"Clarinet"

 

"Jeez, what is that sound?" she asked from the couch. "It sounds like a clarinet. Or a cat dying. Or a dying cat playing the clarinet."

The man closed the wooden box that kept his song safe and placed the box back on the shelf. "Probably just the neighbor's kid. I think he started taking lessons," he said. "Listen, I'm sorry to have to call it an early night, but I've got this presentation at work tomorrow...." He wiped his hands on the front of his shirt, leaving streaks of dust across the fine-gauge cotton blend, no longer worried about how he looked.

"Where the Wind Takes Me"

 

The would-be traveler had just left her parents' house, ready to go wherever the wind took her, when she glanced up and saw, dangling in the breeze, a pair tennis shoes hanging from an electrical wire.

"Maybe I'll just see where the road takes me to start," she told herself, "at least until I get out of the subdivision." She bent down and double-knotted her shoelaces for good measure before heading off.

"Earthworms"

Poor little worm.

The robin hopped in a circle until it was facing me, stopped, and tilted its head. I tilted mine so that we were mirror-friends and asked, "What are you looking at?"

"Quiet," the robin answered with a snap of its beak. We sat silently for a few seconds. "Ah, they're too far underground," it said afterward. "I was listening to the earthworms."

"You can hear them?"

"You can't?" The robin tilted its head toward the other wing. "Listen," it told me. I heard a lawnmower in action somewhere around the corner. A tree stood nearby with its flowers tumbling down in catkins; I heard them brush against each other in the breeze as if they were bells made of whispers. But I couldn't hear the worms.

"Oh, wow," said the robin. "They're really wriggling down there. I don't know. I think they might be feeding on something. It sounds kinda big." It hopped forward and looked at me, its beak pointing like a finger. "So did you, like, put something down there? Maybe, you know, bury something? Not that it matters to me," the robin said. "I'm just wondering."

I let my jaw drop. "I'm not a killer!" I told it. "And I only moved here a month ago! I don't know anything about this place."

The robin's red breast puffed up as if the bird were drawing in a sharp breath. "Seems there's a lot you don't know," it said, giving its feathers a shake. "You don't know what worms sounds like, you don't know what's going on under your own front yard--just out of curiosity, do you even understand why you're able to talk to me right now?"

I didn't have to answer. The robin saw my frown.

"Okay, let me go speak to a few birds about some things," it said, in a gentler voice than it had been using, closer to its usual song. "Wait here. I'll be right back." I watched it spring into the air, wondering where it thought--given all that I had just heard, and all that I still wasn't able to hear--I would possibly go.

"Just a Trim"

 

More and more people had been walking beneath the spruce tree ever since she got her lower branches cut. It bothered her. Other perennials in the area tried to be encouraging, telling her that the trim simply made her, in a very literal way, much easier to approach. And to be fair, the tree did find herself listening to the people talk as they passed, hearing them speak with delight about how nice it was, now that spring had arrived and homeowners had begun maintaining their landscaping in earnest, to be able to enjoy all the greenery around them. The spruce tree merely wished that she could remind these people that she was the same tree that had been rooted there for people's enjoyment for years, just with a new cut, and that she was as green as she had ever been, which only made sense, as she was an evergreen. But the people continued to walk by and comment on all the lovely things they had never seen before, and the tree, being a tree, said nothing.

"Balls"

 

The two women sat facing each other in the kitchen, surrounded by shards of dishware that had been knocked to the floor. One, the burglar, had been tied to the chair where she was sitting; bungee cords and rags crossed her limbs and her chest. The other, the homeowner, was bouncing a tennis ball on the tile floor.

"Is this bothering you yet?" the homeowner asked as the soft thuds continued.

The burglar remained silent. A bruise was spreading across her jaw like water pooling beneath a leaky roof.

"Bet you wish you had tried to steal these," the homeowner said with a click of her tongue. She caught the tennis ball and put it back into the can with the other two from the set just as red and blue lights appeared, painting the room through the windows.

"Keep Me Warm"

 

We sat on the porch under a red, fading sky, with a blanket drawn over our shoulders. I felt the heat spill out from the cracks that split the pavement like open sores.

"It feels so fucking stupid to be cold right now," she whispered. "Keep me warm. Please."

I pulled the edges of the blanket together, over her arms, over the spots where she no longer had skin to cover her.

"Come Out and Play"

 

I heard what I thought might have been an empty plastic bottle rattling down the street. I thought it seemed odd, as there was no wind blowing to sweep anything along over the blacktop. Because that was the only sound echoing in what felt like an empty chamber of night, I stood and looked out the window. That was when I saw the ghost, a blue flame burning in the image of a boy; on the sidewalk by his feet was a white styrofoam cup. He saw me staring at him from where I stood on the second floor. "It's been a lousy day," he said, as clearly as if he were right next to me. "You want to come out and play?" He kicked the cup with a foot lit by ghostfire. The rattling sound could have been the sound of bones. I didn't offer him an answer, because I knew I had no choice.