GRATITUDE - short fiction

This story is in response to a writing prompt at Views from Raven's Nest.  Each week Raven chooses words or phrases for anyone to use in a piece of writing.  She creates a 10-word challenge and a 5-word challenge, or one can use both for the 15-word mega-challenge.

Words for the 10-word challenge this week:  gratitude, immediate, vivid, choice, fragments, carving, charity, solitude, lagging, where did I put my glasses

And for the mini:  irresponsible, teddy bear, colorful, knife and fork, wheels

“Where did I put my glasses?” Carson asked.

“Gees, Car. They’re bifocals. Why don’t you just wear them all the time?” Georgia asked. 

Except in the shower, her glasses were on her face every waking moment. She could see only blurs without them and, lately, colors weren’t as vivid as they once were.

Georgia wondered how she had managed to marry two irresponsible people where eye glasses were concerned. Her first husband would drop his, then step on them, resulting in the cost of new frames and lenses, plus fragments of glass hiding in the carpeting for months.  

Carson misplaced his several times a day. When they were in a hurry, he was always lagging behind searching for them. She wondered if it was a choice he made to annoy her. Georgia didn’t like solitude, but at moments like this, she wished she had remained single after her divorce.

Georgia scurried toward the car carrying a large teddy bear wrapped in clear plastic under one arm while she juggled her purse and a huge colorful sack in the other. She paced by the car waiting for Carson.

Finally he emerged from the house, eyewear in place, carrying two grocery bags with celery leaves poking from the tops.  As was his habit, he circled the car making sure the way was clear to back out of the driveway and checking the wheels to see that the tires were properly inflated.  Georgia tapped her foot and sighed until he unlocked the trunk.

They rode silently to the high school. Georgia wondered how Carson could be so meticulous about everything to do with the car, but his glasses were always an afterthought. 

Gerogia checked the dashboard clock. It was after 7:00 am. They were running late.  Again.

While Carson parked, Georgia rushed into the back entrance of the building.  She handed the teddy bear to one of the high school volunteers to place with other toys to be given to a charity that provided Christmas gifts to children in women’s shelters. Then she headed toward the cafeteria’s kitchen where a dozen volunteers were already preparing turkey dinners for that day’s Thanksgiving feast while high school students set up and prepared folding tables and chairs, adding the placemats and centerpieces they had made in art class. 

Immediately, she opened her sack to pull out five huge plastic bags of bread cubes she had toasted in her oven for the stuffing. She placed Carson’s favorite carving knife and fork on the stainless steel table for later. When Carson arrived with his grocery bags, she chopped celery, onions and spices.

Along with the other volunteers, Carson and Georgia worked and sweated in the kitchen stuffing birds donated by local supermarkets, running a huge mashed potato mixer, cooking vegetables, tossing salad, stirring gravy, and slicing pies. 

        When the birds were roasted, Carson took pride in being the best carver in the lot.

Before the buffet was ready, those the recession had hit the hardest had arrived and waited at the tables. 

As soon as the lunch crowd was fed, they began all over again for the dinner guests who would show up later.

After everyone had been fed and more high school students arrived to clean the kitchen, Carson took Georgia’s hand as she limped to the car. 

“Your heel spur acting up?” he asked.  

“Uh, huh.”

“It was a long day,” Carson said.

“Always,”  Georgia agreed, turning to kiss her husband.

Georgia was filled with gratitude that she had married a man who ---now that they were both retired ---was willing to work with her at the soup kitchen once a week and here, at the high school for six additional holiday meals each year, and was enjoying it. 

So what if he could never find his glasses, she thought.

http://ravensviews.blogspot.com/2012/10/weekly-wordzzle-challenge-219.html

241 Front Street (Fiction)

This story is in response to a writing prompt at Views from Raven's Nest.  Each week Raven chooses words or phrases for anyone to use in a piece of writing.  She creates a 10-word challenge and a 5-word challenge, or one can use both for the 15-word mega-challenge.

This weeks words are: (I chose to use all 15)
vocalize, vandal, virtue, visitor, vim and vigor, vermillion, vague, vacuous, vines, validate,  voodoo, vixen, veracity, valid, vital

241 Front Street

Vivian took one step up the outside wooden stairs to her second-floor apartment at 241 East Front Street,  Sarah, her landlady, was trimming the dead vines from the trellis on the side of the porch.

“Hi, Viv," Sarah yelled over her shoulder. "Say, who was that hunky visitor with you last night?” 

Vivian answered. “No one. I wasn’t even home.”

“Don’t kid me, Viv.  I heard the two of you up there.  Sounded like you were having a very, well, um, lively encounter. I’ve always liked a man with vim and vigor," said Sarah with a come-hither stare that wouldn’t have turned on a sex addict.

“Really, Sarah, I wasn’t here. I stayed at my sister’s last night working to defeat that idiot who is running for City Council in the third district again.”

“Oh, him,” Sarah interrupted. “Now that is one fine looking man. Him with the $3,000 suits and a one-cent brain.”

“Yeah, and the vacuous look on his face. Even his wife couldn’t stand him. She left him last year.”  

Sarah looked at Vivian’s vermillion bag. “What’ve you got there?”

“Campaign information.” 

She hefted her large tote overflowing with papers to the third step as if to validate the veracity of her statement. 

“Someone was in my apartment? How did he get in? What did he look like?”  

“Well, I thought you let him in,” answered Sarah.  She scrunched her forehead and added, “He was tall.”

Dissatisfied with Sarah’s vague description, Vivian demanded to know the color of his hair and eyes, what he was wearing, and what time he arrived and left.

“Well, it was late when he got here. I peaked out the window before I turned off the porch light.  He headed up the stairs as if he belonged, so I just assumed, well, you know.  But I didn’t see him leave. Maybe he’s still there.” 

“And his appearance?”

“Well, I thought he wore sunglasses, but then I thought it must have been the way the light hit them. He had on a dark turtleneck pulled up on his chin, a ball cap. Oh, and dark pants and maybe gloves.”

“Did he have a car?”

“There was a silver car where you usually park, so I thought it was yours, that you had gone up ahead of him.  And I think he carried something, maybe a knapsack.”

Vivian picked up her bag and started up the stairs.

“Hold on a minute.” Sarah entered the house, emerging a minute later with a hammer in each hand.

At the top of the stairs, the women found the door ajar with a broken lock.  Inside, Vivian’s place had been ransacked.  Everything she owned was strewn on the floor. Pillows had been cut open, clothes had been ripped, and food containers emptied. Her living room walls had been spray-painted with “You lying vixen!” and “You are without virtue, you slut” in fluorescent pink.

The women tiptoed through the mess in silence, until Sarah came upon a voodoo doll nailed to the dinette table with what looked like blood spattered over it.  Then she started to vocalize, “No, no, no, no, no,” which eventually turned into a low-pitched moan. She slumped onto the couch releasing a puff of stuffing from a huge slit.

Vivian grabbed her cell phone to dial 911.

It took the police forty minutes to arrive.  After Vivian and Sarah had given their vital statistics and made statements to Detectives Johnson and Ramsey, the men continued questioning Vivian.  Was it her ex-husband or ex-boyfriend?  Was she having problems with someone at work?  Who hated her? Then they seemed to imply she had done the damage herself to generate sympathy from an estranged lover. Vivian had no idea who the vandal could be, but the police didn’t seem to think her statements were valid and continued asking the same questions over and over. What they didn’t do was take photos or fingerprints.  

Vivian was not only angry at the person who had done this, she was furious at the police.

After they left, she used her cell phone to take photos of the mess.  Then she picked through her belongings and packed a suitcase with a few intact items, grabbed her red tote, and closed her door as best she could before heading to her sister’s home. 

The next week, Vivian sorted through her possessions, salvaging what she could, while Sarah and a handyman repaired the door, cleaned the mess, and repainted the walls.  

Vivian moved to the far end of town, instructing Sarah to give her new address to no one.

Two weeks later, Detective Ramsey called her cell phone to tell her that a similar incident had happened two blocks from her old apartment.  

“You’re lucky,” he said.  “When the occupant arrived home, the intruder tried to stab her. But he stumbled over the mess he had made and missed. The woman had her keys in her hand and managed to poke him in the eye.  He'll probably be wearing an eye patch for the rest of his life. That'll ruin his handsome good looks. 

"It turns out he was the woman’s ex-husband."

When the police questioned the suspect in the hospital, he broke down and admitted that the vandalism of Vivian’s apartment had been a mistake.  He had gone to 241 instead of 421 on Vivian’s street.  

“You’ll be seeing a story on the evening news. The chief is holding a press conference right now. You know, the idiot didn’t even ask for a lawyer,” he added. 

“Good looking and stupider than a turnip,” said Vivian.  “He ought to become a politician.”

Detective Ramsey paused, then said, “Funny you should mention that.”

A BOGGLED MIND IS A TERRIBLE THING TO WASTE

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:
family, cheese cake, 20 years ago, refrigerator, laugh and the world laughs with you, bath brush, zombies, African violets, butterflies, holding hands, monsters in the closet, roughly, bowling, menu, Pennsylvania

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

If I stood in a bowling lane and kept rolling balls at the ten pins in the lane in front of me, I would eventually knock them all down, and it probably wouldn’t take me very long to do it. If, however, I were in lane 1, and moved to lane 3, then back to 2 and on to 5 in the bowling alley, it would take me forever to complete my task in the first lane.
That is how the artistic, right-brained mind works.
I can’t start a task and, like a zombie, walk unconsciously through it to its end. No, not me. I jump from task to task. I may complete a task, but it takes forever, sort of like driving from Illinois to Texas, but getting sidetracked through Pennsylvania and Oregon along the way.
I’ve been this way since I was a child. It drove my left-brained family crazy. It took me all day to complete my chores and my room always looked like I had purposely thrown everything I owned into the air just to see where it landed.
Twenty years ago, I thought that as I got older, my organizational skills would improve. Instead they have worsened, so I have decided to accept my incompetence and find the humor in it. As they say, “Laugh and the world laughs with you.”

Let me take you through a simple task. Last Sunday, I decided I absolutely had to read the Wordzzles from Saturday and comment on them. After lunch I headed to my computer, determined that I would not be distracted.
The night before, I had placed some papers on my keyboard to remind me to fill them in. On Monday I had an appointment with a new doctor who had sent me forms about my medical history. I didn’t want to forget them, so I decided to do that first. I already had documents on my computer with medical-history lists, so I opened those to see if they were up-to-date. Two medications had changed, so I headed upstairs to find the bottles to spell the names correctly and find the dosages.
As I passed the refrigerator, I thought I better see what we had for dinner that night. I found leftover pork chops. I grabbed a plastic bowl and headed to the garden to pick what remained of our pole beans.
I returned to my computer to check out the Wordzzles. But, oops, I hadn’t gotten the information from the medicine bottles. On the way, I picked up something that belonged in the closet in the dressing room. But there were monsters in the closet that suckered me into searching for a pair of slacks I couldn’t find. I eventually gave up and headed toward my medications.
In the bathroom, I felt a cold wind coming in the window, so decided to close it, but it had rained for several days, so it was swollen. I looked around for a tool. I figured the bathbrush wouldn’t help, so I found a rubber mallet in a kitchen drawer to bang it shut.
While in the bathroom, I decide to use the facilities, I grabbed a magazine. I browsed articles on butterflies and houseplants. I decided that African violets were too much work, so I chose to forget about any exotic plant life for the house.
Returning to the computer, I realized I had left the post-it note with the names and dosages of my medications in the bathroom. After retrieving it, I revised and printed the information for my doctor. Then I filled out the forms by hand, writing “see attached” when it asked about medical and surgical history and medications.
After placing those with my purse, I was ready for Wordzzle. But then my husband came in to ask if I could help him in the garage. Before retiring, he ran an automotive computer diagnostic service there, so it is not just a garage, it is a G-A-R-A-G-E.
We’ve been havng some car troubles. He was moving some of his other projects out of the way to make room to work on a vehicle. He wanted to store an old car engine in the second-story storage area, so he needed to pull the chain to raise it, while I steadied the 500 pound motor his hoist was holding. Hands down, that hoist is one of the most useful items in his G-A-R-A-G-E.
My husband asked if I had received an email response about an online order that hadn’t arrived. So I checked my email, deleting 37 pieces of junk mail, filing 12 messages to read later, and answering five messages from friends. While I was at it, I decided I might as well check my other two email accounts. I found two messages from friends in Brazil, so I used freetranslation.com to help me write responses and translate them because my Portuguese is rusty.
Then I realized that I had paid for my mother’s Meals On Wheels up through the week that just ended. So I wrote a check and walked to the post office (a block away) so it would go out on Monday.
As soon as I arrived back at the house, my famished husband came in from the G-A-R-A-G-E and asked what was on the menu for dinner. He rinsed the beans and placed them into the top of a steamer and threw the cooked chops into the microwave while I sliced cucumbers and tomatoes for a salad. Lacking something wonderfully obscene like cheesecake, we would have fruit and yogurt for dessert.
We ate dinner while watching a so-so Jimmy Stewart screwball comedy (You Gotta Stay Happy) stopping it once to clean up the kitchen. After the movie, my husband had a few more tasks for me in the G-A-R-A-G-E, including removing rust from tools with a wire brush and polishing some of them with silver polish. (He is a little obsessive about his G-A-R-A-G-E tools.)
After my husband went to bed, I logged into my blog. I found several comments I needed to moderate, some from Friday Flash 55, which reminded me I needed to read and comment on some of those.
Roughly twelve hours after I had first turned on my computer, I clicked on the link to Raven’s blog and pulled up someone’s Wordzzle. Before I read two sentences, I remembered I had promised an organization I belong to that I would set up a blog for them by Monday. At 6 am Monday morning, I went to bed. I might get five hours of sleep before I had to get up for my doctor’s appointment.
The rest of the week was pretty much a repeat of Sunday, so I still haven’t read all of the Wordzzles from last week. (Sorry.) As you can see, I am organizationally impaired and suffer boggled-mind syndrome.

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The above is 90% true. I had to fudge a few magazine articles to fit in butterflies and African violets, but I did read two articles in the bathroom that day. We hoisted some big-ass piece of machinery in the G-A-R-A-G-E but I didn’t know what it was called and my husband was already in bed while I wrote this, so I made it into a car engine since we have hoisted several into the storage area on earlier occasions. But the details don’t matter. The pattern is what is important.
The above describes the motif of my life. It sometimes brings me wonderful and unexpected surprises, but it also frustrates me, and those around me, to no end.

-----------

That being said, I am going to take a hiatus from Wordzzle for a few weeks. I have some projects I have been postponing including some digital photo retouching and freelance art work. I will try to get back to last week's Wordzzles that I missed to add comments. I’ve neglected laundry, mail, bills, my husband and the cat.

(©2009, C.J. Peiffer)

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)

LAST RESORT - 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:charitable, alligator, tribute, drunk, slave, preparation, carrots, mountainside, propeller, lark, chisel, worship, suicide, organic, plus

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

Celia was tired of being a slave to her job and she was especially tired of Mr. Hollinger’s acting all ethical, then taking credit for her work and especially for her ideas. He was always quoting the Bible, then stabbing his staff in the back.

From the time she was a teenager, Celia had given people secret names. She had nicknamed her boss Mr. Holier-than-Thou.

On a lark, Celia marched to the scheduling department late Friday afternoon to see if, by chance, she could take a week’s vacation starting Monday. There was one opening because ---of all people ---Holier had canceled his vacation for the coming week. Poetic justice, thought Celia.
She didn’t plan on informing Holier that she would be gone. As usual, he had already skipped out at 2:00 on Friday, so he wouldn’t know until Monday morning. That was when the regional director of ADvanced ADvertising was going to pay tribute to Holier-Than-Thou’s twenty-five years of service to the company with a ceremony and a plaque. Obviously, that was why Holier had canceled his vacation. Headquarters could chisel his name in stone for all Celia cared. Everyone else could worship him, but that wouldn’t elevate him in her esteem.
Her coworkers had collected money to buy him an alligator briefcase. Celia, not feeling in the least charitable toward the man, refused to contribute toward an item he would never use. Why would he? She did all his work, plus her own.
She was supposed to arrive at work early Monday in preparation for the presentation. Holier-Than-Thou expected her to explain to the manager how the last six months of advertising campaigns had been developed and executed. Holier had assigned her to do it for him because he didn’t have a clue how they came about. She would love to be a fly on the wall watching him try.
Taking vacation now might be corporate suicide, but in addition to her 401k, Celia had squirreled away a year’s worth of take-home pay. If she lost her job, her savings would see her through to her next one.
On Saturday morning, Celia left the city. At a roadside rest, she sat at a picnic table overlooking a mountainside, drinking bottled water and nibbling a sandwich and raw carrots from her cooler. She sucked in the organic scents of the early fall grass, trees, and mountain air, reprimanding herself for not getting away more often.
Celia followed signs to Pineynook Mountain Resort. There, she stepped into a steaming shower that pelted her with a dozen massaging shower heads. She dried her hair, added a touch of blush to her cheeks and gloss to her lips, and donned her casual denim dress. Admiring eyes followed her to a table in the restaurant.
Celia spent Saturday and most of Sunday reading novels, hiking, and swimming laps in the heated pool. The lake was too cold for swimming, but she enjoyed wading near the shore. Her stress was slowly seeping away.
On Sunday night, Celia accepted a drink from a handsome hunk of a New Yorker named Justin, then joined him for dinner on the portico overlooking the shimmering lake. After two martinis and several glasses of wine, Celia’s work-related problems poured out. After a few stressless days, she could actually laugh at herself and Justin laughed with her. He didn’t seem to mind listening to her woes. She wouldn’t tell him the name of her employer, but he asked many questions about the ad campaigns she had developed. He probably thought if he came off as a good listener, he could get her into his bed.
But after dinner and a platonic walk on the beach, Celia headed to her room alone. It was just as well, she thought. Justin hadn’t put her in the awkward position of having to refuse him and, besides, he was leaving Monday morning, so she’d never see him again. However, she was embarrassed that she had talked so much about herself. She hadn’t discovered enough about Justin to give him a nickname.

On Friday Celia rented a boat. She sped through the water as fast as the propeller would take her, hoping to outrun her problems. Instead, she decided she would assert herself, ask for a promotion, and demand the credit she deserved for her work. Holier would look so bad without her that he might agree. And if he didn’t, she would search for another job, do freelance work, or start her own business.
On Saturday morning before heading home, Celia grabbed her Blackberry from the dresser in her room. She hadn't turned it on in over a week. She checked her voicemail and e-mail over breakfast on the portico. Amongst the spam, there was an e-mail from corporate headquarters in New York. Uh, oh, she thought. Holier had probably fired her.
To her surprise, the message notified her that Holier was being transferred to another department. The next paragraph explained her promotion to Holier’s position including a bonus and a raise, effective immediately.
Celia was stunned. Then she looked at the sender’s name, Justin Angelou.
Could it be that he was the Justin she had met here? Unlikely, she thought.
Whether he was the same person or not, she had just chosen her secret name for ADvanced ADvertising’s CEO: Just-An-Angel.

(©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)