"My House"

 

Michael has been just as careful stacking the boxes next to the curb as he had been peeling back layers of newspapers from the dishes or sliding the new refrigerator out of its enormous crate. All of their belongings are unpacked, yet the house now feels empty without walls of boxes to trap their echoes. All of their belongings are unpacked, yet something is missing; something is not where it's supposed to be. A glance outside shows Michael that his son has dragged the refrigerator crate away from the curb to the middle of the front lawn and is drawing on it with a crayon. 

"Hey, big guy," Michael says when he approaches Calvin in the yard, "what do you got going there?"

"This is my house," Calvin informs him while continuing to color. "It's got a blue door, and two windows, and red flowers."

Michael studies his work. "Buddy, that's our old house," he says. "Why don't you give it a brown door? Make it look like what we've got now."

"This is my house," Calvin says again. He is beginning to lose against his tears. "I don't want you to throw away my house." He hits the top of the crate twice, striking the words that end his sentence. Inside the crate, the sound echoes.

"Music Takes Time"

What a crappy photo. I promise, that squash is not swarmed with bugs. That's just my phone's camera adding specks.

Lucas came back to check on the seedling two days after the seed was planted.

"It's not ready yet," Old Man Bones, who watched over things that grow, told him. "Go home and practice. Da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM. That's right." Lucas frowned but marched home, tapping out a simple rhythm on his belly.

Lucas waited a month before he marched back to visit Bones, beating the same simple rhythm that the old man had given him to work with the last time. "Still not ready for you yet," Bones said, "but come here, look at this." He turned the fruit over for Lucas to see. "See this little groove right here? This little notch?" Lucas nodded and pretended that he did. "That's going to be important. You've got to be ready to play it. So try it with some extra notes. Da-DUM, da-da-DA-dum." Lucas practiced for weeks without understanding the point of it, until one day, when, tapping the rhythm against his arm, his finger twitched and struck the bone of his wrist instead. The feeling was completely different. That's all that music was, he realized: paying attention to how the slightest changes felt.

He and Old Man Bones continued like that over the following weeks, the old man giving him new steps in his rhythm each time. Finally, summer ended, and the time for harvest came. Old Man Bones gave Lucas a beautiful drum, plucked straight from the vine. "Now it's ready for you," he told the boy, who ran off and began to play. And you're ready for it, Bones' inner voice added as they both enjoyed the fruits of their labor.

"Fire"

 

He rarely thought about the trees in any of the lands their army crossed, but this one he liked. The way the thin, curved fingers of its trunk curled toward the sky made him think of fire, and fire he liked as well. He took his striking stones from his breast pocket and reached into the pouch at his hip for one of the wax-dipped wads of cotton he carried with him. Grinning, he broke from the line of freeriders and went to kneel beside the tree. It was almost as if its lines were meant to lead the flames.

"The Tooth Fairy Pillow"

 

When I was younger, I had a small pillow, pink with lace trim and a pocket about as wide as the diameter of a quarter sewn onto the front, where I kept the baby teeth that I lost. The night after a tooth had fallen out, I would slip the dead little bit of enamel into the pocket. In the morning, the pocket would hold a coin. My tooth fairy was somewhat lax in her duties, though; often, she left the teeth tucked inside along with the quarter. As more and more teeth fell out of my mouth and ended up in the pillow, I swore that I could hear them clacking together at night, as if someone were talking very quickly, or shivering in the cold.

I hadn't thought much about the tooth fairy pillow until the other day, when I was cleaning the hair out of my brush. I'm used to imagining the tangled bunches that I pull out as tumbleweeds as they drift down toward the garbage can. This time, as it was falling, the mass of hair sprouted tiny legs and feet from its bottom side, landed on the can with its toes curled over the rim, and leaped onto the floor, where it dashed toward a crack in the wall. I thought I had been hallucinating until this morning, when some of my fingernail clippings joined together and grew a hand out of nothing, and afterwards proceeded to run out the front door like the Thing.

Sometimes I've thought about the parts of me that I've lost over the years, and the other lives that I or some other version of me might have gone on to live. Now there's a knocking on my door downstairs, and I find myself wondering, What about all the thoughts I used to have? The stories I once dreamed and the terrors I used to fear? What might have become of them?

Another Update

As you can probably tell by the stretch of time between today's post and the one I made last Thursday, I decided to take a more casual approach with the blog, at least over the past few days. I still don't know what I'm going to do moving forward. I can say, though, that the time away was well spent. I took care of another obligation, one that I'm happy to have.

I wrote my partner a story.

It's a thing we do. Every year, I write two stories just for him: one for his birthday, and one for the winter holidays. (In turn, he makes some art for me on those same days. Well, he draws for my birthday, not for his. You know what I mean.) His birthday is next Tuesday, and I had the idea; I just needed the time to write it out. Stupid as it sounds, I didn't want to talk about working on it until I had the story done. After over a decade with him, I'm still worried that I'll jinx myself and not finish the story if I mention it too early. I wonder if that worry is ever going to go away. At my age, I'm beginning to doubt that it will. And that's fine. Worry keeps me on my toes, eh?

It was hard, working on a longer piece after several months of not doing so, but I will say that this blog has helped me in committing to a story idea and seeing it through to at least some kind of ending--because if I didn't, I wouldn't have a blog post for the day! Whatever this blog ends up being, though, it's been a great exercise so far.

As for the other story I was working on, much as I love sharing with people, some stories are meant only for certain readers. (And Wes, if you're reading this... um, happy birthday! I made you something!)

"The Pepper Plant"

 

Eddi was twelve weeks into the pregnancy when she bought the pepper plant.

"I feel like I need the practice," she told the clerk at the garden center.

She actually felt that she needed some kind of distraction, something that wasn't a baby book or a question about her child-rearing plans from an eager co-worker that would leave her worrying away the rest of the afternoon. And she had always loved the taste and the color of hot peppers. She took the plant home, gave it new soil, and applied an Epsom salt solution to its leaves.

Once the plant, a cayenne, had produced several fruit, Eddi snipped one of the peppers and sliced off the tip. She was well into the second trimester by that point. She brought the piece to her mouth and began to nibble on it. Immediately she wanted to cry.

The burn of it was horrible, nothing like she remembered or had expected. Her stomach had felt like a minefield flooded with acid throughout the previous months, but she had still hoped to be able to enjoy some of what she had worked so hard to grow.

She called her mother.

"I can't do this," Eddi wailed into the phone, "I don't know what I was thinking. I can't do this."

"Do what?" her mother said. "Honey, is this about the baby?"

"I just wanted to eat a pepper," Eddi said.

She couldn't stand to look at the pepper plant the next morning, and she was hardly able to look at it the day after that. She did, however, check on it three days later. Its leaves were drooping. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she whispered as she silently urged the water to fill the watering can. It didn't matter that she couldn't eat the peppers; it was still her plant. Yet she wasn't as worried as she thought she should've been. Somewhere deep inside of her, a voice was saying, It's all right, it's all right.

State of the Blog

Here I am, having taken several days away from this blog to do other tasks with deadlines and timeframes that didn't work well with this project.

For some time, I've questioned whether I should continue with these posts. They've been a helpful exercise, forcing me to write about themes I might not address otherwise and making sure I got some writing practice done every day. Heck, I started this blog to make sure that I got some writing in, even on days when I couldn't find the focus to work on longer stories. And as disappointed as I feel when I put the blog on hiatus, I can deal with it. I mean, it's not as if I can't make up for the days I missed.

But being away brought me back to thinking about the big reason I debate continuing this blog as it is, which is that there are simply other stories I want to write, ones that don't fit into the "one picture + one story a day" format or that I'd rather submit and publish elsewhere. I miss spending more time with characters and getting to know them, y'know? The big problem with the big reason is that there's not enough time in my workday to do all the writing I want to do!

My thought now is to leave this blog not as an everyday commitment, but a space where I can work my writing brain with some short posts if I need a warmup or if I have an image with a story that needs to be told. I'm not sure if that's what I'll end up doing, but I might post this and see how I feel about it tomorrow.

If you've been reading this blog while I've been posting, please know that I'm grateful for your attention. There are a lot of good writers out there, and I'm pleased as all get-out that you spent some of your reading time on my posts. I hope it's been as fun for you so far as it's been for me. :)

"Old"

 

As he pushed the sealcoat across the surface of the parking lot, he became aware of an elderly woman watching him from the balcony of her second-floor condo. She was seated close to the railing, her hands folded over the top bar. The skin covering her fingers was dark brown. He imagined that it would look like splintered wood if he saw it up close, and that her fingers were curling over the railing like withered grape vines. He didn't know why it bothered him. He continued the sweep the liquid seal over the cracks in the exhausted asphalt that had been filled, telling himself that the sun was just getting to him.

On Break

The blog's on hold for the next few days. Got a test that got rescheduled, along with a project for work that needs to die already. Thank you!

"Sometimes on Those Summer Nights"

 

Sometimes on those summer nights, among all the shouts from the neighbors playing bag toss games in their driveways and the songs that fell in pitch as cars drove past the house, he would catch the sound of someone crying. He checked out the window a few times and once in the held-breath stillness of night even stepped barefoot on the lawn, but he never saw anybody. The only figure of any note was that of the tree, which stood in the middle of the yard, sticky with the sap that had built up inside it over the course of the spring and that was now escaping through cracks in the bark, unable to be contained any longer.

"What Are You Afraid Of?"

 

"It's the weirdest thing," said the oldest of the three rabbits. "They make these hard ground pathways for themselves, and they never step off of them, just follow them everywhere. When they're younger, they'll play in the grass, but the older ones--you almost never see that."

"Maybe they go blind as they grow up," said the youngest through the blades of grass that he had stuffed into his mouth. "Need the hard ground to know where to go."

"Or maybe they're afraid of what's out there," whispered the middle rabbit. The oldest turned to see him and would've sworn that he was just sitting still, listening to what the wind had to say for the evening, except that he follow the middle one's sideways stare and saw at the end of it a human, standing not five rabbits' length away, at the edge where the grass met solid ground.

"I don't like it," the middle rabbit said.

The oldest held still for a moment. Then he wrinkled his nose. "Why not?" he asked. "It's on the pavement. It won't come any closer." He lowered his head and joined the youngest in the task of eating.

"It's trying to hide its eyes now," the middle rabbit said in more urgent tones.

The oldest and the youngest glanced up. The human was holding a small rectangle in front of its face."Weird," said the youngest.

"It's still not coming any closer," the oldest said.

Later, the oldest rabbit figured that the human must have been able to hear him. That was why it put its foot on the grass.

"Run!" the oldest rabbit squeaked. The three dashed for the nearest bushes, scared to wonder what else the evening held in store.

"Snugglewood"

 

Person 1: "Hey, you want some wood?"

Person 2: "..."

1: "Look, Snugglewood's on sale."

2: "Sugar plum, it's always on sale. It's just not legal to pay for it outside of certain parts of Nevada."

1: "Why do I have the feeling that 'Snugglewood' was someone's euphemistic pet name for part of the body?"

2: "I don't know. Possibly because we already implied something like that just two seconds ago? Possibly because your mind thinks in weird euphemisms all the time? I don't know."

1: "What? Weird euphemisms?"

2: "I told you I was going to run to the corner and grab some eggs and you, like, died laughing for a half hour."

1: "I was just wondering whose you were going to grab."

[pause]

1: "I think a product name like 'Fucksticks' would help them sell a lot more firewood."

2: "Okay, going inside the store now. And I'm going to check the price of milk, too, if you think you can handle it."

1: [snicker]

2: "Yep. Definitely not getting any wood tonight, that's for sure."

"Dear as Pepper"

Today's post is based on an old Italian folktale called "Dear as Salt."

The wise woman left her cabin in the heart of the deep, living forest and traveled to the castle. There she found the prince, seated at a long table on top of a dais, celebrating his wedding feast.

She gave him a cloth bag full of black and red peppercorns.

"Pepper?" the prince asked, holding the bag open, sniffing. He tugged the bag's drawstrings and gave woman the most graceful smile that his confusion would let him manage. "To be honest, I would have expected mushrooms, or some other forest delicacy. Or at least salt. That has some value. We use that in everything."

The wise woman nodded. "Salt is simple and practical, a good foundation," she said. "But pepper. Pepper adds depth. Bite. Salt stands in agreement with each ingredient and makes each dish what it's meant to be. Pepper makes the whole dish something more." The wise woman bowed and turned to take her leave; the party was no place for her. "Go a year without pepper, and your bride there will say everything is seasoned pleasantly enough," she called out as she walked through the long hall. "But how long can a person look forward to dining on food that's merely pleasant?"

She didn't have to turn around to know that the prince's young bride was watching her leave, and that both her meal and the prince's remained untouched.

"The Pursuit of Happiness"

An open condom box, discarded in the grass near the sidewalk.

In my pocket, along with all of the other junk I carry with me daily, I have a fortune from a fortune cookie. It reads, "Happiness is not a reward; it is a consequence." There are consequences for your actions. I like this fortune. According to its wisdom, happiness can result from any action undertaken, no matter where on the moral scale, the line between good and bad, that action falls.

In theory, even littering can lead to happiness.

"5:21"

 

There was an old woman in the back of the electronics department, moving along the shelves of clock radios like a cursor moving along lines of text. When Frank got there, he saw that she was changing the time on all the clocks to 5:21 p.m.

He brought his careful shuffle to a standstill a few feet away from her and cleared his throat. "Ma'am?" he asked. "Can I help you with anything?"

"No," she said with a quick smile before continuing to the next clock, "I'm quite fine, thanks."

Frank nodded. He started to turn away but then swiveled back around on his heels. "If I can ask," he began.

"I'm dealing with something," the old woman told him. This time she didn't look up.

"Right," said Frank. He watched her work at her task. The finger that held down each clock's buttons seemed to tremble under the weight of whatever was motivating her to do this. 

"Ten-ten," he murmured to her when she was at the last clock on the wall. That made her stop. "That's the magic time," he said while she stared at him. "Whenever you see clocks in a store or in a catalog or whatever, they're usually going to be set to ten-ten. I guess it looks more natural or something, I don't know."

"Well. Never noticed that," the woman said. She returned her attention to the clock and pressed one of its buttons until its glowing red lines aligned in the shapes of the digits 5, 2, and 1.

"My manager's probably going to make me change that," Frank said, even though he doubted Shawn would notice.

"Probably," the woman said. Her task complete, she faced Frank with her hands folded in front of her belly and a smile fighting to take hold on her lips, which confused Frank, as the tears swelling in her eyes suggested that that smile had no business even trying. "Still," she said. "I'd like to see how long we can keep these like this, if that's all right."

"Doesn't bother me any," said Frank.

The old woman nodded and patted Frank on the shoulder as she moved to walk past him. "Maybe I'll go home and set my clocks to ten-ten," she told him. "See if there's any magic in that magic time of yours after all." She left Frank lingering in that instant. Even years later, Frank thought back to that night at the store when an old woman came in and locked the clocks on the shelves at 5:21 p.m. The moment seemed, at least in memory, to last forever.