Falling

Dream Big, Kiddo

It was murder, living in rural Kansas - to be 12 years old, surrounded by the whole world, and to have nothing, absolutely nothing to do. Carolyn wore that burden like a weight around her neck, dragging her miserable self to the events of her mudane life... Early in the morning, feeding the chickens, picking out the firewood, inspecting fences, always the same. At least it wasn't winter yet, and she could walk the perimeter of the property. When the snow comes, she knew, she'd be confined to the house, with hours or even days to kill.

"I'm drowning", she thought "drowning in a cup of water". Her father had been a farmer for a long as she could remember, and her mother a botanist - it's easy to see why they were a team... Dad with his shovel and mom with her soil samples - they never had much to say outside of their jobs, and this isolated Carolyn even more so. it was a struggle to sit at the dinner table, her mind racing back and forth, ignoring every other word, and looking for any distraction.

It's a hard life, being 12 years old and alone. But every 34 days, she found solace. Her father put her in the special chair, while her mother fiddled with the diagnotics machine.

"It is now Thursday the 11th, 8:45 pm" her father said. "Program will resume in 12 hours". Her mother flicked a switch, and everything went dim "a 12 hour charge should carry her at least another month" her mother said, her voice elongating into a long deep drone. Dreaming at the speed of light, 12 hours could be several lifetimes. During the recharge she would be reborn, dream of traveling the galaxy, and growing old, of new friends and falling in love - the things a robot never sees in the waking world.

"Jim", the mother said. Her turned from the girl and looked at her without expression. "Jim, when we go home, let's have real children".

Dreaming

I am dreaming. I'm not dreaming something conjured up by my unconcious though. I am having a lucid dream - a dream in which a person knows it is a dream and can direct the dream. Harness the power of the subconcious if you will.

"I'd like to be, under the sea..."

Water is surrounding me. It is warm, comfortable, and safe. I can breath underwater or maybe it's that I don't need to breath at all. No matter, it is a non-essential detail so my dream just skips past that. No one else is here. I'm not lonely, but I want some company.

"Come with me, my love
To the sea, the sea of love "

There is a beautiful woman walking barefooted up above on the surface. She knows I am here, but is content to just walk around and let me watch her. Kicking my feet, I send ripples to the surface that expand in all directions. The surface is churned just enough for her to lose her balance and slip beneath the water. Smiling all the while, her long black hair smooths out along her body. Not a dolphin, but moving gracefully like one, she comes in close and rubs the stubble on top of my head for luck and laughter bubbles from both of us. We race around together until I decide to go ashore. Resting on the moonlit sand it takes some moments to notice she did not arrive with me.

"Walking on a wave she came...."

I am aware of the sound of waves now. Looking out at the water I see her. She is riding into shore on the crest of a wave. Stepping from the wave to the shore, for a moment she is silhouetted against the full moon. Again she smiles and offers me a small jeweled box.

Anything and everything

What's in the box, Jeremy?

Jeremy Gordon had a secret, one that would have gotten him locked away for a very long time if the wrong people ever learned of it.

He kept his secret hidden within another secret: a small room behind a false wall he'd built in his bedroom closet.

Building the room had not been easy; he had to buy all of the supplies in tiny quantities, bit by bit. A stick of lumber here, a small box of nails there. Everything in amounts small enough that he could still legally use cash; anything over twenty dollars and he would have to use his government-issued finance card. And that put him at risk of setting off behavior-pattern alarms; inevitably he would have a visit from a faceless man in a clean suit and a neat haircut who would politely ask him why an accountant needed homebuilding equipment.

And so Jeremy had gathered his seditious supplies, hiding them under a huge pile of old clothes in his attic. When he had enough he began working - quietly! - creating a secret room in the back of his large walk-in closet. He worked late at night using only difficult-to-find hand tools - excessive power usage at odd hours would also attract curiosity from bureaucratic monitors. He used only screws instead of nails so as not to attract attention with the sound of hammering. And in the mornings his back would ache from the long, slow strokes he used to saw his wood to length.

He lived in a state of constant anxiety for the two months he worked on his project. If any officials from Homeland Security had visited he would have been found out immediately; he could think of no way to conceal the construction as it was ongoing. But finally it was finished, and when he had hung the last piece of clothing on the rack that concealed the false wall and checked it with a critical eye, he could feel the stress easing from his back and shoulders.

He waited a week before he met with his contact and told him he was ready. They made a plan to have Jeremy's secret delivered, and the following weekend a truck pulled up in front of Jeremy's house and delivered what appeared to be a government-manufactured widescreen television (two hundred channels of Homeland-approved programming!). The delivery men (who either spoke no english or merely chose not to reply when Jeremy spoke to them) brought the heavy box into his living room and left silently.

Jeremy drew the curtains and dimmed the lights. His heart began pounding as he contemplated the crime he was about to commit. Finally he opened the box and gazed on the contents with a mixture of fear and joy. He reached in and removed one of the offending items and brought it to his face. He breathed in the musty odor of ancient pulpy paper, his eyes wandering over the fading but still garish colors of the magazine's cover, savoring the sound of the title: "Future Fiction". He looked at the piles of magazines in the box - "Fantastic Adventures", " Amazing Stories", "Weird Tales" and dozens of other titles, each volume a tiny treason against the state.

After a moment Jeremy reached back into the box and lifted out a heavy stack of magazines. He began to carry them back into his secret reading room.

Amazing, fantastic, astounding, startling, future planet adventure

"As requested, this is the science fiction and mystery room", he said while opening the door.

"Thanks. Give me some time to look things over", I said.

I entered a the room and the door was pulled shut behind me. The room was circular and about ten feet in diameter. The room had been purpose built to showcase the walls. There was a mixture of recessed and overhead light for perfect viewing and in the center of the room was a recliner on a small dais. The dais had an electric mechanism which was set so that the recliner would experience a very slow three hundred-sixty degree view of the walls. The walls themselves were completely obscured by thousands of science fiction magazine covers. I'm sure it wasn't every cover ever published, but it was a heck of a lot of them covering a time period from about the forties to now. It was so cool. I sat down in the recliner and relaxed back. This was expensive and I wanted to make the most of it, but there was so much to look at.

It took about five minutes for the dais to complete one revolution and by now I had gone around at least nine times without deciding on a cover. I slipped out of the chair thinking that a closer look at the covers would help and it did. This wall section had a nice grouping of the good 'ol "Amazing Stories" and "Fantastic Adventures". This was what I considered the golden age of sci-fi pulp mags. You knew that every story would be replete with lasers, beautiful girls, and heroic success. The door quietly opened behind me and the host walked in.

"Well, Mr. Stevenson" he said, "Have you made a selection?"

"Yeah. I think so. I think I will choose Fantastic Adventures #17. I remember reading it when I was a kid."

"An excellent choice Mr. Stevenson."

"Uh, Mr. Roark?"

"Yes Mr. Stevenson?"

"If I get into any trouble..."

"Now Mr. Stevenson. I've already explained the rules. Once the fantasy is set in motion there is very little I can do to stop it."

"Okay. I'm still ready to do this."

"Very well. Tattoo, take Mr. Stevenson to the changing room."

"Yes Meester Roark. Dees way eef you please."

Up the down staircase

Grandmother's house

Shelley Raye was angry, and when Shelley Raye was angry everyone suffered.

She dunked the cat in the toilet, then set all the milk and eggs out on the back porch in the 98-degree heat. By the time her mother found them there, island-sized chunks floated in the milk. She put a red crayon in the dryer; all her father's white work shirts came out bright pink. She devised a thousand tiny torments to inflict on her family, each one a pointy reminder of her displeasure.

She had not wanted to come to her grandmother's house. She had wanted to stay in her own home where she could play with her own toys, her own friends, and sleep in her own bed. But her parents had told her over and over, in calm and soothing voices, that they had to be out of the house for several weeks while the builders were tearing out part of the house and putting up a new addition. Her grandmother lived halfway across the state, and the drive there had been a barrage of heavy sighs, pouts, and shrieking outbursts. And time had not cooled Shelley Raye's ire; if anything each passing day saw her anger building.

Her father had tried to be stern with her at one point, but he wore the role uncomfortably. Shelley Raye had merely scowled at him the entire duration of his lecture and he eventually went away, shaking his head. Her mother tried to bribe her with trips to the zoo and the ice cream store, with new clothes and candy, but nothing would calm Shelley Raye's fire. And her grandmother simply sat and watched her, with eyes sharp and clear.

Monday morning had been the worst - Shelley had destroyed breakfast for the entire family, and came close to setting her grandmother's house on fire. Her mother had been close to tears when Shelley Raye's grandmother took her aside and handed her the keys to her ancient Cadillac that slept under a cloth in the garage and told her to take the car and "do something nice for herself", and to not come back until dinnertime. Shelley Raye's mother nearly tripped over the mat in her rush to escape.

Shelley Raye was unsure what to make of this development; she had spent little time alone with her grandmother and was uncertain how she would handle her. As she pondered how to gauge the old woman's mettle her grandmother came to her and asked,

"Would you like to see my dollhouse?"

Shelley Raye contemplated this for a moment, then nodded cautiously. If nothing else, she could smash it and reduce the old woman to tears.

Her grandmother led her up the broad staircase to the second floor, then stopped in front of a door Shelley Raye had never seen opened in the weeks she had been there. Her grandmother reached into a pocket in her dress and withdrew a key - and old-timey key of a kind Shelley Raye had only seen in her mother's ancient children's books. It was iron and adorned with curls and loops that seemed to form some kind of elaborate letter, only the shape of the character was so lost in the elaborate whorls and curlicues she could not make out what it might be.

Her grandmother slid the key into the door lock and turned it with a click that was loud, but smooth and oiled. The door opened with a groan and a smell of dust and dry air spilled out into the hallway. Her grandmother started up the steps, then turned to Shelley Raye.

"Be careful up here," she said, and was that a smile trying to tug at the corners of her mouth? Shelley Raye decided then that she would indeed destroy whatever treasure her grandmother intended to show her, but her grandmother continued,

"Some things up here bite."

What? What did she mean by that? There was only one animal in this house: her grandmother's obese siamese that had, until Shelley Raye's arrival, lived a life of indolent sloth and had never, as far as Shelley Raye knew, bitten anything other than kitty chow.

Her curiosity piqued, Shelley Raye followed her grandmother up the creaking steps into the attic. A swath of early morning sunlight cut through a dormer window, reflecting a golden glow into the shadowed corners that crowded with forgotten artifacts. The attic was crowded with old trunks, framed portraits of family members long dead, and several pieces of wooden furniture - dressers and a chest-of-drawers and a wardrobe that reminded Shelley Raye of the doorway to Narnia that her mother had read to her about. All were of a deep burnished wood so dark that Shelley Raye thought for a moment that they were drinking the sunlight.

"Here it is," her grandmother said simply, and Shelley Raye turned to look at the dollhouse.

As soon as she saw it all thoughts of damaging the dollhouse left her.

It sat on the floor, sprawling and majestic. If it had been a real house, it would have been the finest mansion Shelley Raye had ever seen. A broad miniature porch encompassed the structure, held up by exquisitely turned pillars and decorated with a spiderweb filligree. Each window looked to be a tiny work of stained glass, peaked at the top like church arches.

Shelley Raye walked slowly around the dollhouse, drinking in the detail - each gable, every dormer devised with love and cunning.

She reached the corner where a tall octagonal tower stood out from the house, reaching almost to her eye level. At the top of the tower a miniscule balcony ran above four intricately-wrought windows. Shelley Raye started to lean forward then stopped, oddly uncertain, and looked at her grandmother. Her grandmother nodded with that contained smile threatening to break free, and Shelley Raye leaned in to peer through one of the tiny tower windows.

As she had known it would be, the inside was as exquisite as the exterior. She was looking down the shaft of the tower, along the well of a spiral stairway that fell to a polished wooden floor below. Shelley felt almost dizzy as she gazed through the window: the detail on the stairway bannisters was so fine, the individual planks of the hardwood floor so clear, that she suddenly felt as if she were floating in the air above a real house, looking down not two or three feet, but instead a hundred feet to the floor below.

And then Shelley saw something that made her jerk upright and stumble back into a pile of old clothes and hats, and fall to the floor in a tangled heap. Her breath caught in her throat and her heart leaped up to the top of her chest, trying to escape. Shelley Raye stared at the dollhouse for a long moment, then turned to see her grandmother still standing a short ways away, that smile now full and open on her face, her eyes still sharp and clear.

"You saw, didn't you?" her grandmother asked softly.

Shelley nodded numbly.

What she had seen was this: as she had gazed down that stairwell, noting the detail on the tiny carpet and the almost imperceptable grain on the wood, as she had marvelled at the fantastic detail in this most wonderful dollhouse, quite abruptly at the bottom of the stairwell, striding with quiet purpose, a tiny little man had walked across the floor.

Day dreaming

Like a lot of kids William could daydream for hours on end. Unlike most of those kids was the way that William would daydream. I don't mean in what was happening in his dreams; that was all the usual fun stuff with heroes, and flying, or maybe pretending to be an animal. It was literally in the way he would go about it.

Just to give some background, William's parents were exceptionally fond of their local library and spent quite a bit of time there. It was an old library with that old library smell. The floors were wood and warm near the windows where sunlight spilled in and there were nooks to sit in and big tables to spread books out on. It even had a big sign up front reminding people to be quiet. You don't see those signs too much any more. William's parents went so far as to put bumperstickers on their car that said things like "Books, they're the right thing to do and a good way to do it!" and "Support your local library".

Well this library had two sets of winding staircases leading up to the second floor or down to the first depending on which way you were going. The really cool thing was that one of the staircases was tucked away. It was obscured by an odd architectural bend in the building, so very few people ever bothered to use it. So William would slowly climb up one staircase to the second floor and, when no one was looking, would meander to the back staircase and quietly mount the bannister. Slowly, to not to attract attention, he would quietly slide down the long winding pole to the bottom. He never looked down, always up. He didn't do it in order to see where he had been, but more in order not to see anything at all. Seeing often requires reaction or thought and that was no way to start a daydream.

She's got legs, she knows how to use 'em...

Pulpy

I know squat about shoes, but the pair hanging off the toes of the corpse in the bathtub looked expensive. Like, expensive with three zeroes after it. I could feel my stomach start to roil, looking at those shoes - these big-money cases always cause a major pain in my backside. There's always someone threatening to "have your job" or trying to grease your palm to overlook some nasty little habit you dug up. These rich types - they literally make me sick.

I backed out of the bathroom - money or not, this was Manhattan and bathrooms are still tiny - and checked over the bedroom. It wasn't pretty; the super had blundered around the room in a panic trying to find the phone after he discovered the body of his high-rent tenant, and the beat cops who'd showed up first hadn't done much better. They give these guys training on how to handle a crime scene like this, but walking the beat and shaking down street vendors is about the most they can be expected to handle.

I walked to the balcony door and checked it. Locked. Outside I could see a small balcony decorated with dozens of plants and a bunch of trinkets that looked like they probably came from South America somewhere. Probably the kind of stuff that was made by grubby villagers and sold down there for a buck a piece, but up here rich ladies paid hundreds for it.

I was about to turn away when I noticed that one plant had been knocked over and the pot had cracked on the tile floor of the balcony. I unlocked the door and slid it open with a soft rumble and stepped out.

The noise and smell hit me right away. You spend time on the street, you stop noticing after a while but the apartment had top-end air treatment equipment and the contract between the fresh, conditioned air inside and the muggy stench outside brought home again how much of a toilet this town is. No matter how high above it you get, the smell alway reaches you.

I bent to look at the pot - a small thing, maybe a bit larger than a softball. Some kind of cactus or something had been in it, but now it lay on the tile in a sprinkle of dirt. I checked above to see where it had been sitting and found a brown waterstain ring on a low shelf maybe two feet off the floor. Definitely the right size; looked like that was where the pot had been sitting. But the edges of the shelf were raised; it didn't look like you could just accidentally knock anything off it, at least nothing as small as the pot had been.

"Detective?" Walker was standing in the doorway, a memo pad in his hand. "They need you in the hall."

I looked at the pot again. Probably nothing. I stood and followed Walker through the balcony door and turned to slide it shut. As I turned back Walker asked,

"So waddya think? She do herself?"

These guys.

"Well, let me ask you this," I replied. "When was the last time you saw someone eat a bullet, then lay the gun neatly down on the toilet beside the tub?"

Point of view

Point of view is a funny thing. In writing it is a measure of either omniscience or personal view. For me though it is purely visual. I knew something was wrong even before I opened my eyes. I was horizontal and my cheek was pressed against something cold and wet.

My lids cracked open, but focus wasn't part of the deal. Raising my head a little allowed my two wandering eyes to center on what turned out to be an elaborately tiled floor with a helluva lot of something wet on it. From the position of my head and the location of the wetness on my cheek I made a guess that it was spit. The way my head pounded I guess I had been passed out there all night and so reasonably just proceeded to drool all over the floor; not the first time that had happened, but the last time had been in college.

I swiped my cheek against my shoulder to dry it off and then looked up past the floor. Right on eye-level was a shoe. In fact it was a ladies shoe and attached to it was a foot followed by a nicely shaped calf. The end point of the calf was obscured by the fact of it disappearing into a tub and I was still prone on the floor. I could see another not altogether unexpected shoe and it's friends close to the first one. I have to admit to being a bit more interested now and figured on exploring just where these two items led.

Dragging myself on my elbows a bit closer I reached up and with my finger traced the outline of the nearest calf all the way to the tub. Still a bit too far away and too headachy to want to stand up I just grabbed the edge of the tub and pulled myself up. I was not ready for what I saw. She had a face that was the perfect compliment to those perfect calfs. The rest of her though was covered by ice.

"Uh, Miss?" I said.

Her eyes fluttered open, but it was clear that she was in bad shape. Her eyes took in face and then focused on random parts of the room. She gaze stopped at a point somewhere above and behind me. Her face went from relatively blank to a look of horror and her mouth parted soundlessly. She moved one of her arms from beneath the cubes of ice brought up a hand covered in blood. I went from prone inaction to stand up and wide awake in about a half a second. Looking behind me I could see the bathroom mirror with a note written on it in red lipstick.

"Call 911. I have taken one of your kidneys, but don't want you to die. I just need it more than you do."

Oh, shit.

Airport '06

Flight

The old rat behind the bar slams another cracked glass down in front of me and the railroad spike behind my left eye digs a little deeper. I wrap my hands around the glass, pulling it to me and sheltering it even though I'm the only one sitting here - everyone else is scrambling outside, trying to find some way out of this mess. I can hear them squawking like a bunch of frightened geese.

"You pay now!" the bartender croaks, "I leaving! You pay now, you go!"

I pull a twenty out of my shirt pocket and wave it in front of him.

"Go ahead, take off." He eyes the bill hungrily. "But leave the bottle."

Old reflexes make him uninclined to accept, but we both know that a twenty might mean the difference between bribing the right guy and getting a seat on one of the last few crates out of here, or being left behind to face the guerrilas that are closing in on this hilltop village even as we sit here dicking around.

Finally he snatches it out of my hand, thrusts the bottle at me, and rushes out the door, stopping only to grab a weathered bag bulging with clothes and trinkets. He shoulders past Wilmer, who enters with a scowl on his face.

"What the hell are you still doing here? I told you to meet me at the plane - I don't think I can hold your seat much longer! You know how much they're paying out there for a spot? Cash money?" He stands by me, agitating nervously.

I drain the glass in one long pull and lean back in my chair. The headache dulls for a moment, but I know it'll be back - worse.

"Think they'll let me take the bottle?" I ask. He rolls his eyes and turns to fight his way to the plane.

Get back to work!

Finished

Craig stepped back from the canvas at last and pored over the piece. He'd been looking at it for the last twelve days, of course - sometimes from across the room and sometimes from as close as two or three inches, but now he tried to see the whole thing; not just an individual brush stroke, or whether his color choice made the shadows lay convincingly on the surface of the snow, or whether the perspective on a bench was right. Now he tried to see the painting as a complete, finished work.

He stared for long minutes, his eyes at times darting here and there over the surface, other times lingering on a particular area. He even allowed his eyes to unfocus and his vision to blur to see how the overall contrast worked.

Eventually he walked to his sink and dropped his brush into a paint-spattered jar full of muddy thinner, then washed the worst of the paint splotches off his hands. After drying them on a thin, faded hand towel he stepped from his studio into the kitchen, grabbed a beer from the fridge, and walked out onto the back porch where he lowered himself slowly onto the creaking wooden steps. Standing for hours at a time took its toll on his lower back, and he'd been doing it for almost two weeks straight. He cracked his beer open, then lit a cigarette and took a long, deep draw.

He heard the screen door creak open behind him and close softly as Helen joined him. He grinned at that - she was the only person he knew who bothered to close the door gently; everyone else just let the thing slam shut with a crash.

"So is it done?" she asked.

Craig looked out over the trees and hills at the nickel-colored sky.

"I do believe it is." He took a draw of his beer, savoring the cold clean taste.

"Can I see it?"

"Soon," Craig said, "Let's just sit out here a bit. It's not going anywhere."

The crime

"There's no one here", said Luka.

Snow was piled several inches on top of every flat surface in sight; benches, trees, everything. It was cold too, but there wasn't any wind. That helped, but it also left things eerily still. Even the sounds of the city were muted to almost nothing. The gas lamps could only must a pale yellow glow over the park benches. Footprints meandered around the benches where bums had been and gone. No one who was worth anything was out here now though.

"Why the hell should there be anyone here?" Said Benny. He was an unapologetic complainer. There wasn't anything happening in the world that he couldn't find something to gripe about. This time though he had a point.

"Look Luka. Bugsy and Meyer have pulled out of this town; moved on to bigger and better things. You just can't expect stuff to stay the same forever."

"I miss the good old days though. There was something about shaking down the good kids and taking their dough."

"Heh, you are talking about a long time ago. So why the hell are we hanging out here anyway?"

The look on Luka's face was one of deep thought. An impressive feat for someone of his low IQ.

"This is where I first met Meyer Lansky. He believed in me. Thought I would have a place in his organization."

"Luka, you know he meant it. Whatever Meyer may have done in his life he always kept his word."

"Yeah, but he ain't around here anymore."

"We shouldn't be around here either. Let's go shake down some of those good kids you were talking about."

Can't think

I can't think of anything to say and by God I'm gonna state that. You'd think there would be a plethora of things to write about, but sometimes you can sit down at the keyboard with the best of intentions and.... mental silence. Funny, I read a lot of Carlos Castaneda some years ago and the characters in those books talked about "stopping the world"; forcing your mind to complete and utter silence. These guys spent years perfecting their techniques and rituals in order to perform this one act. It took me five minutes and four of those minutes were my laptop booting. I guess that I'm a lousy writer, but a helluva Shaman. Hmm. Where are those peyote buttons....

Get your paws off me you damn dirty,... uh, Romans!

Kansas?

walking

I was walking down a road. Not sure where it was or why I was there, but I was walking sure enough. Both sides are bordered by a nice split-rail fence. You could tell that during a good rain the water would pool in the slight gullies between the fence and the road. It is a hot summer day though with just enough wind to keep it from being too uncomfortable. Once in a while a lazy dust-devil pops up nearby for just long enough to let me know it was there before laying back down on the dusty road for an afternoon nap. Overhead it is mostly blue with a few cotton clouds floating by.

Shading my eyes I can see that up ahead the road winds through a shaded lane and I can hear cicadas buzzing in the branches of the trees. The smell of fresh-cut hay, still drying in the fields next to the road, fills my nose with the most wonderful of scent and tops off the feeling of summer.

I stop to take it all in. All I can hear are the sounds of wind and insects. Not a soul in sight. Walking to the side of the road I snatch up a small stalk of sorghum to chew on, set one foot on the lowest fence railing and lean comfortably. It is a perfect day and one that I'll remember when I'm old.