Garage Sale.

Ildar Sagdejev (Specious.) > Wiki.

Suzie Caruthers sat in the family’s den, allegedly her den but for the heaps of laundry in baskets and Rex’s files from work which he’d been promising to go through and dispose of. Cardboard banker’s boxes lined all available floor space, so he had at least gotten that far.

She had been meaning to get around to creating some system, for they had heaps of Christmas cards. Suzie thought it would be nice to pull them out next year. It would make the job of finding names and addresses easier, especially if she kept a rubber band around each year and kept them all in one place.

“I know.” Aunt Muriel’s cookie tin would be just the thing.

Up until now it had been entirely useless.

Kicking around the house for years, a gift of course, the blue and gold metal box had decorative flowers on the lid. She’d been meaning to use it for herbal teas or something. Counter space was at a premium in their kitchen and she’d never gotten around to it.

It would have to be in the back of the bottom kitchen cupboards or maybe up on top somewhere. She kept big juice pitchers and stuff that wouldn’t fit anywhere else on top of the cabinets. It was just a waste of space otherwise. It wasn’t for display—it was all very utilitarian and you couldn’t really see much up there anyway.

The slender thirty-six year-old mother of three left the den in its turmoil and went looking for the cookie tin as it should probably hold a couple of big bundles and it was about the right size.

She spent ten minutes pulling open cupboards, closing them, and opening them up to check again, finally looking under the sink. Suzie tried to recall when she’d last seen it.

Going out into the living room where Rex was firmly planted in his armchair, reading all the Sunday papers and making a fine mess of her coffee table, she asked him.

“Have you seen Aunt Muffy’s cookie box?”

“Huh?” His mouth opened and his head swung and he stared at her.

The look of pure bewilderment on his face was priceless, and then she burst out laughing and had to explain it all right from the beginning.

***

Alison Martin, a nine-to-fiver down at the Monolith Insurance company head office, one of the town’s major employers and not far from the health center where she worked out almost religiously two or three times a week, pointed triumphantly at the top shelf of the oaken wall unit on the far end of her mostly brass and glass living room.

The thing was jammed with books, hard-covers on the lower shelves and paperbacks on the upper three layers, all romance writers Bill had never cared for. There was a cleaner spot on the shelf and she just knew she hadn’t moved it.

“What, what?” She was always going on about something.

“Justice is gone!”

He threw the financial section down in disgust.

“Alison. What in the hell are you talking about?”

It all came out in a rush and he wondered if she’d had her noon pill yet. She was such a good woman and he still loved her, still found her surprisingly good in bed after all these years.

“My little bronze figure—remember, the scales went up and down and stuff like that?”

Bill got up and gravely took her in his arms.

“Uh, not really.”

Apparently she was referring to a small bronze figure of a well-known Roman goddess, complete with working scales, the scales of justice, something that had uncomfortably suggested drug deals and illicit cash to Bill, but he’d never mentioned that. Their house wasn’t that kind of place.

***

Belinda Davies had a list of gripes.

“And that’s not the only thing.”

Brad Davies held her and tried to get to the bottom of what was really bothering her.
Their reflection, ghostly in the hallway mirror, mocked him in its enigmatic reflection of his tired, shopworn face and her back, and long red hair. She was a bit lumpy around the hips and thighs but she was all paid for and had a lot of good miles in her yet.

“No, what else, honey?” She’d been pretty good lately, but a relapse wasn’t unheard of in times of stress, although he couldn’t think of anything major in their lives presently.

Her distant cousin Sheela’s wedding couldn’t have anything to do with it, if anything it gave her purpose, something to look forward to and even meddle in. But Belinda had always been special. Her vulnerable neediness had appealed to him as a somewhat stodgy sophomore without a date, and, in the end, he really couldn’t have been happier.

Every family had some kind of a problem. Theirs had several.

“I can’t seem to find my meat grinder.”

Meat grinder. Meat grinder. Then Brad recalled.

“Oh, yes, the meat grinder.” He thought for a moment. “And you can’t find it?”

There was nothing unusual with that, not in this house, not with two teenage boys walking off with all of his tools all the time and never putting them back. He’d taken to keeping all the good stuff at work, where his job box was permanently locked and off-limits in terms of lending and borrowing. When he needed something, he brought it home in his lunch bucket and did whatever little job he had to do. Then he took it back to work.

“I could have sworn it was there just a month or so ago. It was in the back of the end drawer, by the back hallway.’

Belinda had bought the meat-grinder for twenty-five dollars at some garage sale and a long-suffering Brad had clamped down hard on his tongue and said not a thing about it. He knew the odds of her actually using it to grind meat were infinitely small. The grinder was all cast iron, or possibly aluminum, shiny and grey, and it clamped onto the end of a table or something. You fed in chunks of meat and turned a big handle and voila, you had ground meat for making meatballs or meatloaf.

Brad pondered the significance of all this. It seemed just so unlikely to turn out well. Every once in a while Belinda started looking through recipes in magazines, asking him over and over again what he thought of this, and that, and the other, and then look out.

“Well. I wouldn’t worry too much about it. Why don’t you just go to the market if you need some, ah, ground pork, or lamb or something.”

She looked at him uncertainly.

There was no trace of sarcasm, and now, she realized, he would probably be expecting something good for supper.

“Never mind.” It’s just that it was right there, right in the back of that last kitchen drawer, only now it wasn’t.

It was gone, for all intents and purposes vanished into thin air, and no one cared to wonder why.

As for her husband’s innermost thoughts, they were perhaps a bit clearer than he might have known, which only tended to irritate Belinda further.

But that bloody meat-grinder had to be somewhere.

***

They were proceeding east down Pine Street in the Toyota, having just left the three-way stop at the intersection with Empire Circle, when Belinda grabbed Brad’s shoulder and bellowed in his ear, her stabbing arm pointing off to the left through the windshield.

“Stop! Stop the car!” Her voice was shrill and commanding, like some termagant in a TV commercial but she really wasn’t like that and it really must be an emergency.

He couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary in a quick sweep where she was pointing…

Brad jammed on the brakes wondering what the problem was, although there were a lot of parked cars and people moving about…some sort of garage sale going on at that address, and yet there were no kids or dogs or people in the street. Mystified, he turned to inquire politely just what exactly was up and why was she yelling?

His wife whipped off her seatbelt, threw open the door, and as Brad stared in some oddly objective fascination, nipped around the front end of the vehicle, and she charged over there into that crowd of people and started yelling. He threw the car in park and went after her on sheer reflex, rather than any strong desire to get involved.

She was his wife, he loved her dearly, and something was up, mostly likely with her.

He’d been dreading this for some time. It was like things were going too well in the last couple of months or so.

With a deep sigh, Brad stepped up to the better half and gently tried to catch her elbow, which she flung off without a glance and then she lunged for the other woman, who, as a sick sense of what was going on settled over Bill, was clutching a cast-iron meat-grinder for all her stout arms were worth. Both ladies were screaming and shouting and the language coming out of his wife was distinctly troubling in front of all these nice people.

“Honey! Honey! Let’s not make a scene here.”

***

Sergeant Ed O’Herlihy stood by the back end of the cruiser as Patrol Officer Angie Marrietta recounted her observations. Real trouble in this upscale suburban neighbourhood was unusual, although people always had concerns. This looked like one big mix-up and not much more.

“So you were just talking to the caller when this other woman steps up?”

“Yes. Mrs. Caruthers She says she thinks this other thingy belongs to her—some kind of brass figure. It’s like Lady Justice or something. She swears it’s a carbon-copy of one that went missing from her bookshelf.” That one wasn’t really insisting on charges, but it helped to build a picture.

“So what do we have?” The idea of the homeowner, Steve Maynard, a Navy vet with an artificial leg, pensioned off for thirty years, going around burgling homes for knick-knacks and bric-a-brac seemed a bit far-fetched, and yet murder had been committed for fifty cents or a pack of smokes in some places.

Those places were some ways off, but you never knew.

“All right, let’s have a word with the man.” Sergeant O’Herlihy went up to Officer Marrietta’s cruiser and she opened up the door and stood aside with her hand on her weapon.

“So. What’s going on here, sir?”

Turns out Mister Maynard was hopping mad and had a vocabulary that was extensive.

***

After being held all night and going before a judge, Steve Maynard vehemently denied theft and insisted he’d bought all of the items in question. It turned out there were a lot more than just two suspicious items on those tables when bystanders and passers-by really started looking. He said he’d bought them all at garage sales.

The crowd jeered when they heard that. It’s a good thing they had backup, two more cruisers rolling up at just that instant settling the crowd of early-morning garage-sale shoppers right down.

It was a small town.

It was like the crime of the century around here. They just wanted to be helpful. They were being tough on crime. The moral stance was easy enough, but opportunities were few and far between.

It seemed half the people in town were sort of missing things, small things, and the sergeant himself had been a bit perturbed to find a gnarly old wooden lamp, broken, needing a new socket assembly and a shade perhaps, and it would be as good as new. That lamp looked awfully familiar. It was the spitting image of one he’d had in the recreation room for ages. The last time he’d seen it, it was maybe sitting on the end of the workbench in his two-car garage, just waiting for inspiration.

To go out and buy a shade and a new socket was a low priority, but undoubtedly he would get around to it one day.

Could it be?

When the sergeant called home and had his wife look in the garage, she told him a bit breathlessly over the phone that she couldn’t find it. But the garage was a mess and the lamp disassembled. He settled for thinking it could be there. It could be that she just didn’t recognize it.

“Honey, have we ever had a garage sale?”

It turned out they had, last summer or the summer before, she thought. All of this was pretty inconclusive, as the sergeant wouldn’t put it past her or Jinny, his fourteen year-old daughter and very snarky she was these days, to put that out on a table, in all cynicism, and try and get fifty cents for it. Why not, after all? It was just a piece of junk. The fact that his father once told him he had carved that in high school wood-working shop would mean nothing to them, would it?

Someone was claiming some crummy old wooden cigar box was theirs, and another person was looking through all their old photo albums, hoping to identify a maple end table, with a broken leg re-glued in an amateur fashion and with knife gouges in the top made by someone’s undisciplined child, perhaps the previous owner…

The sergeant sighed.

With a bit of luck they would get a murder or a big bank robbery, or something, any day now and then they could quietly drop the whole thing.

Otherwise, it looked pretty bad for old Maynard.

All in the name of justice, they would run him through the meat grinder.

The sergeant drummed his fingers on the desk top and looked at his coffee, already going cold.

He had the luxury of time, and a good dose of discretion. He would think on it.

For no particular reason, the sly look on Maynard’s face when leaving with his lawyer, released by the judge on his own recognizance, kind of bothered him. He couldn’t really say why, it was just an impression.

The words of a familiar nursery rhyme came to him. He’d sung it to his own daughter often enough.

“With a knick-knack, paddy-whack, give the dog a bone. This old man came rolling home…”

In the quiet background hum of the station, a small shiver went up and down his spine and the hairs prickled on the back of his neck.

Three more years until early retirement.

He rubbed his eyes and looked blearily over the squad-room through his glass partition.

Small evil lurked in small places. He mustn’t forget that. A cop could never forget that.

Right about then the sun went behind a cloud, his office seemed dimmer and it was like the temperature dropped three or four degrees—just enough to be a little spooky.

Ah, well. Maybe they’d get their murder after all.



END



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Writing: Short Story versus the Novel.

Sometimes I drive around thinking about stuff.

There are differences in writing the short story versus the novel.


The most obvious difference is sheer length. However, if you can write a good, stand-alone short story, then you can certainly write a good chapter. The chapter allows more leeway, not less, because you have all the stuff that went before, and all the stuff that comes after. It might have a beginning, a middle, and an end, but it’s not so final—not until you get to the end of the book.

Assuming you write twenty or so chapters, each of four to six thousand words, you’ve got yourself a good first draft of a novel, at least in terms of sheer word count.

A good first draft takes me anywhere from two to three months to write. That takes care of the plot and the characters to some degree. I need to get to the ending before I begin to feel really comfortable with the thing as a totality.

Usually it’s around sixty thousand words. Re-writing usually makes it a bit longer, and yet I’m always paring words out as I go. With luck, I manage a thousand words a day for two or three months. Some days might not see any work at all, and on other days I might manage two or three thousand words. The thing has to be making progress to be motivating.

It’s not hard to write a thousand words a day. It takes about an hour, sometimes even less. First, you need to know what the next scene is.

You can’t write it if you can’t imagine it, seeing enough of the basic movements and settings, clearly in your head. I spend a fair amount of time thinking about what comes next. I know where I’m going tomorrow when I sit down to write. My current novel is up to eighteen thousand words right now, and it’s my eleventh novel.

(Other than that, I have no real qualifications for speaking on such matters.)

A novel has to have some kind of compelling climax and a satisfying ending. When I begin a novel, I often don’t know exactly how it all turns out.

Working at a thousand words a day gives me time to figure that out, and work towards that end point.

When writing a short story, I can’t even begin to write the thing until I figure out the ‘gag.’ Once I have a gag, the structure reveals itself and works itself out.

I have to know the ending. In that sense it’s easier structurally. All the rest of the novel is left out of a short story. I say that because any good story can be made longer. I have short stories that arguably should be made into novels. Why I abandon them, is a very good question. That one I think is purely intuitive—they simply didn’t grab me by the guts and refuse to let go until I did the work and got it out of my system.

Another major difference is simple time. I wrote a seven thousand word short story over the weekend. It took two and a half days. It’s already submitted. There is the satisfaction of coming up with an idea, working with it, solving the problems and then completing it. There is that quick gratification with writing short stories. You write them and submit them and hope for the next good idea to come to you as soon as possible.

Making a submission is a fairly positive moment.

Right now I have probably a dozen, pretty strong short stories under submission in pro and semi-pro markets. As long as you’re writing new material and resubmitting as soon as a rejection slip comes in, that part of the business is relatively easy to maintain. Read the guidelines and keep track of your submissions. If you get even the silliest idea, write it up, polish it, and submit.

See what happens, and repeat as necessary.

As for writing a novel, the motivation, the urge must be sustained over a longer term. It takes enthusiasm generated over the long haul. There may be no real clear idea of where it is headed for the first twenty or thirty thousand words. You may have no idea of who the people are until they begin to react to each other in their own voices and their own characteristic way. It happens on the page as you write it. There is spontaneity in the novel. It just takes longer to write one.

In order to submit or self-publish a book, first you have to write one, and complete it, and polish it until all doubts are removed insofar as that is possible.

No one can teach you how to write or tell a story. It is a journey of discovery. If we want it bad enough, we will learn. We teach ourselves. Ultimately, we’re all alone out here.

You learn a lot about yourself as you go along.

 

End

The Comet.

Movies like Meteor, or Deep Impact, or the appallingly bad Space Cowboys always fucking piss me off, for some reason. I don’t plan on seeing 2012, anytime soon.

I’m not much of a scientist, although I taught grades six and seven for about thirty years at a couple of different schools in Des Plaines, and I was happy enough doing that. It seemed like such a privilege to help mould young minds; that is until I saw what happened to those minds when they became adults. For some reason some of, ‘the most brilliant young minds of our times,’ don’t even know the simplest, most basic facts of math, physics, or chemistry, or even that most uncommon of all things, common sense. As a teacher, I hate feeling like a total, abject failure, but that sort of thing happens from time to time. For some reason the human rejects seem to do awfully well later in life. It doesn’t seem fair for some reason. Some of the worst students go on to become doctors, lawyers, or newspaper editors, but our society is pretty sick to begin with. And science isn’t about the quest for truth or knowledge, it’s about patent applications and making money out of poorly-tested products that ultimately cause more harm than good. I suppose I saw them young, before they realized their true potential. And the old are entitled to be grumpy once in a while. I had always believed I would develop more patience as I aged. I was wrong! Oh, so wrong. But as our allotted time gets shorter, the value of time seems to go up proportionately. I guess you could say that the old appreciate life, while the young just seem to take it for granted.

So when a young guy that I taught years before showed up in the bar on a Friday night, and latched onto me like a long-lost friend, I had to be tolerant. I had to accept the fact that the boy I always thought of as, ‘poor Billy,’ had been hired by a prominent firm, a member of our military-industrial complex; and that he was in the business of making tools and devices for killing people. Sure enough, he caught sight of me and his eyes lit up.

“Mister Prentice,” he bellowed the length of the bar.

There wasn’t much point in slouching down in my seat at that point, was there?

Sometimes you just know. We spent some time reminiscing about old school chums, good times and bad times. Predictably enough, it wasn’t long before he started in on the complaints about his career, his wife, his job. It seems his wife didn’t understand him. He told me that three times before quaffing off his fourth martini and ordering another.

My unspoken comment, “I think she understands you very, very well,” remained unsaid.

It didn’t take too long before William, as he liked to call himself now, was drunk. And I mean stupidly drunk, where he was telling me stuff that he shouldn’t. Although I’m glad he did, as it gave me the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to save the world.

“I shouldn’t be telling you this,” he slurred, then burped; then looked around with a guilty look: obviously married, in the worst possible way.

“Then don’t,” I replied shortly.

Some guys just can’t take a hint. He sure couldn’t, but that’s perhaps for the best, as was quickly demonstrated.

“There’s a comet,” he confessed, with a look of raw desperation. “It’s headed this way. It’s top-secret, of course, but you’re all right. I know you won’t tell.”

His eyes burned into mine.

Ah, yes; the masturbation incident. He was actually a little young for it at the time, but he had been reading some book—I think it was Desmond Morris’ ‘The Naked Ape,’ or something.

And he had tried it. Apparently his first climax was achieved while clutching that book, and following along like some kind of instruction manual. Morris’ rather clinical description of the higher primates engaging in sexual intercourse, was the chapter that did it. A lot of the kids passed that book around, and I eventually confiscated it. Otherwise I probably wouldn’t know what’s in it. It seems he got scared when nothing came out! His first climax was a dry one. And he couldn’t talk to anyone at home. His parents were right lunatics. They’d beaten an older brother half to death once when he was about fourteen years old and had come down with a cold.

His mom had found a few facial tissues in his waste-paper basket, and predictably enough, drawn the obvious-but-mistaken conclusion. As a teacher, I despise a certain kind of parent, but we have to treat them all like gold, or we get sued for a half a billion dollars or something ludicrous like that. The school board frowns on that sort of thing. It’s okay for the parents to foul up the kids, try to teach them anything useful, or accurate; or arcane notions, like evolution, or freedom of inquiry, and they get uptight. Recently the government of Canada has decreed that the subject of homosexuality, in conjunction with other sex education, has to be dealt with in the schools, beginning in grade four. Yet it is the parents, some of whose children are homosexuals, or will be later in life, that are objecting to the subject being dealt with in any terms other than outright condemnation. It is only after their kids have been beaten to death by the side of the road, that they realize that a parent can forgive a child for anything, even things the child could not control. We’re supposed to teach the kids tolerance, and the kids would be fine at that age.

It’s the parents who can’t hack it; it’s the parents who are truly ignorant.

I taught his brother history in grade seven, and quite frankly the bruises, the half-healed gashes and cuts were something to make one’s blood boil. Greg is doing eleven life sentences in some maximum-security prison out west somewhere. His record is a long litany of violent, sexual crimes against women, oddly enough. No, Greg is not a homosexual, he’s merely a violent psychopath.

Somehow that’s more socially acceptable, at least in his own mind.

Half the people in the Bible were violent psychopaths, unless I’m reading it wrong.

With a wrench I pulled myself back to the present day, and tried to show a little compassion, although I had this particular former student pegged as the classic, ‘A-type personality,’ which is a scholarly euphemism for the nethermost regions of the alimentary canal. I suppose he can’t help it. The upbringing has a huge influence, which even the best teachers can seldom correct. William was telling me that the meteor was going to hit the Earth, and we were all going to die, and there was no way that they could build a big enough nuclear weapon to, ‘vaporize it,’ in his words, and that’s when I put on my little thinking cap.

“See, I think you’re going at it all wrong,” I suggested in a gentle tone.

“No, no, we just can’t build a big enough friggin’ device,” he insisted. “That’s the only way we’re going to stop it.”

It seems the usual missiles and rockets just weren’t big enough to carry a zillion-megaton bomb. After all, they had been designed to drop much smaller bombs on our neighbor’s heads.

By destroying the world we prevent our enemies from winning, or something deucedly logical like that. They can design it, they can build it; they can test thousands of them to make sure they’re going to work. They can even use them from time to time. For some reason they can’t call it what it is: a bomb. I guess that’s considered rude.

I suppose I’d had a couple or three drinks myself; by this time, otherwise my patience would have held out against any assault.

“Dispersed gases,” I told him, and I don’t know where that came from.

Somewhere in the subconscious mind, I suppose.

“What?” he asked. “Dispersed what?”

William had his doctorate, for Christ’s sakes, and yet every one of them buggers all think the same way; the benefit of higher education. They all think like they’re supposed to. So I said it again.

“Dispersed gases,” I told him. “The meteor goes through a cloud of dispersed gases, and then it heats up from friction. It begins to outgas. That’s a verb, William. It radiates them in all directions, in a semi-spheroid pattern. Most of its mass won’t even approach Earth. You must have twenty or thirty thousand smaller missiles lying round, gathering dust, no good to anyone that way…perhaps you should use some of them up, before mice gnaw the insulation off all the wires and they self-ignite…”

William had talked about the comet’s transit past Saturn and Jupiter, and a couple of smaller planets. Let their gravity catch a-hold of some of that mass, while it was a liquid or a gas, and in the midst of decomposing from simple, abrasive heat. The key was to start a little earlier, and use just enough of it, or approximately one zillion megatons.

He sat up a bit then.

“What are you getting at?” he gasped in new-found hope.

“Think of it as driving a nail into a pencil lengthwise,” I offered. “If that comet had to go through something like a jet contrail, lengthwise, the heat of friction, from all the dispersed gases, say helium, or hydrogen, any kind of gas will do, although the denser the better…hell! You could use black powder from a bunch of firecrackers, if you wanted to do it on the cheap.”

Sure the world would go through a few years of climate upheaval. It would cost the taxpayers, who would have to subsidize the big corporations in order to guarantee massive profits, but at least the common man would still have a planetary biosphere to inhabit. And the bombs had all been paid off at the bank decades ago.

“That’s…that’s…” he said, wild-eyed, and no wonder.

The man was piss-drunk, and he was confronting the issue of calling the boss while under the influence and not in a very organized state of mind. “Brilliant!”

“It’s not brilliant at all,” I told him with just a hint of heat in my voice.

It suddenly occurred to me that William must have cheated on Section Five of our science class.

“You should have read the book, William,” I told him. “You get all your science off of the movie screen, or out of some crappy science-fiction book from some rank amateur who thinks kids floating through the air on a bike is cute.”

I couldn’t help it. It just came out that way. His pale, insipid, wishy-washy blue eyes stared into mine. Then he slapped his thigh, pulled a little phone out of some inner recess, and hit the ‘speed-dial’ button.

“Can you explain that, over the phone?” he asked in an agony of suspense.

Perhaps there was some hope for William after all. Sometimes massive forces, applied crudely, and all at once, just won’t work. Maybe he’ll get it someday.

“Of course, you ninny,” and he grinned a little at that.

Teachers have to say something, after all. That one was socially acceptable, although the parents and school board wouldn’t have liked it much. So William muttered away for a couple of minutes, while I checked my watch as unobtrusively as possible, wishing I were somewhere else. Then he handed me the phone.

I had to explain it again a couple of times, about little puff-balls of smoke or gases all lined up in a row ahead of the meteor, and how the thing would arrive in Earth’s vicinity as just a big clump of steam; without enough kinetic energy to cause any harm or penetrate the atmosphere, et cetera. Usually a couple of beers are enough for me. William’s company made my skin crawl, and I pounded back another. I’ve never thought of myself as an ugly drunk, but maybe the medications, the pain-pills and the alcohol were an unlucky combination.

I had to explain that if you took a half of a tenth of one percent of velocity off of that comet, there’s no way it could hit the Earth. I tried to explain how a simple bomb-blast behind the comet, up nice and close, in the cone of shadow where the sun’s light pressure was shielded by the body of the comet itself, would inevitably guarantee that the comet would pass behind and outside the orbit of the Earth harmlessly, but I don’t think he was actually capable of understanding that part. Perhaps it simply wasn’t an expensive enough option for his line of thinking.

After a long conversation with some four-star cluster-fuck in Washington, I handed William back the phone. Making my excuses, I headed for the washroom to relieve myself. Just coincidentally, the rear exit is right there, out of sight of the main lounge. I bought a huge cup of coffee at a well-known retailer, and went home. I haven’t been sleeping much lately, to tell the truth.

Sometimes I sit out back on a starry night and just enjoy the sky. And I’m glad I got the chance to talk to William. The universe is just too beautiful to let shit-heads, and ass-holes, and guys like William fuck it up for the rest of us. Incidentally, I heard later that ‘poor Billy’ got a big promotion. He lives in Cupertino, California, and makes about four hundred thousand dollars a year, and in a recent news story, it seems he got a fifty-million dollar bonus at Christmas.

The little creep never even called me or anything. But who knows? Maybe he blacked out and doesn’t even remember talking to me! It’s scary when you think of people like that involved in our national security.

About a year and a half later, a few of us schoolteachers were invited to the White House. our new president is big on beer, pretzels and, if it seems justified, a quiet conversation in the back room. She gave me some new medal that no one has ever heard of, and apparently, ‘If I’m ever out of work…’

I told her, “No fucking thanks, Madame President.”

I hope she accepts my decision in this matter. You see, I’m a Democrat, and I can’t stand them lying Republicans. About half of them should be put up against a wall and shot. The other half are just fine where they are, beating their kids half to death, promoting ignorance and bigotry, and preventing poor people from enjoying the common benefits of civil society. They make regular people look much better than they really are. Don’t take my word for it. Just sit back and watch for a while. Sit back and observe objectively.

Lately the stars seem a little dimmer at night, or perhaps my eyes are going. We all have to get old sometime. I’m tired, and I suppose that’s a good thing. It makes death look so much more attractive. You want the truth? I have cancer. I’m not in pain or anything, what with all the medications they’ve been giving me lately. I’ve had all the treatments. There is nothing further anyone can do for me. On the plus side, my wife is dead, my kids are all grown up, and I don’t owe anyone any money. I’m an only child, and my parents are long gone, although I do have an elderly aunt in Detroit. And I’m very grateful for all the kindnesses, of course.

There are times when I kind of resent saving the world.

I just know damned well they’re going to bury me with that fucking medal on my chest, and if I’m lucky, my granddaughter Sarah will put a little package of chocolate-chip cookies in there too, and maybe a little note saying how much she loves me.


END

'The Comet' appears in 'The Paranoid Cat and other tales,' available from fine online retailers everywhere.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Paranoid-Cat-other-tales/dp/0987972391

Wheel of Misfortune.

Germanname1990 (Wiki.)

“Hi, everybody, and welcome to tonight’s show. That’s right, it’s time for Wheel of Misfortune again, with our genial and always immaculately dressed host Gene Halley. “

The studio swelled with applause as announcer Rick Burdette, standing off in the wings, paused and the jingle faded out.

“Maisy Clark of Oklahoma City! Come on down!”

“Squee!” The lady in question, suitably dressed in a chicken suit, cast aside a sign that read ‘Pick Me! Pick Me!’ in big green letters.

She bounced up and down clapping and turned to her companions for quick hugs and congratulations.

“Maisy joins Steve Aberarder of Croswell, Michigan, last week’s biggest loser with absolutely no points, and Edward Swartmore, who joined the panel of contestants at the end of the show with the demise of reigning champion Frannie Macpherson. And now, the man of the hour, my friend, and your host with the most, Gene Halley.”

Gene stepped out of the back and quickly scooted across highly-polished black tiles to his futuristic rostrum, which was both a sort of homage to the Jetsons and a throwback to Art Deco and neon art.

Extending an arm, Gene welcomed Sharon Moutif, his hostess and the lady who actually turned the letters, and her bouncing charge, brought down from the audience, Maisy Clark. With a brilliant smile, Sharon took her place beside the big board.

Maisy took a quick look back and flung a kiss to her hometown contingent including her husband and three kids, plus a half dozen others all in home-made costumes and hats. Contestants were selected from the line-up before studio opening, and personality and originality the lady clearly had in abundance.

Taking a quick look at his cue cards, Gene spoke into the camera lens with a charming gleam in his eye, perfect enunciation and a smooth, oily delivery.

“Maisy’s a rock climber, Zen gardener, master chef and runs a daycare when she’s not being a mother of five. Always active in the PTA and Welcome Wagon, we welcome to the show, Maisy Clark.”

She giggled and gave a little wave.

“Thank you!”

“Okay, Maisy, you give the wheel a spin and we’ll try and solve the puzzle, which has three words.”

The panels lit up as Sharon Moutif, resplendent in a black gown and pearls, with pendant earrings and patent black pumps, posed with an arm raised elegantly to draw attention to the board.

“The category is American History. American History, for a hundred points.”

Maisy took a firm grip and spun the wheel. Happy music played and an overhead camera showed it on studio monitors for the in-house audience as the signal was seamlessly cut in by the director and switcher so the home TV audience worldwide could see what was happening too.

The wheel slowed and the pointer after some hesitation settled on the number sixty.

“Wow! Sixty bonus points riding on this round.” Gene beamed at the audience behind the cameras, every move and inflection caught perfectly.

“Okay, Steve, give her a spin. I mean the wheel, Steve.” The audience chuckled appreciatively as Sharon pouted and stood with her hands on her hips.

The fellow stepped up to the rail and gave the horizontally mounted wheel a monumental heave.

While they were waiting for it to stop, Gene went on.

“Steve’s an avid ice-fisherman, a volunteer fire-fighter, and coaches little league baseball when he’s not busy running Steve’s Pizza in downtown Croswell.”

The wheel stopped on twenty.

“Oh, not good. Well, good luck in the next round. All right, Edward, give it a good one. Edward, as I recall from last week, is an avid war-gamer, a cross-dresser and works afternoon shift in a hairdressing establishment. In his high-school yearbook, he was voted most likely to succeed in life.”

Again, the wheel went round and round but Edward couldn’t beat Maisy and only got a thirty.

“All right, Maisy, here’s another clue. Are we ready to start playing?”

David Shankbone. (Wiki.)

The audience clapped and whistled as she nodded, waved her arms above her head and bounced up and down in her chicken suit.

“Here’s the clue, and if you can solve it, hit the button and have a go. The sixteenth President’s most famous speech was called this.”

No one slammed the button. Maisy shook her head.

“Well, it’s early in the game yet. Do you want to spin again? You can give up fifty bonus points…”

She shook her head.

“No. I’d like to buy a vowel.”

“Okay.”

“I’d like to buy an ‘e.’”

“That’ll cost you fifty points. There are two ‘e’s, good going.”

Two panels lit up, the second panel, and the third from the last.

“Okay. Can anyone solve the puzzle?” More head shakes.

“Next player, give it a spin.”

Steve Aberarder leaned over and gave it a strong push, and it went around and around.

“Oh!”

The wheel stopped on ten. But it wasn’t all bad news, for the audience saw that a card was lying there on the wheel, shaped to fit and blending into the background.

“Pick it up, pick it up, Steve.”

Steve lifted it up and turned it over so the camera could get a look at it.

It was a thousand-dollar gift certificate for a well-known national credit counseling agency. Steve’s face drooped as he picked it up.

“Steve, can you solve the puzzle? Or would you like another letter?”

“Give me an ‘n.’” Steve spoke without hesitation as the audience clapped spontaneously in response to the warm-up guy’s waving placard.

Consonants were free, vowels cost points.

“Sorry, Steve, no ‘n’s.” Gene looked expectantly off to the right. “Still have time? One more spin? Okay.”

“Edward.” The tall, distinguished looking older man, looking austere and intelligent in his black suit, white shirt and tie in shiny blacks, greys and charcoals, stepped up to the curving rail in front of him and reached over.

“Huh!” The man gave it a spin the likes of which hadn’t been seen on the show in quite some time.

Gene’s mouth dropped open as Sharon clapped enthusiastically and the other two contestants exchanged glances with audience members and supporters behind them. The wheel kept turning, and then showed signs of slowing.

“Let’s hope your luck is changing.” Gene nodded at the camera.

But it was not to be. This time Edward got the ten, and no placard. He looked crestfallen, but just then a whooping, strident, siren-like noise went off and the backlit parts of the set and backdrop began to flash on and off.

Edward’s chin came up and his eyes glittered in the harsh studio lighting over in anticipation.

The studio roared with applause. Everyone cheered, and clapped, and jumped up and down, including Sharon.

“Well, well, well, Edward. Come with me please. You know what this means, don’t you?”

The man was smiling now.

“Yee-hah!”

Grinning, Gene led him off to another backdrop, angled to allow the audience and two of the studio cameras to switch back and forth after a quick dolly back by camera one on the left.

The pair stood in front of a garish carnival sledge-hammer set up, as Gene handed him a big mock hammer with a long wooden handle and a red claw hammer head on it. There was a big chrome pad for the hammer to come down on, a track going straight up marked in feet in amber letters, and the clown’s head behind the striker plate was the marker.

“Lizzie Borden took and axe and gave her mother forty whacks.” Gene smiled his famous smile.

Edward listened to the shouts and encouragement of the studio audience for a moment, taking the time to grin and wave back.

He hefted the hammer speculatively, stepped up to a comfortable position, and took a couple of deep breaths. Then he lifted and swung in one big smooth arc, whereupon there was a big Clang! and the clown’s head shot up the track, with red neon splashing and flickering in tear-drop shapes behind it until it stopped.

“Sixty thousand dollars! Whoa!” Edward was ecstatic.

“Nicely done, sir. That’s right, Edward, a guaranteed acceptance. Sixty thousand dollars on a fourth mortgage, no credit check, easy repayment terms.”

Edward waved at the audience, smiling in relief. You could only lose so many rounds before you were dropped, and at least he would be going home with something.

Gene reached into an inner pocket.

“And, there’s a thousand dollars to go with it.”

Edward jumped up and down, clutching a swath of bills in both hands for the cameras and the folks back home.

“So, we’re back to the puzzle. But first, this important announcement from Abilene Dog Food.”

***


Auditioning for Wheel of Misfortune. > TenPoundHammer. (Wiki.)

After the two-minute commercial break, the show came back on air with a bang.

“Okay, we’re back.” The audience settled down.

Finally the applause petered out.

“Okay, we’re back to Maisy.”

She spun the wheel, this time getting a forty. She still had points left, so she bought another vowel, this time an ‘o.’ Pretty much everyone who played or watched knew that e, t, o, a, and n were the most commonly used letters in the alphabet.

“Sorry, Maisy, no ‘o’s.”

“Steve?”

Steve spun the wheel, perhaps not as hard as the first one, and the thing settled up on fifty.

“Well, that’s better. What do you want to do?”

“I’d like to buy a vowel.”

“All right, which one do you want?”

In the background the audience muttered and called, as Sharon bounced up and down clapping in a cheerful yet restrained manner.

“Give me an ‘a.’”

There was the ‘boop’ sound of a hit and one letter lit up on the board. It was the first letter of the last word.

With lightning speed, Edward’s hand came down on the buzzer.

“Yes?”

“I’d like to solve the puzzle!”

“Are you sure? If you miss, you lose all points and your bonus prize.”

Edward nodded firmly.

“Go ahead.”

“The Gettysburg Address!”

Sirens and whoop-whoops went off in the studio, all the lights flashed and the audience went wild.

Things went quiet again and then came two more boop-sounds.

“Judges agree with the answer. Congratulations, Edward. The Gettysburg Address it is.”

The audience went wild again. Sharon bounced around clapping, Gene stood there smiling and the other contestants tried to get into the spirit of it too, smiling and nodding along as well. With the show only half over, there was still hope for them too.

“All right, ladies and gentlemen, we’ll take a quick break again and come back with the Doors of Fate.”

***

With the sets and camera set up changed, Maisy and Steve were visible on far right while Gene and Edward stood in front of three small rolling type doors, numbered in sequence from left to right.

“What door do you want, Edward?”

Members of the audience began shouting, with none of the three numbers predominant, but Edward listened, grinning, to the racket. Gene patted him on the shoulder with a grin and they just waited for a second. Finally he made an answer.

“Door number…” He held it for drama. “Door number three.”

The audience, or at least a portion of it, screamed and shouted in relief and support and just plain joy.

“So Edward, without further ado, let’s hear what kind of prizes we are looking for.”

Rick Burdette began the spiel.

“Behind one of these doors is a yacht. It’s a sixty-foot cabin cruiser. With the Bel-Air 60’s two-thousand gallon fuel tanks, you’ll be able to cruise to Monaco. Sleeps ten in sybaritic luxury. Prize includes membership in Newport Yacht Club and all cost of training in small vessel operations is free to the lucky winner.”

Edward seemed remarkably cool about such a prize, just shrugging and looking at Gene.

“Behind another door is a two-week time-share in Rio de Janeiro, a set of his and hers Hublot Tourbuillot wristwatches, a set of his and hers gold bags, full of course, and an outdoor jacuzzi Water Sprazzle.”

“And the Grand Prize, which we are all familiar with as it is unchanging and the same from week to week, is behind yet another door.” Gene patted Edward on the back.

“Which one will it be? Door number one, door number two, or door number three?”

From the studio sound system came a long, slow drum roll, beginning down low, all raspy with the snare effect, and then building up and out into a final crescendo, and a sudden silence after one quick rap on the high-hat cymbals.

Gene grinned.

“We must have an answer.”

But Edward seemed a bit dazed, turning back repeatedly to look at the audience, most of whom where shouting their own personal choices at him.

“Oh, God.” He licked his lips. “Door number two!”

People screamed, there was applause, his fellow contestants jumped up and down. Gene extended an arm and led him off to the end of the studio.

“So, here’s number one. Would you like to see what you gave up for Door Number Two?”

The routine, the same every week, was popular and kept audience numbers high in survey after survey.

With a sick look but a grin nevertheless, Edward shrugged.

“Yes.”

“Yes! He said yes!” Gene laughed and slapped his thigh as Sharon clapped.

“He said yes!” It was her first line tonight and she delivered it with gusto as Gene put a hand up to his brow as if to block out the lights.

“I thought that was you.”

Sharon laughed and gave Gene a big thumbs-up.

A bell clanged and the door went up. Edward’s hands flew up to his mouth, then dropped to his sides. The shape of a big yacht, and some other trifles was revealed by the time it was three-quarters of the way up, and the audience reacted accordingly with clapping, hisses, boos, and then a general burst of laughter.

“Two more doors to go, Edward.”

Edward put his hands up over his face, and then Gene led him back closer to the central area as cameras moved to follow.

“Here we are, Edward, it’s Door Number Three.”

Edward rubbed his face in stress and tension, then catching sight of the camera, smiled and waved. He stood there biting his lip.

“Well, we won’t torment you any more.” Gene made a signal.

U.S. Army Africa. (Wiki.)

The door began to creep up.

While this one was dimmer than the previous, when the door got to a certain height Edward could see along with the audience and the viewers at home that there were furnishings in there, along with some windows, curtains, even a chandelier hanging from the ceiling. A backdrop of a famous beach scene, backed up by hotels, sparkling water and a familiar terrain showed that this was the time-share in Rio prize.

Sharon stepped out from around the corner. Holding up a wrist, she pointed at an expensive-looking watch on her arm.

“Oh! The time-share.”

“And that just leaves Door Number Two. Your door, Edward. Do you want to see it?”

Edward sagged at the knees but nodded dumbly.

“Yes.” You could barely make it out, but he said it.

With a theatrical creak and a groan, slowly it began to rise.

“So, as you know, Edward, our Grand Prize is the same every week. We pay off your mortgage. We pay off your credit card bills, and outstanding accounts. If you can locate the paperwork, and if you owe someone money, we pay the bill. But there’s more. We pay off your cars, and—get this, Edward, we sent your kids, all of them, to college. You get your credit rating back again.”

The door allowed studio lighting to enter, combining to fully illuminate the object that dominated the space inside what looked like a shipping container by its corrugated metal sides and the numbers stenciled on the end frame.

The Guillotine.

“So, Edward, I have to ask. How does it feel?

“Fantastic.” Edward sighed deeply, staring at the infernal machine with glorious intent.

“We even buy you a family plot for up to six people, and a very nice headstone.”

Edward nodded.

“At last. I’m finally free.”

Gene’s eyes gleamed into the lens and the director took a commercial break.

#

Studio music swelled up as they prepared for the next part of the show. This involved one final family reconciliation scene, the execution itself, and the turning over of the documents.

There wasn’t a dry eye in the house, with Sharon in particular affected by the little girls thanking their father for paying off the family debt and giving them a shot, a real shot at making it in affluent American suburban society.

Then it was one final spin of the wheel, after bringing on a new contestant, a certain Alison Withers of Pensacola Florida, a tall, spare woman of indeterminate age but probably high fifties.

She was immaculately prepared.

She was a radiologist, had seventeen purebred Sphynx cats, was a certified Neuro-Linguistic Programmer, and gave extensively to charities in third world countries. When she could squeeze it in, she was into Tai-Bo, ran, and did a fair amount of shopping for antiques, especially dolls and figurines with any kind of Regency connection.

END

The Interview.

Testing your responses.

I had a new job. The trouble was that I had no idea of what it actually was. I think it was a big warehouse or something with a lot of office space up in the front two floors of the building, all kinds of people coming and going.

Everyone in the place was ignorant, or threatening or abusive. Either that, or they ignored me, just rolling their eyes when I tried to talk to them. They were all nuts. Nothing they said made any sense, and I had no idea of why I was there—I hadn’t worked in years and I sure as hell wasn’t looking for a job, not that I recall. You’d think that I would remember something like that.

Finally, when I just couldn’t take it anymore, I turned to the nearest guy and let him have a big one right in the kisser. My arm went out to its fullest extension and I caught him on the side of the face, slightly high so I wouldn’t bust his jaw.

He went down.

#

I was confronted by a sloping concrete wall, and I was standing in a foot of water. I wanted out of there real bad so I dropped to my knees and began clawing at the mud and gravel where the slot allowed the dirty coffee-coloured water to flow under and out of the tunnel.

The gap was too shallow. The slot was too small for my body to squeeze through, and there was just a thin slice of air above it. If I could lower the water level, maybe I could slither through on my back. There was light out there. It would take a while, and turning, I saw to my relief a square patch of sunny glare only fifteen metres behind me.

I was in a culvert or something under a road. That must be it.

Sloshing my way to the daylight, the sides of a ditch or drainage canal sloped up, all covered in thick green grass, curling and uneven. The sky was blue, with thin high clouds. The sides of the ditch were ten or twelve feet high. The sides must have been seventy-five degrees. Cold water flowed past my feet as I tried to kick or cut a foothold. Grabbing grass, I pulled myself up, attempting to plunge my fingers into the soil, but it was harder and drier than I thought. It took a couple of attempts, but I made it up, kicking and clawing all the way…

#

My little red sports-car handled fine. It was a lovely summer’s evening about seven o’clock. Dodging oncoming traffic, I pulled off the left side of the road into a field, with a big down-slope and trees coming up fast. I picked a thin spot and discovered it was a narrow lane through the trees, although I had to steer right and left to avoid the bigger ones. The grass was very green. The ground was smooth, or at this speed I would have been bounced right out.

I got to the bottom and the other side began curving up, but I turned left and over in a big arc and then followed the valley up a hillside and over the top, to a wide, open street where I bounced down over a curb. I turned left again, went about two blocks and pulled right into the driveway of a French Colonial house, a monster of a home. The garage door opened so I put the car in there.

I walked through the place, it was very quiet in there, and it had a couch and a few items of furniture. There no curtains on the windows and light streamed in. All the windows were closed. There was a bedroom, and there were empty rooms but someone had been using the kitchen recently. There was cold coffee in a pot and a little food in the fridge. I saw one or two dishes in a rack. I was standing in the end of the kitchen when car doors slammed and some people came in. One guy in an expensive charcoal grey suit came in, and walked right past me. There were voices in the house, but I didn’t see where they went. He went into the other room.

He sat in a chair in the living room and opened up a newspaper as I came in.

He glanced up, and went to the next page, but then he ignored me and I wondered if he belonged there. It could have been my house.

Something wasn’t right here.

There was a funny pricking pain at my left temple. I felt thin wires on my neck, hard, like bell wire going down to somewhere else, and on the side of my head a round pad of something shiny…like plastic.

#

“Not bad.”

“What?”

Jerking against some kind of restraints, I looked wildly around. I wanted so badly to sit up.

We sat in an office, with me in a dentist’s chair. I was wired for sound, wrists strapped to the arms of the chair.

“Congratulations. You’ve got the job.”

“What?”

“Only eleven seconds to pull yourself back to reality. That’s very impressive.”

“What? Who the hell are you?”

“Welcome to the firm.”

He came over and began unsnapping buckles.

“What’s this all about?”

“It’s okay. You passed the test with flying colours.”

All of this was a just little too surreal to me.

“Screw you. I don’t want the job.”

He threw his head back and laughed.

“Don’t worry. You’ll fit right in around here.”

#

And it was true, too.

I’ve been working here for, ah, I don’t know, about twenty-nine years now, and I just love every minute of it.

###


Author's Note: Presently, employers can check out prospective employees on Facebook and Twitter, use photo-search to find their faces on other sites, and check them out in any number of ways. Bearing in mind there will be far fewer 'good' jobs in the future, they can afford to pick and choose. Also, with the market so tight, people will submit willingly to almost any indignity and give up almost any and all privacy in order to get one of those coveted jobs. People have always given up freedom for bread, a sad truth but a truth nevertheless.

In this case, the subject signed a waiver and certain portions of his memories and even his personality have been carefully wiped.

On the other hand, he gets a whopping $11.00 an hour and some small benefits from his employer, including an annual picnic in a local park and a gaily-striped unform with his name on it which he wears as he flips burgers.

At the company picnic, he even gets to watch junior executives with professional amusement as they struggle to cook a burder for him once in awhile.

Remember, you learned it here first.

-Louis