THE ROOF OF THE WORLD - short fiction

This short story is in response to

RAVEN’S SATURDAY

WORDZZLE CHALLENGE

Click on the above link to join in or read other entries.

How it works: Raven supplies two sets of words (or phrases) to use in a piece of writing. One can choose the ten- or five-word challenge ---or combine both into a fifteen word mega-challenge.

Mega challenge:
Tibetan sky, symbols, won’t you come home Bill Baily, shadow figures, brain cortex, practice makes perfect, life, start of school, lavender, chow down, mental hospital, falling leaves, apple cider, packing crates, clues

(Words from the challenge are in bold face in the story.)

*** If you have trouble reading this post, see note at top of right sidebar. ***

The adventures of Matty and Clem continue.

It took Matty and Clem nearly a week to cover Clem’s living room with foil, but only a few days for the kitchen, bedroom and bath. The old saying, “practice makes perfect” kept looping through Matty’s head.
Thursday evening, after completing the foil, they emptied the packing crates that held Clem’s belongings. In one Matty found a dozen new lavender T-shirts. Matty surmised that lavender had to be Clem’s favorite color, but Clem admitted he had purchased the shirts at a flea market, twelve for five dollars. Lavender was the only color in his size.
One crate held ten hand-woven throw rugs featuring unusual designs and symbols. Another held a small statue of Buddha. In his high school yearbook he was listed as Clement Altan Gyatso, an unusual name, Matty thought. Beside his photo, it said that Clem had been voted the most likely to become the next Dalai Lama. Each find seemed to be a clue to Clem’s life, although he didn’t talk about himself much. But Matty couldn’t put the clues together.
As usual Clem cooked dinner. He made enchiladas with chicken, beans, rice, cheese, and homemade salsa. Matty couldn’t help but chow down the delicious meal, but as usual, Clem seemed indifferent to his dinner once he started to eat.
When he walked her to her door, Clem invited Matty to accompany him to the mental hospital the next morning. All she could think about was the horrible three days she had spent in one of those places when her mother tried to have her committed, but Clem convinced her that he would make sure they didn’t try to keep her there.

Friday morning, Clem arrived holding two knitted caps, each lined with foil. He also carried a small cooler and suggested they have lunch in the park after his appointment.
Afraid to enter the hospital, Matty decided to sit outside while Clem saw his doctor. Several patients wandered the grounds. One asked her if her name were Bill. She shook her head. The patient stared at her for a full minute, then said, “Won’t you come home Bill Baily?” over and over. Matty had no idea what he meant, but figured the man himself might not know either. She was glad she wasn’t crazy like he was. It was everyone else, all those people trying to steal her thoughts who were deranged.

The park was quiet. There were a few adults pushing toddlers in strollers, but with the start of school, no other children were present.
They sat at a picnic table on the top of a hill that made it seem to Matty like they were on the highest peak in the world. Falling leaves floated around them, their colors vibrant in the sun. After they ate ham sandwiches and pumpkin cookies Clem had prepared, Clem sat staring at the horizon sipping from a small bottle of apple cider. Matty thought he might be in his usual mealtime grump, but then he started to talk.
“It looks like a Tibetan sky, today,” he said.
Matty snickered. “Like you’d know what the sky looks like in Tibet,” she said.
“Tibet has the highest average elevation of all the countries in the world, over three miles high. Tibet is called ‘the roof of the world.’”
“How do you know stuff like that?” Matty asked.
“I was born there. My mother was an American mountain climber who explored the Himalayas and my father was a Sherpa who helped the climbers. My parents raised sheep. My grandmother spun the wool and made the rugs we unpacked last night. She sold most of them to tourists.”
Matty said nothing. She just stared at Clem wondering what other interesting things she would learn from him.
“Occasionally, my father would still go to the mountains. On one expedition, three people plunged into a ravine, including my father. So my mother, sisters and I moved back here to live with my mother’s parents.”
“I’m sorry about your dad,” Matty said. Clem continued to stare the sky.
A few minutes later Matty asked, “So what do you mean that it looks like a Tibetan sky ?” She nodded toward the horizon.
“I was only five when we left Tibet, so I don’t remember much. My grandparents, even my father, seem like shadow figures to me now. But I do remember the skies. We were so high up, that the clouds were always low, just above the horizon, never high above us like they are here.”
Matty saw that all the clouds were near the horizon that day. They sat in near silence until a cold wind kicked up.

About half way home, Clem said, “I saw my doctor about test results. I had a brain scan several weeks ago.”
“Oh, no.” Matty stopped walking. Ringing her hands nervously, she said, “They stole your thoughts, didn’t they?”
“The court ruled if I didn’t have the tests they’d commit me, so I had to let them do it. Dr. Wallace promised he would erase all my thoughts from the results and would return them to me before any government people could get hold of them.”
“And you believed him?” Matty asked shrilly. “Oh, Clem. Oh, no.”
“He proved to me that he did what he said he would. He asked me a dozen questions before the test and I still knew the answers afterward. So they couldn’t have taken my thoughts away, could they, if I could still think?”
Matty nodded. That made some sense.
“So, the tests show that I have a thick cerebral cortex.”
Matty looked puzzled.
“That’s the brain cortex, the part of the brain that controls memory, among other things. The doctor said that thickness usually indicates intelligence. My IQ tests were above 150. I asked if my cortex is thick enough, if it would be very difficult for the government to steal my memory, my thoughts. He says I shouldn’t have to wear a foil cap any more.” He took off his hat. “What do you think about that?”
“Please put your cap back on. See that woman walking toward us? She’s pretending to use her cell phone. She’s trying to send radio signals to our brains. I can tell because I feel a buzzing in my ear.”
Clem quickly replaced his hat. “The other thing they found was that I have, uh...” He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket and read, “Dysgeusia.”
“That sounds terrible.”
“Because of a zinc deficiency my sense of taste is distorted or decreased. That’s why I don’t enjoy eating. The doc gave me a prescription which he says should help.”

Finally they arrived at the apartment building. It had been the longest Matty had been outside at one time for years and suddenly, she felt exhausted. She was glad to get home to her cat, who had managed to remove his aluminum helmet. Matty tied it under his chin again and crawled into bed for a nap, but she couldn’t sleep.

Matty worried that if Clem no longer needed to wear a foil cap, he might not want to hang out with her anymore. Or if he removed the foil in his apartment, she wouldn’t be able to visit him anymore. Or what if he stopped wearing his helmet and then his memory was stolen? He would no longer be Clem. And he might stop working on his brain-wave blocking machine.
Matty finally decided no matter how frightening it was for her, Clem was a very smart man and he would make the right decisions. But she was still worried sick about him.

(©2009, C.J. Peiffer)

FOILED AGAIN - short fiction

This short story is in response to

RAVEN’S SATURDAY

WORDZZLE CHALLENGE

Click on the above link to join in or read other entries.

How it works: Raven supplies two sets of words (or phrases) to use in a piece of writing. One can choose the ten- or five-word challenge ---or combine both into a fifteen word mega-challenge.

Mega challenge:
dangerous, engine, sullenly, bespoke, evergreen, bauble, medicine, freight, destined, tinsel, carbon, feelers, outright, ballet, fizzing

(Words from the challenge are in bold face in the story.)

* * * * *

You’ve met Matty and her new neighbor Clem in a previous post, “Foiling Her Adversaries.” The following continues their story.

With his three-day growth of beard, her new neighbor Clem was a little scruffy looking. Matty knew if he were famous and on TV it would be called ‘designer stubble.’ On Clem, it just looked like he didn’t take care of himself.
But Matty could excuse his looks, because Clem understood her so well. He knew the FBI and CIA were trying to steal her thoughts ---and his, too. He told her he had been prescribed medicine to keep his so-called delusions at bay, but he knew the pills would just make him let his guard down, so he didn’t take them.
Clem was convinced that he was destined to invent in impenitrable brain-wave blocker. He stole engine pieces and other auto parts from the garage where he worked, hoping they might be useful.
Matty and Clem had spent their evenings, for over a week, applying aluminum foil to Clem’s apartment walls and windows. While he was on a ladder, Matty danced around him cutting the foil and handing him duct tape. They worked in perfect sync, almost like a choreographed ballet.
They discoveredd they were much alike. They were both afraid of the freight elevators in the building and had refused to use them when moving their furniture into their apartments. They loved the smell of evergreen and cleaned everything with Pinesol™. Neither of them could stand carbonated beverages, because the fizzing reminded them of radio static, which they knew was really the government listening in on them.
They knew Clem’s apartment would be dangerous until the aluminum was up, so they wore construction helmets lined with foil. Clem devised long antennae from coat hangers which he had covered in tinsel. He said they would work like feelers on a bug. Wearing them, he and Matty would be able to sense when someone was trying to steal their thoughts.
Clem was outright the best cook Matty had ever met. She only ate frozen dinners, canned spaghetti, and bags of munchies in her own apartment, but Clem cooked Cajun, Italian, and Chinese food each evening while she sat on the floor covering the lowest parts of the walls and the baseboards. Once he had everything cooking on the stove, they would work together until dinner was ready.
Clem liked to cook, but eating put him in a bad temper. Around nine o’clock, after they had worked for several hours, he sullenly ate what he had cooked while Matty delighted in every bite. Her plus-sized jeans were already feeling tight.
Clem’s indifferent eating habits bespoke the depression that would fall over him after dinner. Unable to talk him out of his gloom, Matty would leave for her own apartment. She worried about his lack of appetite. He was already extremely thin.
But the following evening, Clem would show up at Matty’s door bearing some bauble or other for her in apology for his sulky behavior the night before. Matty collected them in a shoe box she had covered with duct tape.
Clem had looped silver washers on a chain to make a necklace. He had twisted colorful plastic-coated wires together for a bracelet. He created two little metal helmets from welded scraps of aluminum for her cat, so that she didn’t always have to make foil ones that the cat could tear off with his claws.
But her very favorite gift from Clem was special. He had cut a slice of pipe, drilled holes on one side of the cylinder, filed off the rough edges, and polished the metal with emory cloth and steel wool. Then he superglued pebbles from a broken windshield’s safety glass into the holes. One fell out, but he had a tin can full of them, so he had more to glue into the ring if she needed them. It was better than a diamond ring, because diamonds would have attracted the government monitors. Glass didn’t block them, but it didn’t attract them either.
If Clem could make all of those beautiful things, Matty was convinced his brain-wave blocker would be a technological and financial success. And just having Clem in the apartment across the hall made her feel less vulnerable to the radio signals which had been scrambling her thoughts. And, besides, her cat looked so cute in his new helmets.

(©2009, C.J. Peiffer)

ERASING THE PAST - short fiction

This short story is in response to

RAVEN’S SATURDAY

WORDZZLE CHALLENGE

Click on the above link to join in or read other entries.

How it works: Raven supplies two sets of words (or phrases) to use in a piece of writing. One can choose the ten- or five-word challenge ---or combine both into a fifteen word mega-challenge.

Mega challenge:
Spam, perpetual motion, sprinkle, telephone pole, stains, alphabetical, surgery, flattery, liberty, preservation, shadows, singularity, Florida, caterpillars, copy

(Words from the challenge are in bold face in the story.)

After a morning filled with boring meetings, Ashley sat at her desk deleting hundreds of spam messages that had accumulated over her summer break. It was the first of three in-service days at the school where she had been teaching Social Studies for nearly three decades. A thousand human perpetual motion machines would show up on Thursday morning.
Ashley wasn’t sure she was ready for the preteens. The previous spring, her mother had died. Then she discovered that her brother, a financial planner, had embezzled everyone’s investments including her own and her mother’s, leaving Ashley and her sister to borrow money for the funeral. Over the summer, Ashley's landlord threw her out because she had left her tub overflow into his apartment. To make things worse, Ashley was going through menopause, which caused extreme crankiness. With those problems and her surgery in June, she didn’t feel like herself. But Ashley was determined to put all of that behind her.
Her sister Marilyn had suggested a sabbatical for Ashley to join her in Florida, but her older sister had never stopped bossing her around. Ashley preferred her liberty to a semester with an overbearing sibling. Besides, with no savings, she couldn’t afford a leave of absence. She was sure she could handle returning to work.
Once the junk mail had been deleted, Ashley popped a few aspirin, then found her printed class lists and began to copy students’ names into her electronic grade book in alphabetical order. She recognized family names of students she had taught in the past, some welcome and some sure to sprinkle her classes with a few troublemakers. Her right hand began to tremble as she typed the last of the names.
She attempted to deal with disruptive students with humor and flattery, or anything else that assured the preservation of her sanity, but she was not always successful. She believed in the singularity of each student and made a supreme effort not to force them all into the same mold, but there were always a few incorrigible ones who drove her crazy anyway. She dug in her purse for a valium.
When Ashley peered through the slats of the blinds on her classroom’s windows, she realized that shadows had grown long. It was time to go home.
Ever since the accident, she was leery of driving, especially after dark. In the evening dusk, Ashley’s car inched out of the parking lot as slowly as a caterpillar. A child on a bike pedaled past the school's driveway. With a piercing pain in her head, Ashley flashed back to that day in June.

On the last day of school in the spring, she had stayed late to make sure all grades were recorded and her classroom was ready for summer cleaning. After all her troubles, she felt as if she had just barely survived the last grueling days of the school year without falling apart. It was nearly dark as she left the building. When she drove from the school parking lot, she saw her nemesis Billy Brandoff on his bike. She had a nearly uncontrollable urge to run him down. She aimed for him and stepped on the gas.

At the last second, she had swerved to avoid hitting the boy. Instead, she ran head-on into a telephone pole, resulting in her fractured skull. Afterward, she claimed she had no memory of the event. No one suspected it was anything but a freak accident, so there was no stain on her driving record nor on her teaching credentials.

Ashley snapped back to the present. Billy was at the high school now and she hadn’t seen any Brandoffs on her class lists for this school year. Trying to control the tick in her left eye, Ashley vowed to drive home very carefully and slowly every day. She would attempt to control her temper.

And if she couldn’t, she’d just have to think of a better way of erasing her troublesome students.

(©2009, C.J. Peiffer)

FOR LOVE OR MONEY - Friday Flash 55

"MOOlah 2"

(click on image for larger view)

original drawing in ink and colored pencil

by

C.J. Peiffer

This post is in response to

FRIDAY FLASH 55

The idea is to write a story in exactly 55 words.

Click on the yellow link above to join the fun or read others’ stories.

“The first time I married for love. This time I married for money,” Connie announced proudly.
“What happened to your first husband?” Serena asked.
“He’s in jail for fraud.”
“What did he do?”
“That S.O.B. forged checks and stole all my money.”
Serena thought about Connie’s second marriage for a second, then nodded. “Good move.”

(©2009, C.J. Peiffer)

DON'T CRY OVER SPILT MILK - Short Fiction

This short story is in response to

RAVEN’S SATURDAY

WORDZZLE CHALLENGE

Click on the above link to join in or read other entries.

How it works: Raven supplies two sets of words (or phrases) to use in a piece of writing. One can choose the ten- or five-word challenge ---or combine both into a fifteen word mega-challenge.

Mega challenge:
records, impulsive, really cool, bread crumbs, angels, Sponge Bob, magical moment, back and forth, suffering, good fences make good neighbors, side effects are generally mild, clingy, rooster, samples, curiosity

(Words from the challenge are in bold face in the story.)


“Hey, can you hand me a sponge, Bob?” Nell asked as her husband entered the back door. She was on the floor in front of the kitchen cabinets, soaking up milk with paper towels.
“I thought they said side effects are generally mild,” Bob snapped as he handed her a damp sponge from the sink. “You’ve been dropping things for three days. First it was the container of bread crumbs, then a mug of tea, silverware, a plate, and now this.” He kicked the empty milk carton out of the way.
“Dr. Jamison said that I’d stop suffering these episodes after I get used to the new medication.”
“Well, for heavens sake, Nell, don’t try to hold anything that can spill or break or make a mess.”
“What should I do when you’re not here? Stop eating?”
“That wouldn’t be a bad idea. You could stand to lose a ton.”
Nell knew she had gained about ten pounds over the last months due to lack of exercise. She gritted her teeth, deciding not to let him goad her.
Nell changed the subject. “Your sister called. She has business in the city and wants to stay with us for a week or so. Should I tell her it’s okay?”
“Oh, yeah, that will make for some magical moments, the two of us going back and forth, arguing about everything that ever happened since we were toddlers.”
“What do you have against your sister? I think she’s really cool.”
“You know we’ve never gotten along. She’s clingy and impulsive. And she’s up with the roosters and will wake us at four in the morning. And when I’m at work, I know her curiosity will have her going through the business records in my office upstairs.”
Bob paced in front of his wife. “You know how they say good fences make good neighbors? Well long distance makes good relatives.”
“You’re going to have to call her to tell her she can’t come. I won’t do it for you,” Nell said.
Bob snapped, “Are you going to sit on the floor the rest of the day?”
“Can you please help me up?”
Bob placed his arms under Nell’s arm pits to pull her from the floor and back into her wheel chair. “I wish you wouldn’t slide out of your chair to clean up your messes. You just do it to make me feel guilty.”
Nell grimaced. “Who's going to help me. Are some angels going to show up to wipe the floor? Besides, I knew you’d be home for lunch soon so I thought I'd start cleaning it up so you wouldn't have to.”
Bob set his jaw and shook his head.
Nell wheeled herself from the kitchen, tired of Bob’s impatience ever since the accident.
Bob stewed in the kitchen. Nell was more of a pain-in-the-ass to him now than before the accident. He not only had to put up with a woman he didn’t love, but he had to do everything for her and the housework, too. His girlfriend was getting impatient.
Now he was forced to play the loving husband role, at least around others, so no one would be suspicious. The brake failure was supposed to kill his wife and now he was strapped with a paraplegic. He had rejected poison because he knew the coroner would have taken blood and urine samples and might have suspected foul play.
If he divorced her, he wouldn’t get the pending fortune Nell’s father had left her. Divorcing a cripple would ruin his business. His associates and clients would think he was a cad. What a mess she had made for him.
In the living room, Nell turned on the stereo. She was angry, but she had a plan. Bob would be in Chicago on business the entire upcoming week. She had already told him she would have a friend in to check on her. The reality was that five friends were going to show up to pack her belongings. Since the accident, she hadn’t been able to go upstairs. They would go through Bob’s office to search for evidence of his affair. Her friend Britt, who always suspected the accident wasn’t really an accident, would make a copy of Bob's hard drive.
Nell had already had her lawyer start the divorce process. He assured Nell if they could find evidence of Bob’s rigging her “accident” he wouldn’t get any of her father’s money.
There was an opening at an assisted living facility where Nell could stay and receive physical therapy until the condo she had purchased was retrofitted to accommodate her special needs. Her father's bank was more than willing to approve a loan until her father's vast estate was settled.
Wouldn’t Bob be surprised the day the divorce papers were Fed Exed to his Chicago hotel? He would try to call her but there would be no answer. And then he’d be rid of her ---albeit not exactly as he wanted.
Maybe Nell couldn’t walk, but she certainly wasn’t helpless.

(©2009, C.J. Peiffer)

PEPPERED - Friday Flash 55

This post is in response to

FRIDAY FLASH 55

The idea is to write a story in exactly 55 words.

Click on the yellow link above to join the fun or read others’ stories.

Emily’s lunch had been stolen from the refrigerator three days in a row.
Late Friday morning, gagging, with a red face, the boss tore from his office and raced toward the water cooler.
A tablespoon of cayenne folded discretely between the ham and cheese on her sandwich had flushed out the thieving culprit rather nicely.

(©2009, C.J. Peiffer)

FOILING HER ADVERSARIES - Short Fiction

This short story is in response to

RAVEN’S SATURDAY

WORDZZLE CHALLENGE

Click on the above link to join in or read other entries.

How it works: Raven supplies two sets of words (or phrases) to use in a piece of writing. One can choose the ten- or five-word challenge ---or combine both into a fifteen word mega-challenge.

Mega challenge:
blind panic, apartment, fleas, soap operas, cajun cooking, free and easy, legal, sangria, public school, new, class, calendar, keeping secrets, boring, fashion

(Words from the challenge are in bold face in the story.)

Matty ran into her apartment and slammed the door. Fumbling with five locks, she tried to quell her blind panic for she was sure that someone had followed her because she was keeping secrets.
Her walls and windows were covered with aluminum foil to keep the legal system from listening to her thoughts when she was at home, but every time she left the apartment, she knew they were tapping into her brain.
She threw the cat food she had purchased on the dinette table. Quickly, Matty ran to her calendar. She saw that the moon was in its first quarter. She would have to keep up her guard until Septemeber 4th. From the moon's first quarter until it was full, scientists bounced microwaves off the lunar surface and then she was at her most vulnerable. That was when they made her do things she didn’t want to do.
The previous year, they disordered her brain to make her write Rush Limbaugh’s name on her presidential ballot. She had wanted to write in Sylvia Browne for president. The election was held the day before the first quarter moon at a time when she was helpless against their brainwashing. Although the news media didn't report it, she was sure Sylvia had lost the election to Obama by only one vote ---hers.
After September 4th, she could play it free and easy for twelve days before she would be vulnerable again.
It had started in public school. Her classmates read her thoughts. They claimed they didn’t, but she knew better. By her senior year, none of the other students even talked to her. At first Matty’s mother told her it was because the snobs in her class disliked her for not wearing the latest fashions. Matty wore white all the time to reflect radio waves. Matty knew that wasn’t the reason they didn’t talk to her. They read her thoughts and knew she hated them for it.
Several years later, her mother tried to have Matty committed, but as an adult, Matty couldn’t be detained against her will for more than three days unless she was dangerous to herself or others. But when they had to release her, government agents had stepped up their surveillance. She knew when they were reading her thoughts because her left ear itched as if fleas were in it. Anytime someone on TV used a cell phone, she knew they were trying to communicate with her brain. All those people on the streets pretending to use cell phones were doing the same.
Even her cat had been reading her mind until she made little aluminum hats for him, with slits for his ears and elastic straps for under his chin. She made several for him every day, because he always clawed them off his head. But she knew as long as he didn’t leave her apartment, he couldn’t tell the agents what she was thinking.
Except for her trips outside for essentials, Matty stayed home and watched old movies, soap operas, and talk shows. Sometimes they were boring, but they usually kept her mind off what the government was doing with her thoughts. She was lonely, but no one understood what she was going through. She knew there were others persecuted as she was, but until she found them, it was better to be alone.
Fifteen minutes after she had locked her apartment door, she heard a knock. She was sure they had come for her. Matty collected welfare, which meant they knew where she lived.
When she looked through the peep hole in the door, a scruffy-looking man stood there looking left and right as if expecting someone to creep up on him. He wore a construction helmet and a silver shirt. She knew it wasn’t an FBI agent. On TV, they were clean-shaven and wore trench coats.
“Who is it? What do you want?” Matty asked.
“I’m Clem, your new neighbor across the hall. I just did some Cajun cooking and made a pitcher of sangria. Do you want to join me?”
Matty unlocked her door and opened it. She intended to thank the man but refuse his invitation. He looked a bit puzzled when he saw her cat with his silver cap rubbing Matty's leg. Then he stood perfectly still staring past Matty at her aluminum-covered walls.
Matty thought she had made a mistake. The man was probably an undercover agent. Her palms began to sweat.
Clem smiled and said, “Hey, cool. I haven’t finished putting up my foil yet. I moved here from uptown because they found out where I lived and were scrambling my brain waves. I might have to wait until I get my next paycheck to buy enough to cover everything. Meanwhile, I hope my helmet holds them off. I lined the inside with foil.”
With a sigh of relief, Matty said, “I have a dozen rolls of foil ---the extra-wide kind ---and some duct tape. I can help you.”
“Gee, thanks. That would be great. Hey, I have another helmet if you want it,” Clem said.
She smiled and said, “I’d like that.”
At last, thought Matty, she had found her soul mate.

(©2009, C.J. Peiffer)

WITHOUT A SOLE - short fiction

(click on image for larger view)

This short story is in response to

RAVEN’S SATURDAY

WORDZZLE CHALLENGE

Click on the above link to join in or read other entries.

How it works: Raven supplies two sets of words (or phrases) to use in a piece of writing. One can choose the ten- or five-word challenge ---or combine both into a fifteen word mega-challenge.

Mega challenge:
superlative, flea market, falling leaves, disinformation, who was that masked man?, keeping kids out of trouble, I'm a believer, bonnet in the attic, staff, generation, deep in the forest, government, charming, heirlooms, flabbergasted

(Words from the challenge are in bold face in the story.)

Sarah stood by the shoe display counting the cash in her purse, hoping she would have enough to buy shoes for her daughter. Jenny’s sneakers had fallen apart. Sarah couldn’t send her to school in flip-flops. Well, Jenny could get away with wearing them for a few weeks, but as soon as the weather turned, she’d need decent shoes. Just thinking of falling leaves made Sarah anxious. How would she pay the heating bills that winter?
Sarah had lost her job, along with her health coverage, two months after her husband disappeared. She suspected he had run off with a woman he had met in rehab. Now, Sarah’s only income was an unemployment check. She wanted to sell the house, but without Ralph’s signature, she couldn’t. Without enough to pay the mortgage, heating bills might be the least of her problems. She suspected she and Jenny might soon be living in her ten-year-old car, unless she could find a boarder to share her home.
At the flea market, she had passed tables covered with heirlooms, the sellers trying to make a few dollars, flabbergasted at how little everyone was willing to pay for their family antiques, sometimes their only reminders of generations past. Sarah wondered what she might possibly sell on eBay. But then, all she could think of was her great-grandmother’s worthless dresses and dusty bonnet in the attic. And, besides, she had shut off her internet connection to save money.
In the past, Jenny could buy herself CDs and video games with her baby-sitting money, but now her earnings went toward household expenses. Well, thought Sarah, I’m a believer that work is good for keeping kids out of trouble, not that Jenny was likely to get into any.
The flea market attracted an array of strange characters. One was dressed like a clown. A very tall man, dressed like the Lone Ranger ---mask and all ---wandered up and down the aisles, carrying a saddle bag over his soldier. Occasionally he reached inside to pull out an envelope to hand to someone in the crowd, advertisements Sarah assumed.
Sarah was on the brink of despair. She never imagined her formerly-charming husband would become an alcoholic or that he would leave her. She thought her low-level government job on the custodial staff in the state office building had been secure. If it weren’t for Jenny, she might crawl deep in the forest and curl up and die there. At least her decomposing body would do some good for the plant life.
A friend had told her a man at the flea market was selling name-brand knockoffs for five dollars a pair. But that was a sorry piece of disinformation. Shoes large enough to fit anyone but a toddler cost twelve. Sarah had just under eleven dollars. She asked the man if he would take eight, leaving her enough for milk and eggs. He refused. He even refused all she had. Sarah felt as if he had punched her. Tears welled in her eyes. She slapped them away with the palm of her hand before they could run down her cheeks. She turned away from the shoe booth, bumping into the Lone Ranger.
“What’s the matter, little woman?” he asked with a Texas twang.
Sarah ignored him and hurried toward her car. He grabbed her arm. “Whoa,” he said. “I can help you.”
“No one can help me,” Sarah answered. “I’m at the lowest, sorriest, most miserable point of my life. I can’t even buy cheap shoes for my daughter for school.”
“Well, that sure is a lot of superlatives you’re using there,” the man said. “Maybe this will help,” he added, handing her an envelop from his saddle bag.
He shoved it into Sarah’s palm, but made her promise not to open it until she got home. Sarah nodded in agreement, continued to her car, and cried the whole way home. She threw the envelop on a pile of junk mail on the kitchen table.

The next day, after another unsuccessful attempt to find work, Sarah sat exhausted in front of the TV. The news announcer wrapped up the broadcast with her usual human-interest story.
“A lot of local people are asking the question, ‘Who was that masked man?’ Yesterday, at a local flea market, a man dressed as the Lone Ranger handed envelopes to total strangers. Each contained cash in amounts ranging from one to ten thousand dollars for the lucky recipients.”
Sarah jumped from her chair, ran to the kitchen and clawed at her envelope. It not only had enough money to buy Jenny new shoes, but enough to pay the mortgage, utilities, and buy groceries for three months.
When Jenny arrived home from her baby-sitting job, Sarah hugged her daughter. She flashed the biggest smile she had been able to muster in months. “We’re going to make a bank deposit at the ATM and then we’re going shopping for the coolest sneakers we can find.”

See the shoes pictured above and 80 other pair of unique shoes designed by CJ by clicking HERE.

I skipped Wordzzle last week while I attended a fantastic Mark Twain conference that included appearances by author Russell Banks and actor Hal Holbrook. Read all about it HERE.

(©2009, C.J. Peiffer)

BULLHEADED - Short Fiction

This short story is in response to

RAVEN’S SATURDAY

WORDZZLE CHALLENGE

Click on the yellow link to join in or read other entries.

How it works: Raven supplies two sets of words (or phrases) to use in a piece of writing. One can choose the ten- or five-word challenge ---or combine both into a fifteen word mega-challenge.

Mega Challenge: fair warning, hormones, journalism, philanthropist, burgeoning, running the bulls, saturation, tossed in the towel, whine, indelicate details, hard labor, lurid, quick fix, sizable contributions, trumpet

(Words from the challenge are in bold face in the story.)

Art Rivers, one of the world’s great philanthropists, had made sizable contributions to the Running the Bulls Amputees (RBA) a group that provided prothetic limbs to those who had lost arms or legs in the idiotic attempt to outrun a herd of bulls through the streets of Pamplona, Spain.
When a reporter asked why he would support boneheads who had put themselves in danger by ignoring fair warnings that injury was not only possible but probable, Mr. Rivers told of the time he had planned to run with the bulls himself. Early that morning, after he tripped over an area rug in his relatively-safe hotel room, he lost his balance and rammed his groin into the corner of a dresser which resulted in.... well, Rivers decided not to go into the indelicate details of his injury. However, he related some of his life’s story.
When Rivers was a young man getting his feet wet in journalism, he was expected to cover the bull run with a first-hand account. After being injured, he tossed in the towel. Without a story, he was fired.
Art didn’t whine about his injury. He sued. After years of scraping by as a freelance writer while the court case dragged on, he used his settlement from the international hotel chain to start his own weekly, specializing in true crime.
He loved running his own company but Rivers sometimes felt like he had been sentenced to years of hard labor. With only a few employees, he worked eighteen hour days, seven days a week. Soon, his burgeoning business was earning money. Before long, he was a wealthy man.
After ten years of long days and little sleep, his wife Julie pleaded with him to take time off from work. She said he was like a crazed bull dog. When he got his teeth in something, he wouldn’t let go, even if it was to his own detriment. When he continued working long hours, she left him.
Six months later, depressed, lonely, overworked, and drinking too much, Art had reached his own saturation point. His doctor prescribed less work. The quick fix was to turn over the running of his business to his assistant. After ten months of sobriety and a lonely-but-enlightening round-the-world cruise, Rivers was ready for his next move.
He had spent years writing and editing articles about true crime. On his cruise, Art turned to writing lurid crime fiction. On the ship, he worked only six hours each day, five days a week, to complete his first novel “Sexual Relations.” The plot revolved around a hormone-crazed teen who sexually assaulted and murdered his aunt. Art had taken the details of a half dozen true crime stories and woven them together into a page turner that reached number three on the best seller list. Rivers was trumpeted as the next Raymond Chandler.
By the time agreements were signed for foreign distribution, paper back editions, and film rights, his second novel, “Gun Shy,” was in its final stages. He was already a millionaire from his publishing company. Now he had earned millions more from his first novel and had won an Edgar Award for his work. But he was a lonely man.
Art called Julie. He offered to hire her to administrate his philanthropic projects, something he knew she would find rewarding. To his relief, she accepted.
The following summer, Rivers invited Julie to join him for a cruise to Spain. This time he had no intention of running with the bulls. He wanted to soak up the atmosphere for his third novel, “A Line of Bull,” about a private detective who had lost a leg during the bull run.
Aboard ship, Art planned to ask Julie to marry him again.

I will be at the Twain conference next weekend, so I will be skipping Wordzzle on August 8th. I'll be back in two weeks.

(©2009, C.J. Peiffer)

WHAT’S IN A NAME? - Friday Flash 55

This post is in response to

FRIDAY FLASH 55

The idea is to write a story in exactly 55 words.

Click on the yellow link above to join the fun or read others’ stories.

All Calico wanted was a warm lap, a bowl of tuna, chin scratches, and a sunny spot for a nap.

She rubbed against the bars and looked sadly at the young woman.

Soon she was in the woman’s lap and away from the shelter. The lady called her Patches, but Calico could live with that.

(Photo note: The photo is of my cat Patches. I added the bars digitally. Patches was not adopted from a shelter like my fictional cat, but was the daughter of Calico, a pregnant stray who adopted us. Unlike her long-haired daughter, short-haired Calico loved to be petted, but she hated to be picked up, always retaining some of her feral instincts. Patches was a sweet and lovable girl who loved to sit on our laps. Both eventually succumbed to illnesses in old age. Calico's all-white son, Mr. Snowball, survived them both, but eventually died, too. Now we have only one cat, Lunette. You can read about her HERE.)

(©2009, C.J. Peiffer)

YOU BETCHA' - Short Fiction

This short story is in response to

RAVEN’S SATURDAY

WORDZZLE CHALLENGE

Click on the above link to join in or read other entries.

How it works: Raven supplies two sets of words (or phrases) to use in a piece of writing. One can choose the ten- or five-word challenge ---or combine both into a fifteen word mega-challenge.

Mega Challenge: sober, spoilage, knight, laugh and the world laughs with you, peak, blueberries, owl, drugstore, lampshade, keyboard, economy, Michael Jackson, ladder, clue, structure

(Words from the challenge are in bold face in the story.)

Rachel had been pulling weeds around the flowers near the low fence between her property and the neighbors’. She hadn’t seen her annoying neighbor all day, so she thought she was safe. Suddenly, sandaled feet were only inches from the weed she was pulling.
“Did you hear?” her neighbor asked. Mimi looked a little dazed. She wore a filthy shirt that looked like she had smeared blueberries all over it. Rachel wondered if she were sober. Maybe the shirt was stained with wine. Mimi was always an odd duck, but she'd never seen her like this before.
Rachel imagined Mimi at a party. She would be the sloppy drunk brooding by herself in a corner, while her husband John would be wearing a lampshade and dancing the Macarena.
“Hear what? Rachel asked.
“Sarah resigned.”
“Who?”
“Sarah Palin. Did you hear?” she asked.
“You betcha,” Rachel answered. She couldn’t help herself.
“I just love her. What do you like best about her?”
“She thinks she's a maverick,” Rachel said, emphasizing the word 'thinks.'
Mimi missed Rachel’s sarcasm.
“And Michael Jackson. I still can’t believe he’s dead. I just know his career was going to peak again. Don’t you love his music?”
“Can’t 'Beat It.'” Rachel never listened to pop music, so until a few weeks earlier, she had no clue what songs Jackson had made famous. But with the 24/7 news coverage, she could hardly miss hearing a few of the titles. Didn’t the national news have more pressing issues to report, like maybe the miserable economy, Rachel asked herself.
“Which is your favorite song?” Mimi asked.
“'I’m Bad,'” Rachel said, adding after a pause “at remembering song titles.”
“I asked John to buy me an organ, you know, one of those ones that the keyboard plays itself so I can play Michael’s music all day.”
Rachel decided not to ask why she wanted to do that rather than buy CDs.

Mimi, still looking dazed, sprinkled some spoilage from her kitchen around her tomato plants, over-ripe banana slices and potato peels. Then she climbed a short ladder to adjust the owl sculpture on top of her trellis. Rachel had always assumed it was to scare birds from her garden, yet Mimi had recently added fifteen bird feeders to her eclectic assortment of yard decor. The trellis’ structure wasn’t very sturdy. Rachel thought it was going to topple over, but it just swayed back and forth a few times before settling.
Mimi was swaying a little herself. She moved unsteadily around the yard, between her windmill, plastic flamingos, rusty sculpture that looked like a knight in not-so-shiny armor, and cut outs that resembled the couple in “American Gothic.” She moved two of her gnomes from behind orange marigolds. When she looked up, she seemed surprised to find Rachel still weeding.
“I don’t like that weirdo that replaced Jay Leno,” Mimi said. “When do you think they’ll get rid of him, that Brian O'Connor guy?”
“In the year 3000,” Rachel answered. She knew she was being bitchy, but she was in that kind of mood.
“What do you think of our commie president? I heard he wants to eliminate pennies. Do you think that’s true?””
Rachel had to think for a few seconds tbefore answering, “That’s a change we can believe in.” She’d heard the treasury department had suggested that move years ago, but hadn't heard anything lately.
“Do you think we can impeach him?”
“Yes we can,” Rachel answered, trying not to go for Mimi’s jugular. Hadn’t Mimi seen her Obama ‘08 bumper sticker last year? No one could miss Mimi’s Bush/Cheney 2000 and 2004 stickers, still on the back of her gas guzzler.
“Do you know anyone who didn’t like McCain?” she asked.
“My friends, “ Rachel answered.
“Oh! Really?” Mimi responded. “And what about Farrah and Ed McMahon dying at the same time, too?” She shook her head.
Rachel saw Mimi’s husband’s pickup approaching the driveway, right on cue.
Rachel rose from her knees. “Here’s Johnny,” she said. “See ya’.”
She wanted to run to the drugstore for some extra-strength headache relief before Mimi could ask more questions.
Rachel had been waiting for Mimi to get one of her witty remarks, but she knew it wasn’t going to happen in this lifetime. She guessed that old saying ‘laugh and the world laughs with you’ applied only when one’s audience got your jokes.

(©2009, C.J. Peiffer)

FLOWER CHILD - Friday Flash 55

This post is in response to

FRIDAY FLASH 55

The idea is to write a story in exactly 55 words.

Click on the yellow link above to join the fun or read others’ stories.

Petunia hated her stupid name. Her mother, who loved gardening, named her and her sisters after flowers: Iris, Daisy, Violet, Rose, and Petunia.

Kids at school had taunted them by calling them the Flower Girls.

If she had a brother, he would have been tormented ruthlessly. Surely her crazy mother would have named him Pansy.

(©2009, C.J. Peiffer)

THE FINAL CUT - Short Fiction

This short story is in response to

RAVEN’S SATURDAY

WORDZZLE CHALLENGE

Click on the above link to join in or read other entries.

How it works: Raven supplies two sets of words (or phrases) to use in a piece of writing. One can choose the ten- or five-word challenge ---or combine both into a fifteen word mega-challenge.

Mega Challenge: Florida, spit, child bride, operatic, busy, holding pattern, sunflowers, ginger jars, office, superintendent, music to my ears, plot, powerful, braggart, super model

(Words from the challenge are in bold face in the story.)

Florida wasn’t Cassy’s first choice, but it had two advantages. First, her sister Kate had offered Cassy a job in her brother-in-law’s company. Second, it was about as far from Seattle and her husband as she could get. She wanted to spit each time she heard his name. In her head, she called him Brutus.
Cassy had been swept off her feet at age 17 and had become the child bride of a a man who was pushing forty. A few weeks of marriage had revealed that Brutus was a braggart with nothing to brag about except the powerful hold he had on her. Before they were married, he bragged about being a superintendent in a large business. He was actually a mechanic in a garage that employed six people, superintendent only in the sense that he was in charge when the owner stepped out.
He severed Cassy’s contacts with friends and family, insisted she keep busy managing their spotless home, and counted every penny she spent. There was not a spec of dust on their ginger jar lamps, not a crumb on the carpet, not a dish left in the sink, not a dried leaf on the sunflowers in their yard. For if anything had been out of place, there would have been hell to pay.
One minute he told her she was supermodel beautiful and the next said she was lucky she had him because no one else would marry someone so ugly. He refused to take her anywhere because of the bruises.
One day, Cassy’s new neighbor Diana stopped by to introduce herself. When Cassy anxiously told her she had to finish cleaning and have dinner on the table at exactly six, Diana, who had been a volunteer counselor in a women’s shelter, recognized the problem. She drew the story from Cassy. It was a soap-operatic tale of isolation and battery. Soon the two of them devised a plot to remove Cassy from her situation.
Cassy called her sister, collect, from a pay phone with money Diana gave her. Kate sent a check to Diana for Cassy’s airfare and other expenses. With the help of another battered woman who worked for the Social Security administration, Diana acquired a new social security number in a new name for Cassy. She arranged for a new ID, including a photo with darker hair.
As soon as Brutus had left for work one morning, Diana showed up. “Today’s the day to start your new life,” she announced.
“Oh, that is music to my ears,” said Cassy. “I feel like I’ve been in a holding pattern waiting for this day to come."
Cassy and Diana tore through the house doing the things Cassy would normally do. They cleaned, scrubbed, did laundry, ironed and cooked dinner leaving it to simmer in a crock pot. They even ate what Cassy would eat for lunch so the trash can would contain an apple core, napkin and small piece of bread crust.

Cassy removed a wet bandage from her hand and applied a new one.

"That's a nasty wound. What did you do?" Diana asked.

"I cut myself making dinner yesterday." Cassy slipped the wet bandage from her hand into her pocket so it wouldn’t be found in the trash.
By ten, they were ready to leave. It would appear that Cassy had been there until shortly before her husband arrived home. They hoped that would delay his missing person's report and confuse him and the police when checking airlines.
That night, Brutus would be late. He had been searching for a used motorcycle. Cassy just ‘happened’ to find an ad for one on a supermarket bulletin board. Her husband had called the number and talked to the wife of the owner. She made an appontment for him to look at the bike. It was sixty miles from home, but a deal too good for him to pass up. In reality, Brutus had called Diana on her new throw-away cell phone. The address where he was to meet the bike’s owner didn’t exist.
In Diana’s house, Cassy donned a dark wig over her light hair, applied makeup over her bruised cheek. She changed into the too-large clothes Diana had found at the Goodwill. They wrapped cloth around her middle to make her look heavier. Diana gave her an old suitcase with two extra sets of clothes, a few packs of underwear, and toiletries to get her through a few days.

In Miami, the newly-born Isabel Fortuna stepped into Kate’s waiting arms at the airport baggage claim.
A month later, Diana sent an email from her brother’s office computer to Kate in a prearranged code. The police were suspicious because Cassy had taken nothing with her except the clothes she wore and Brutus had no alibi for his whereabouts except for a non-existant motorcycle owner. He could provide the police with no names of Cassy’s friends, because she hadn’t been allowed to have any. When the police contacted her family, everyone said they hadn’t heard from her for years. Diana was concerned because Brutus' being suspected of murder had not been in the plan.
Isabel Fortuna was pleased to hear that Brutus was under constant serveillance. In other words, Brutus was in his own kind of prison, not unlike the one Cassy had been locked in for six years.
Isabel Fortuna knew the blood from Cassy's cut, left in the trunk of Brutus’s car before he had gone to work that morning had been a brilliant touch.

(©2009, C.J. Peiffer)