his throat; the slight suffocation. For a time he would not look back on Earth. He refused to become accustomed to the paper mache replica in the distance, too small and easily hidden behind a well-placed thumb. The surface of the moon was grey valleys and mountains, the elevated outer lip of craters were like scattered bowls in the desert. Eric climbed the side of a large crater and took airless hops down to the deep middle of it. It was impossible to see over the edge from where he stood. A single ant in the center of a mountain a million miles from anything. Kicking his feet out from underneath himself his body was parallel to the moon’s surface. He was not laying down, but his body floated, making a slow descent to the ground. He drew his knees into his chest and rocked.
Eric set the binoculars in the gutter and wrapped himself in the blanket. He would not sleep until the moon did. He stared at the moon like a man looks at his wife in the morning haze with quiet and coffee, before the rest of the world screams to life. There is no sound but he does not mind enough to break the silence.
I hope you enjoyed this piece, another first draft I’ll be submitting to my creative writing professor, so constructive criticism, comments, and feedback is welcome and appreciated. Thank you for stopping by 🙂
I read way, way, way too much information on astronauts, astronaut suits, moon and sun cycles, earth rises, and information on what happens to the body when exposed to space (this was going to be a very different story at one point…) and I notice I end up researching a lot of tidbits on things I may include in a story to add more authenticity to it. I’ve learned tons of useless, obscure things because of it. Do any of you spend an absurd amount of time fact finding for a story?
Big assed women danced with multicolored peacock tails strapped to their backs. Their big, boisterous asses swayed to calypso for no one in particular. Just a bunch of dark skinned girls with a beat that needed to be matched with equally feverish movements.
It was carnival and the sun was high. A residential road served as a dance floor, fast food joint, and bar. People danced and drank, scattering for the occasional car then returning to their activities once the car passed. Air carried weed and ackee and salt fish scents through the street. Sweet smells of a successful celebration.
The cluster of chocolate and caramel peacocks danced until beads of sweat ran down their backs; their hair, gelled straight up and dyed bright blue to match peacock crests, tossed and flipped as their necks jerked unnaturally. Their wide peacock tails were peppered with sea foam, turquoise, and auburn ocelli. Huge eyes that guarded the crowd like Argus did Io. Carnival transformed these women into omniscient nymphs of Hera, bouncing their asses in epileptic fits.
A woman lay prone on the tarmac like roadkill. She held onto the rear bumper of a red 1978 Honda Civic, her peacock wings twisted, makeup melted to amorphous pools. A man with stubby dreadlocks sat in the car with a much darker, prettier, french speaking woman. The woman on the ground yelled something to the man. Something about him not really knowing how to speak French – about how he’d always been a good bullshitter and soon this new, darker, prettier, french speaking woman would see. Her pupils were pinpoints, eyes huge with disbelief. If she held onto the bumper any tighter her knuckles might split open. The heads of two small children were visible through the wide rear view window, their eyes darting between the two women. It was not clear which one, if any, was their mother.
An explosive backfire sent most of the crowd to the ground and the rear bumper slipped out of the woman’s fingers, carbon dioxide kicked into her lungs. She might have been better off if the man had dragged her a few miles down the road. Instead she lay there, the rest of the peacocks getting a bird’s eye view of her shamelessness. Calypso was an ill-fitted soundtrack for the worst moment of her life. Voices stirred with tongue clicks and finger snaps, murmurs of “if he’d done that to me”. Hypotheticals that would never be tested so were not worth the talk. Just a brave show among women. She picked herself up, threw her peacock tails down. All of that women’s intuition, all of those eyes sprouting from her tail, proved useless once again.
I hope you enjoyed reading this very short-short, the first I’ve managed to keep under 500 words. As usual, please let me know any thoughts, comments, or constructive criticisms you might have in the comments section!
“Did you know Buddhist monks aren’t allowed to touch women?” Jerry yelled even though his mouth was right next to Liz’s ear. His bony fingers wrapped around her waist, squeezing her rib cage from behind. Liz’s eyes narrowed, fastened to the road; partly to resist the urge to snuggle her cheek into Jerry’s beard, partly because she hoped if she stared long enough, the road they were supposed to be on would become obvious. Neither of them remembered to bring a map. Liz’s left hand was on her head holding a floppy straw hat in place. Her long lens camera swung wildly around her neck. The other hand worked to steady the motorcycle.
“What?” she yelled back.
“I said, Buddhist monks can’t touch women!” he yelled, louder this time. “Not even mothers and sisters. Unless they’re sick- then touching is okay. I wonder why.”
Jerry read an ‘All You Need to Know About Cambodia’ pamphlet on the plane and spouted random trivia whenever there was a lull in the conversation, which was more often than not. Liz thought for a while, taking in the bamboo forest around them. She made a right in front of a hut on wooden stilts, an old woman tended a pile of flaming trash behind it. Half dressed children laughed, chasing a small dog around the fire. Why were they up so early? The path was straight, painted sky opened up, shades of orange and pink. Some might have found this place romantic. Liz turned to see Jerry’s face up close, purring in the sexiest voice she could muster.
“Maybe it’s got something to do with desire. It comes naturally between a man and a woman.”
“What? Speak up!”
“DESIRE. IT’S NATURAL.” She could only sound so sexy yelling at the top of her lungs.
Jerry nodded slowly, wrinkled his brow. “Are you saying they’d go as far as incest? That kind of stuff is probably frowned upon in a monastery.”
“No, I’m not saying that.”
“I mean, I could see it. Not being near a woman for that long. If that were me I’d likely rape the first woman I saw.”
The group of children stopped chasing the dog and were screaming after the motorcycle. Was he coming onto her? Liz waited for his grip to tighten around her waist, to feel him hard and pressed up behind her. She waited a little longer, holding her breath to sense any subtle sign he might give. Nothing. Her heart sank. She checked her watch, thirty minutes until sunrise. Liz was losing faith that there would be enough time to reach Angkor Wat, buy tickets to get in, set up their tripods amongst a sea of other tourists, and take photographs for the article. The week would be full of photographing travel spots in Siem Reap, part of a budget travel segment Liz proposed but Jerry was ultimately chosen to produce, while she tagged along playing assistant. Leading up to the trip, Jerry wore mandala printed pants with slouchy crotches and leather bound slippers around the office, sporting a rust colored pre-tan – something Liz was unaware existed until then. It would dissolve any barriers between him and the local Cambodians, Jerry said, handing Liz a pair of her own slouchy crotch pants. Jerry was always a well of information, that’s what she loved about him.
Jerry told Liz to pull over, he recognized the area from a description in the pamphlet, the temple was not far. The sky was blue now, but the sun was not up. Heat stayed pent up in the trees, turning the air thick. They could see everything in this false daytime. Being outside between night and day, just the two of them surrounded by walls of tall bamboo and foreign smells was like a lucid dream. As if they were the only ones that knew this place existed, or they were the only people that existed within it. As if this space would only exist as long as they were there. They climbed off the motorcycle, as good a time as any to stretch their legs.
“Nature calls. And when it calls, I answer.”
Jerry walked towards the trees, already pulling down his slouchy crotch pants. His back was turned but he remained insight, resting his forehead on a tree, his legs in a wider than necessary stance. Liz decided to go a little deeper in the woods, but still, if Jerry turned around he would see her head and knees bobbing behind a small bush. When she pulled down the slouchy crotch pants Jerry had given her (yet had said they made her bottom half look a lot like a potato, when she asked what he thought of them) she rolled the excess crotch in her hands so it wouldn’t sit on the ground while she urinated.
Squatting out in nature with a breeze at her backside, skillfully hovering a few inches off the ground, Liz felt primal. Did nature always have this effect on people? She smiled, eyes closed, face towards the sky. Nature’s simplicity forced itself on them, skewing social norms. There it was perfectly fine for two colleagues of opposite genders to relieve themselves in full view of each other. Liz wondered what else nature could turn on it’s ear. She watched a trail grow from between her legs and go downhill towards a small clearing where there was a pile of burned trash. An old pair of sneakers sat on top. Something shiny was in the waste, at the base of the mound. Liz got up, looking around her. Jerry was still insight, now on the bike reading his pamphlet – probably still thinking about incestuous monks. The sky was yellow now. Liz walked towards the clearing, unsettling dirt around her. She had never been somewhere so still yet all encompassing. The shiny thing lost it’s shine the closer Liz got to the trash pile. Finally she stood over it and saw it was only cheap aluminium, wrapped around a bloated wrist.
Liz did not know how long she was staring at the body. The dead man was at her feet, his eyes wide open, the underside of his chin visible from inside his open mouth. The corpse was naked except for a wristwatch that was stuck at 5:38. Liz’s mouth opened, nothing came out. Useless, just like the dead man’s. She could not tell if she was making any noise. Her ears only gave way to the sound of her heart thumping against her chest. Her eyes stayed fixed to the corpse; partly because she was scared it would rear up and kill her, partly because she had never seen anything like it. Her fingers came down around her neck, reaching for her camera. She held the camera up to her eye and took in everything nature had to show her. The sky’s yellow was deepening. Jerry called from the motorcycle, waving his tripod in the air. The sun was rising.
I’m still working on my titles, but I’m not too bothered about this one at the moment. This is a very first draft of a story I’ll be handing in to my creative writing professor so if you have any constructive criticism, feedback, opinions, or questions of any sort, they will be appreciated!
She held a third gin and tonic in her left hand and a freshly lit cigarette in the other. My kinda girl. Collapsing in the sand she pressed into me with wanton desire and turned my skin to film.
“How long until the tide comes in?” she said. Her words were honey and I a humble bumblebee.
“Maybe a few hours.”
Inhale. Exhale. Smoke.
“I want the waves to take me somewhere. Anywhere but here.” A wasted wish since the water was smooth as ever. Chugging without constraint liquor spilled down her chin. Silently I willed her to drink me up with the same eagerness she drank that shot.
Her poison came best in triple doses; alcohol, smoke and I were the only medicine she cared to take. When we kissed she would take my head in her tobacco stained hands and I always pulled back a mouth of must, a chemical cocktail of haze and tang. This I found the most irresistible.
Her breasts failed to fill the space in her bra and a mismatched thong peaked from folds of scarred belly, legs spread wide and hands pressed back in the sand, she let the ocean wash over her thighs, stealing kisses before drawing back into itself. It was then that I knew I would gurgle sea and sand to give her all the kisses she needed to feel healed, if only she would let me.
Maggie slipped a knife and fork into her designer handbag hoping no one had noticed. Something to remember this day by. She always thought this when she took something that was not hers. At a coffee shop she would take magazines. At the hair salon she would steal shampoo, conditioner, maybe a hair curler if she was feeling brave. Sometimes she would go to donation yoga just to take money out of the box. Little thefts had grown big since she could remember. She looked up from a pictured diner menu and saw a miserable waitress charge towards her.
“What did you put in your bag there?” her breath smelled like she had not eaten in hours.
Maggie was calm. She had been called out from time to time when someone saw her taking something, but her looks – the blond curls, put together outfits and demeanor, made people doubt what they had seen.
“Nothing,” she pulled a pair of tweezers from her bag “just doing some maintenance.”
“Uh huh, maintenance. Well buy something or get the hell out, I can’t maintain a business if people just come in and sit here.”
“I’m waiting for my father.”
Les came into the diner backwards holding a box with “DO NOT THROW AWAY” scrawled on the side. He held it high on his chest and could barely see over it. Maggie only knew it was him from his tired talking shoes.
“Maggie!” he yelled from the door and stumbled over. He threw the box down on the floor and opened his arms wide for a hug. Maggie did not get up so he did a weird self hug and sat down.
He turned to the waitress “Hey Betty, get us some menus will ya?”
Betty pulled her mouth into a fake smile and revealed a snaggletooth painted purple with lipstick before walking away.
Maggie looked at her dad closely for the first time. Grooves lined his face and she wondered when he had gotten so old. His shirt was two sizes too small and he had used his name tag in an attempt to hide a toothpaste stain. A grown man that wore his hair long with the ends girlishly tucked in. Somewhere in those years he had started dying it a schoolboy blond. He caught her staring at his hair.
“I know,” he licked his fingers and patted down “I get a lot of shit, but your mom likes it so, y’know.” He shuffled in his chair, pulled his tiny shirt down over his belly. “She says sorry she couldn’t make it.”
Maggie scoffed internally with her lips tightened – Right. Sorry. Her father looked around, trying to find something to talk about. “Nice place, huh?”
He had chosen the diner and knowing he would insist on paying, despite having to take a bus ride in to do so, Maggie agreed to meet him there. A layer of grease sat on the pleather booths, she could feel her calves sticking to them. She had placed her handbag on top of an unfolded napkin on top of the table and it jingled with cutlery. The menu, some crayons, and the salt and pepper shaker were stuffed inside too. A party of diner souvenirs. The table was littered with splotches of gravy or ranch dressing or sour cream from the previous patrons. Betty brought them stale bread and glasses of mostly ice water. Her few grey hairs were spiked with too much gel that dripped on the table when she leaned over to put more cutlery down.
“Is that my stuff?” Maggie nudged the box by her foot and could see it was full of junk, clothes, pictures, books. She sipped the water and even the cup had a greasy film to it. She took three splendas and mixed them in with a straw. Les smiled “C’mon Magpie, let’s at least eat first. Want me to get you one of those sundaes you like?” He was already waving the hunchback waitress back over. “What was it? Chocolate? Vanilla?”
Maggie never liked vanilla or chocolate ice cream or sundaes, but her younger sister Alice had. Every Friday when they were young Les would take his two girls out for ice cream sundaes completely forgetting one of his daughter’s had no interest in them. Alice would leave full, her face smeared with sprinkles and Les would puzzle over why Maggie had barely eaten half – Ha, since when don’t you like sundaes? Maggie wanted to remind him but the dinosaur of a waitress had already trudged over, much nicer than last time. “Whaddya want, love?”
“Chocolate’s fine.”
Les ordered a beer and yelled “Not all froth like last time!” throwing the old waitress a wink.
He turned back to Maggie, leaned forward and rubbed his hands together as if he was preparing to hear some gossip,
“So Magpie, what’s new, how’s Los Angeles?”
“I’ve told you before, I live in Miami.”
“Ha!” he forced his mouth open wide to laugh revealing few pearly teeth. Maggie counted ten, maybe twelve. “Since when?”
“Since always.”
“Ah, well y’know you’re old man, I’ve never been good remembering things.”
Maggie could not recall the last time her dad had remembered something she had told him. He constantly forgot her birthday, calling her just before midnight to redeem himself – Daddy just gets so busy sometimes, you understand. She did not understand. Les worked part time at a movie theater so he was hardly busy. Him and his much younger co workers spent the day drinking butter from behind the confectionery stand and sometimes he would be found drunk and passed out in the back of the screenings. Maggie had gone down to pick him up twice before it got too embarrassing.
The box almost fell apart as she lifted it on the table and rifled through finding her treasure of stolen items throughout high school and college in Georgia. Stuffed inside was a plush bathrobe she could not remember owning, some children’s toys, and endless books stamped with “Property of Kennesaw Library”
“Is that all of it?”
“Yup.” Les burped his beer loudly. “I don’t know why you want all this shit for anyway.”
In amongst the box of stolen odds and ends was something she did not recognize. She turned it this way and that. It was damp, soft with fur. She smelled it and it was sour like bad salami. Maggie tried to place it. Was it some board eraser she had swiped from her teacher’s class? Maybe a shoe insert from the summer she worked down at Shoe Bargain, before getting fired. She flipped it upside down and spotted two sharp yellow points. Two very sharp, very yellow teeth. It was a dead rat.
“What the hell, there’s a rat in here!” her eyes blinked rapidly at Les, she threw the thing on the table.
“Ha,” that toothless laugh again “is that what that is? I didn’t know, it was in the garage by your things and I just threw it in.”
“You just threw in a dead rat?!” Maggie was scratching her skin dirty from touching the rat.
He draw his neck back and looked at her, “Ugh, well, fuck. Come on, why do you care what’s in your box of stolen crap?”
Maggie sat back, shocked. How long had he known about it? Did her mom know? Did Alice?
“All this stuff is mine.” she made no effort to sound like she even believed herself.
Les wiped his face slowly with his palm, “You were always coming home with random stuff. Shoes we never bought you. Half eaten sandwiches we hadn’t made you.”
“I have money.” She pulled out her wallet, it was stuffed with hundred dollar bills she had borrowed just for today. “I don’t need to steal.”
Les slammed his beer down, the froth spilling over the edges.
“You act like you’re so high and goddamn mighty with your designer clothes, living in LA or wherever the fuck. Don’t give a shit about us, d’ya?”
He swung his arms out hitting her bag. It flew through the air before landing heavy and spilling all of it’s contents out. The whole diner turned to the sound of metal hitting the ground. The cutlery, salt and pepper shakers, crayons, all of it was on the floor.
“What is wrong with you Maggie?” he hissed, “you’re still doing this?”
She was on her hands and knees keeping her eyes to the dull linoleum floors, quickly stuffing everything into her bag as if some tampons had fallen out.
Drunk Off Rhetoric 