Category: Fiction (Page 10 of 15)

2015 Halloween Contest Finalist: “The Landlady” by Dara Marquardt

October 30, 2015 / The Furious Gazelle Editors

Dara Marquardt is one of our Halloween writing contest finalists for 2015. We’ll be publishing our contest finalists every day until Halloween, when we’ll announce our contest’s winner.

THE LANDLADY

By Dara Marquardt

It was a gift from across the high seas, that’s what the square of thin paper said as I unwrapped the package. I’ve read that square a hundred times, but have found no fine print about this.

My mom brought it back from her business trip. She was always doing that, bringing me little trinkets; Kokeshi dolls from Japan, Matryoshka nesting dolls from Russia, a delightful gem colored ten-penny carousel toy from Germany that played the most peculiar little tune, a set of shekeres from Kenya filled with bite-sized orange stones. She was always bringing me these far-flung wares. But nothing like this.

It was a spirit house from Thailand. It had golden gables and a Cheshire green roof of clay shingles. It had tiny windows the size of my pinky nail and when I pressed my cheek to the side for a better look, the interior walls were painted with couches and drapes, even a matchstick-sized fireplace for the spirits to warm their toes.

The tag said to put it outside for the spirits to haunt.

So that’s what I did. Continue reading

2015 Halloween Contest Finalist : “Like to Skeletons” by Irene L. Pynn

October 29, 2015 / The Furious Gazelle Editors

Like to Skeletons

By: Irene L. Pynn

There is a tombstone at the far end of the cemetery that never collects moss. Its face never dulls with neglect. Its pebbles never shift in the wind and rain.

You could walk across the dry and tangled lawn – “manicured” by the blind caretaker who lives on site – and stumble over a hundred forgotten stones – tended by Victorian ghosts alone – but never see a single bit of color. Not a vase, not a rose bud, not a potted offering. You wouldn’t even spy a wildflower among the withered loneliness of the graveyard. Nothing grows. All is death and loss.

Except for the tombstone at the far end.

Keep walking, though the obscurity of death will threaten to overpower you, whispering that, yes, someone will mourn you when you die, but only briefly. Very soon after, you will dissolve into nothing, both in form and thought. In time no one will be able to decipher the name on your stone, and then your existence will truly end.

And then your afterlife must begin.

But keep walking. There is a light at the end of this graveyard. Propped against the ancient, cracked wall stands the marker for the only remembered bones we know. It practically glows with the affection it receives, standing out like the comfort of a lighthouse amid the dark confusion of restless waters. There is a keen jealousy that engulfs the forgotten dead when they lie near someone who is still loved by the living. They would drown in their envy if they could die.

The simple stone at the far end reads Heath Alan, loving fiancé. I will see you again in Heaven. Its plot features a flattened patch of grass next to a regularly-renewed supply of the only flowers to be seen on the grounds. We watch each night for the trodden patch to level out. We look each dawn for the flowers to stop coming. We wait. Because the time for all that will come, and when it does, Heath Alan will rise to join us, and he will know what it is to be forgotten.

My people are often angry and afraid – a dangerous combination of emotions, especially in ones who have no need to fear violence. We lose our identities during our underground sleep, and when we finally wake, our headstones are faded, and we can’t remember our own names. Or who buried us. Or when we died.

How we came dead we can often deduce. Our bodies, though they have rotted away to skeletons with scraps of flesh, usually tell the tale. A younger person will almost always display some kind of grievous injury, leaving no need to wonder what happened. An elderly frame is generally assumed to have passed in his sleep. Some in our community debate whether that should be considered a badge of honor or the easy way out. Occasionally one or two bodies arise who were in their prime at death, and they show no signs of physical distress at all. It is as if they died of nothing. Then the whispers begin – was it poison? A cough? Did she drown?

Such morbid questions fill our hours while we wander the cemetery, mysteriously confined to this yard with no guard or explanation. We cannot leave, but we are free to walk the perimeter night and day, as long as we are no longer missed. It is the grief from the world of the living that kept us in restful slumber. Without that we never know rest again.

There may be husbands and wives here together, but they do not know each other or remember the bond. One will rise, and then another, but they look upon each other’s bones with blank, eyeless expressions, and they carry on, seeing, smelling, and thinking only through the magic—or perhaps the curse – that compels us to stand above our own graves.

And yet we can feel love. When I awoke from the earth, I clawed my way to the air and felt in my rotted heart the dull pain of something I had lost. There was a loneliness I could not understand because it had vanished from my mind – but not my soul.

Some things I could sense about myself right away: I was a man. I was probably in my 30s. I was tall and nicely shaped. But my name… my life and death… they were gone.

I clung to my dim echo of loss like a lifeboat. The more I cared about my past the less deceased I truly was. Someone had loved me once, and out of respect for that person, I would not ignore the aching in my soul that told me we had been torn apart too soon.

It was a bullet, I think. The great hole in my skull told me enough about that. But who shot me and why is long lost to time. I inherited an eternity of regret and sorrow with no name.

The living woman comes every morning early with fresh flowers, a cup of coffee, and a book. After taking a steadying breath of the lonely air, she strolls stiffly across the graveyard to the far end, her long, yellow hair blowing in the chill breeze, and we hide, watching. Some of us choose to stay underground during her visits. It’s easier to ignore the pain of our obscurity if we cannot see her face.

Her lovely face. She has the soft features of youth mingled with the sophistication of early adulthood. Her light brown eyes look with sympathy upon all the gravestones she passes. Her blush lips are full and slightly curved upward, like a smiling blossom of love upon her mouth. The cold air pinkens her cheeks, and she brushes a golden lock from her face as she reaches her destination and kneels in the patch of grass, pressing the blades flat. Today the dead man has received a pot of daffodils, tall and yellow and vibrant. They seem to light up the cemetery. The overcast sky parts to let in a little sun.

I wait for her here. I’m always here, hiding just behind the dead tree that hangs its skeleton over her lover’s grave and casts a shadow like spider’s legs across the ground. For several minutes, she sits in silence, and I smell her perfume through the curse that preserved my senses while destroying my body. The scent is sweet and light. It matches her slender shape and creamy skin. I absorb her fragrance until she begins to speak with a voice that is soft and kind.

“Today I think we’ll read poetry, if that’s okay with you?”

I nod, unseen.

“Let’s see…” She sips her coffee and flips through the pages of her book. “Wordsworth?”

Yes, Wordsworth, I whisper, and I listen to her read. It is not to me. She recites a poem of daffodils and loneliness, and I revel in her tone that reflects my own broken heart: she is full of love and gentleness, but there is something damaged in her voice. There is a past full of pain that she cannot forget, just as I live with pain I cannot recall.

I long to move from my hiding place and gather her in my arms. To tell her we all can love again, even those who have lost someone, like her, or have been lost ourselves, like me. I want to pluck a daffodil from her vase and put it at her waist and taste the honey of her lips and build new memories with her.

But I must not. I am not the man I must have been once upon a time. To stagger out at her, all bones and rotting flesh and broken skull, would be to blaspheme the blessing she has brought to the graveyard. My ghastly body would frighten her off, and she would never return.

Her voice is an instrument; the poem is her song. I stand, enraptured, as she performs it tenderly with all the love in her broken heart. Did anyone do this for me in the days following my death? Did I leave behind a suffering maiden who came to my side every day? Did she talk of beauty and sadness and her undying love? If so, I never heard her words. She is lost to me forever – if she existed at all.

A fresh aching swells in my soul. How pitiful that this soft creature has come to share her music with the one person in the cemetery who can’t hear her. He will never hear her again.

I wonder at the power of memory. Her emotion touches not only her lover, who rests peacefully because of her fidelity, but it touches the entire lawn. All around us I see others peering from behind their own headstones, expressions of longing on their wasted, forgotten faces. The sun has broken through and warms our bones as it spotlights on the vase of golden flowers at Heath Alan’s plot.

She takes the poem slowly, carefully, letting us dwell in the rhythmic tune of her voice as if we were adrift in a canoe, gazing lazily up at a clear sky filled with possibilities. She brings us this gift without realizing it. And even the cruelest among us are thankful.

And then, all of a sudden, she is done. She closes her book and wipes away a tear. I start forward instinctively, wanting to catch that tear for her and kiss it from her cheek. She gasps. I freeze, half hidden by the shadow of the spider tree.

She is looking right at me. I have made the most terrible mistake, and I remain motionless, racked with fear that at any second she will stand, screaming, and tear out of this place forever, leaving us all to suffer alone until our bones finally turn to dust.

“Who…” she says, her voice a strangled sound nothing like the tune she shared before.

“Don’t be afraid,” I beg. I stay where I am, praying the shadow conceals my horror.

She stares, uneasy and perplexed. I consider running away, but I can’t leave her.

“Let me see you.”

“I can’t,” I say.

“Why not?”

“Please. I didn’t mean to surprise you.”

Again she scrutinizes the shadows with her light brown eyes, and I watch as her expression turns from worried, to curious, to amazed, to terrified.

She can see me.

She stands, shaking.

“Please,” I say again. “Please don’t.”

I know she will scream. I would scream if I saw a corpse in a graveyard, standing over me like Death himself. I wait for it to happen.

“You –” Her voice is quiet. She hasn’t screamed. This frightened angel has looked at me and has not run away.

“I came to hear your poem,” I say, though I know I have no right to speak to such a beautiful creature. “It was so pretty… I swear I will not bother you. Please forgive me.”

For a few more seconds we look at each other, and then the pain is too great for me to take, and I back away, deeper into the shadow, out of her sight.

“Wait,” she calls, and I stop. I am her servant, though I do not want her to see me again.

She approaches, and I think of the hole in my skull and the little flesh that remains on my bones. I think of my torn clothes nearly decomposed to nothing and stained with the yesterdays that are long absent from my mind. I look at her. Whole, beautiful, alive. Full of happy tomorrows. She wants something from me. I would give her anything in the world.

Her eyes are wide as she accepts the reality of me, and I see that she is not only kind, but brave.

“You live here…” she says, not asking. I wait.

What could she want? For a moment I allow hope to flood my senses, and I wonder whether she has seen in me what I see in her. I want to take her hand in mine, but I resist. I will let her tell me what she wants, and then, if it is as I dream, I will hold her close, and we’ll never be alone again.

Her eyes search my face as if she understands me, as if we are two souls locked in sadness together, and only together can we finally escape. I hold on to these precious seconds as I wait for her words.

And then she speaks. “Do you know Heath?”

Of course. I was a fool. I fall back a step and lower my gaze.

“No.” I imagine the last of my dried blood running fresh and spilling from my heart onto the grass below. “He cannot wake while he is remembered.”

She hesitates and then looks back at his grave.

“Oh,” is her only reply, but it is filled with meaning. That one word brings me to the epicenter of sadness and loss and that breathless moment just after crying has stopped and is about to begin again.

I could run from her now, but I won’t. She is the only source of sunshine in a dark place, and she should learn what her lover will never know.

“You keep him safe,” I explain, and her red eyes fill with hope. She is listening. I go on. “While the living cling to him, he rests in peace. It is only when you forget that he –” I look down at my own yellowed, bony hands, wringing each other in nervousness. “That we…”

She takes a ragged breath. “I see.”

We are silent for a moment, and finally she adds, “I’m sorry.”

I nod as if to say it’s nothing, but it isn’t. It is everything.

Before she leaves, my love bends down to collect her coffee and her book, and she plucks a daffodil from the vase on Heath’s grave. She hands it to me.

The stem rests in my bony palm, and the golden petals cast a soft glow onto my fingers. I look back at her. She smiles weakly, and then she leaves.

“And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.”

2015 Halloween Contest Finalist : “House of Horrors” By Michael Ainaire

October 29, 2015 / The Furious Gazelle Editors

Michael Ainaire is one of our Halloween writing contest finalists for 2015. We’ll be publishing our contest finalists every day until Halloween, when we’ll announce our contest’s winner.

House of Horrors

By Michael Ainaire

The Swamp Man arrived late to the party. It was his fifth year attending and the last few hadn’t been particularly fun, but the year before he and Bloody Mary had made out for a bit after everyone else turned in for the day. There were worse places he could be spending the end of Halloween.

The last kids he had caught trespassing in his swamp had been college age, probably on some sort of dare, and as the last of them had been sinking into the bog he had found two six packs of Oktoberfest sitting in a cooler in the backseat of their car. A good enough gift to bring to the party, he supposed. He would have felt bad mooching off everyone else.

The house was in the woods with a leaning graveyard on one side of the driveway and a thicket of poisonous thorn bushes on the other. He made his way up the steps to the house’s front door, webbed feet slapping on the weathered boards.

Boogeyman, whose house it was, answered his knock.

“Hey!” he exclaimed. Swamp Man had barely opened his mouth to reply when he found himself locked in a tentacle’d hug. “I didn’t think you were going to make it! What is that, Oktoberfest? Come on in and we’ll crack one open!”

Down a twisting corridor, past portraits that turned to follow them, spaced between Hands of Glory mounted on the walls. Swamp Man could hear organ music from a distant room. He looked down at his feet, self-conscious of the black ichor and marshy sludge he trailed behind him.

“The whole gang’s here,” Boogey was saying. “I invited a few from the new crowd—they might show up later. Even reached out to some of the old folks too. Got a soft yes from Baba Yaga and the rest…” he waggled one clawed hand in a see-saw motion. “I think you know everybody.”

The rest of the guests were spread out across a decrepit living room. Frankenstein’s Monster and his Bride were sitting on a loveseat by the window. Mummy was slumped in a corner. The American Werewolf was sitting on a stool by the old piano, rummaging through a plastic trash bag.

A smaller crowd than in years past. Perhaps the rest of them, after so long, had finally begun to tire of this yearly tradition.

“Everybody, you know the Swamp Man,” Boogey said. “Look at the two of us—Boogeyman and Swamp Man. We’re the Man men!” He laughed as if it were his first time telling that joke, and because it was his house and his party, the others laughed as if it were their first time hearing it.

They all felt bad for Boogey, Swamp Man knew. Three hundred years old and still single.

“Swampy!” called the Bride. “Come over here and sit with us.”

Swamp Man shook hands with Frank and gave the Bride a quick kiss on the cheek.

“Did Bloody Mary make it?” he asked.

“Her? No, she had business,” the Bride said. “There are a lot of slumber parties on Halloween. She does well for herself.”

“I wish I was that lucky,” American Werewolf said. “This will be my first halfway decent meal in months.” From his trash bag he produced a long pale leg with a black dress shoe on the end of it. He bit into it with relish; a thin spurt of blood landed on the floor at Swamp Man’s feet.

“How have you been doing, Swampy?” the Bride asked. “Keeping your head above the muck?” She laughed and raised her wine glass to her lips.

“I do okay,” Swamp Man said. He grabbed and Oktoberfest and bit down on the neck of the bottle with his pointed teeth. Beer and shards of glass trickled down his throat. “I try and keep things small, you know. Not spread myself too thin.”

“How’s that?” Frank asked.

“Well, I’ve become a kind of legend in my hometown. It guarantees me good eating around Halloween. And the whole small town thing means some kids are still scared of me. It all depends on who’s telling my story.”

“Yes, and what is your story again?” The Bride asked. “You weren’t always green and scaly were you?”

Swamp Man thought for a moment. “You know? I’ve forgotten.”

“That is the right way to do it,” Vlad said from across the room. Swamp Man looked over, startled. He hadn’t noticed Vlad was here. Tall and willowy in his black cloak, he stood hunched over a pool table that one of the dusty chandeliers had fallen on. Despite this, he was trying to sink one of the striped balls into the far pocket. Three young women hovered around him, stroking his arms, massaging his shoulders.

“What is?” Swamp Man asked him.

“Keep things small. Keep your legend local. Me? Fah!” He gestured theatrically with one arm. “Mine has grown too large. People now make children’s films about me, where I manage a hotel. Can you imagine such a thing?”

On the loveseat, Frank was nodding in agreement. “I hear you. They make us all too cuddly in the end. It’s hard coming back from a reputation like that.”

“What about you, Vlad?” Swamp Man indicated the three women hanging onto the vampire’s bony shoulders. “You seem to be doing alright.”

“I am a hit with the foreign exchange students,” Vlad admitted. “They always insist on taking the castle tour around Halloween. And always they think my costume is very realistic…”

The three girls turned to Swamp Man in unison, red eyes glaring flat and feral. They bared elongated canine teeth when they smiled.
“Man, do you remember when it was no work at all scaring people?” Boogeyman said. “Just the mention of your name and…” He produced a wet sucking sound with one of his mouths. “That was all you needed. They were terrified.”

“Fear tenderizes them,” the Werewolf said, smacking his lips as well. “Gets that nice, fall-off-the-bone flavor.” He took another bite of the leg. The dress shoe bounced and bobbled.

“How hard can you have it, Boogey?” Frank asked. “You’re fear incarnate. No one knows how to make you cuddly.”

“It’s the name,” Boogey said. For the first time at any one of his parties, he actually looked glum. “The stupid name. Kids hear it now and think of big hocks of snot…”

The party rolled on. Swamp Man finished his beers, swallowing the bottles whole when he didn’t feel like drinking them. The place where he sat was growing damp and sticky beneath him. Soon it would be time to head back to where he came from, bide his time until next year.

“—he was the best!” Frank was shouting, his gray face flushed red. “The absolute best! When he was making movies, none of us went hungry. To Boris!”

“To Boris!” echoed the room, and they raised their glasses. The Bride was looking less than happy about it; this had to have been their sixth or seventh toast of the night to the late Mr. Karloff.

“Boogeyman, what happened to the other invitees?” Vlad asked. “I believe you said you invited some of the masked killers? Slenderman?”

Boogey waved a dismissive claw. “They’re not coming. Too good for this crowd.”

“Oh, honey, you know that’s not true…” the Bride began, but Boogey was staring morosely into his drink and didn’t seem to hear.

“They will be lucky to attain a fraction of the longevity we have,” Vlad said. His girls were pawing at him and making soft mewling noises. “Oh, if you insist…” With one fingernail, Vlad opened up a gash in his long pale throat. Blood leaked out, black and thick, and the girls were all over it in an instant, heads darting, tongues lapping greedily.

“The black and white days,” Frank said, more to himself than anyone else. “When the nights were longer and the shadows were deeper.”

“Oh come on, everybody, that’s enough,” the Bride said. “It seems like all we’ve done at these parties the last few years is drink and talk about the old days. There has to be something else.”

Mummy stood up from his corner, mumbled something beneath his bandages, and passed out face first onto the floor.

“Now there’s a sad case,” Boogey said with a shake of his head. “Who do you know who’s scared of him anymore?”

“Tomb robbers, I should think,” The Bride said. Swamp Man could not tell if she was being sarcastic or not.

From beyond the living room window, where the first hints of dawn were already staining the sky, came the sound of footsteps on the driveway. Voices.

“Who could that be?” the Bride asked.

They crowded around the window and peered out. Three kids—teenagers, probably—were making their way up the steps to the door. It was the classic setup: a big guy in a letter jacket. A smaller, slighter boy with glasses—probably the jock’s best friend. And a lithe young girl with tumbling waves of hair and a perky chest. The three of them positively glowed with nostalgia.

“Come on Krissy,” they heard the big guy saying. “No one’s lived here for years. And it’s almost daylight anyway. Come on. You aren’t scared, are you?”

Swamp Man could see everyone’s faces lighting up. The words were music to their ears.

“What do you say, everybody?” Boogeyman asked. He smiled with all his terrible teeth. “Want to see if we’ve still got it?”

2015 Halloween Contest Honorable Mention: “Halloween,” by Jon Mayo

October 28, 2015 / The Furious Gazelle Editors

Jon Mayo is one of our Halloween writing contest finalists for 2015. We’ll be publishing our contest finalists every day until Halloween, when we’ll announce our contest’s winner.

HALLOWEEN

by Jon Mayo

Ali hid under the table and sat on the kitchen floor. She stared at the open doorway that led to the living room, waiting for the sun to creep down and settle the day. The guests began to show up, appearing out of thin air and materializing from head to toe. Their bodies were translucent like vapor and glowed amber against the radiant dusk. Ali looked at the new arrivals and searched for a face she trusted. When a teenage boy made eye contact with her, Ali turned away.

“Ali, come out of there,” said her mother Olivia. Ali pushed herself to the base of the table and grabbed the front legs of the chair in front of her, using it as a shield from anyone who dared to disturb her.

“No!” said Ali.

“I hope she’s not scared of us,” said Grand Aunt Colleen who appeared next to Olivia.

“No, she’s just shy.”

“That is so cute,” said Grand Aunt Colleen. She stooped down to look at Ali. “Hi Ali, don’t you remember me?”

Ali struggled to identify Grand Aunt Colleen; it was hard to identify someone with a see-through face. When Ali recognized the dragonfly hairclip and the plump physique, Ali remembered. Last year, Colleen was the loudest and the rowdiest of the dead relatives. Colleen had consumed a bottle of wine, a bottle of Jack Daniels, three bottles of Guinness and a glass of Long Island Iced Tea. Ali could never forget the smell of Grand Aunt Colleen’s breath. Ali raised an arm and waved at her to say hi.

Olivia walked over to the stove top oven and checked the turkey inside. When Olivia opened the door to take a peek, the aroma escaped and wafted through the kitchen. Mrs. Carmine, who was good friends with Olivia, cooked her potatoes on the stove, frying it with garlic oil and sprinkling it with spices and seasoning. Mrs. Carmine was alive and breathing, and she could see the ghosts too, just like Olivia and Ali.

“You make them potatoes really good Mrs. Carmine,” said Grand Aunt Lisette, hovering between the kitchen table and the stovetop oven. “If only I can smell them right now.”

“You will dearie,” said Mrs. Carmine, “You will soon enough.”

Ali stayed under the table, scanning the guests as they came through the front door and as they appeared out of thin air. The living room was getting crowded, and the living and the dead mingled with one another, catching up with their loved ones and sharing stories about their travels to the country side and the nether planes. The ghosts talked about their adventures as well.

“I was in Anne Hathaway’s body when she accepted her Academy award,” said Grand Aunt Colleen. “I felt so alive and it was electric with all the lights and all the celebrities looking at you. Well, I mean, her.” The living room burst into laughter.

When moonlight entered through the kitchen window, Olivia went back to Ali. She knelt down, looked Ali in the eye and reached for her daughter.

“Come on Ali, the ritual is about to start.”

“Where’s daddy?”

“He’ll be here. Don’t worry sweetie, daddy will be home soon.”

Ali grabbed her mother’s hand and pulled herself from under the table. She immediately clung to her mother’s waist, which made the walk from the kitchen to the living room a balancing act for Olivia. When they crossed the threshold, Ali searched for her father, scanning the room filled with strangers and relatives. When Ali didn’t see him, Ali buried her face in Olivia’s dress.

“Happy Halloween everybody! Family, friends and welcomed guests, we are gathered here tonight for this special occasion,” said Olivia. “Please enjoy your brief stay in the living plane. Have fun and stay safe.”

The ghosts cheered and whistled while the living clapped with their hands. The newly dead turned to the veteran ghosts and asked what was to come.

“Wait and see kid,” said Great Aunt Lisette to the teenage boy.

“Come on sweetie, mommy needs to sing,” said a voice behind Ali and Olivia. Ali turned around and immediately recognized her father. She loosened her arms around her mother and scampered towards him. She wanted to grab him and hug him and drag him to the kitchen for tea, but Ali remembered what her mother had said about touching a ghost and interfering with their space. Ali made that mistake last year when she passed through a crowd of ghosts – she had nightmares for weeks. Like a good girl, Ali placed her hands behind her back and stood next to her father.

Olivia smiled to her husband and turned to her audience. She took a deep breath and sang. The words were not in English nor were they in Latin. No one knew what was said or knew what it was about. But Olivia sang. The high notes were perfect, and she sustained them flawlessly like a professional. She belted the low notes that came out strong and vicious. Ali listened and felt the energies emanating from her father and from the ghosts that filled the room. The hairs on her nape stood. The living listened, mesmerized by the song as if the melody touched their souls.

The ghosts slowly transformed into flesh, beginning from the head and down to their toes. The clothes they had worn before their deaths materialized with their temporary bodies. As soon as they inhaled the aroma from the kitchen, they dropped from the air and landed on the floor. Olivia finished her song, and everyone applauded until their palms were red. Olivia smiled and curtsied to her audience. She turned around and embraced her husband, kissing him in the lips and sharing a tear to his warm cheek. Continue reading

2015 Halloween Contest Honorable Mention: “Accumulation” by Josh Sczykutowicz

October 28, 2015 / The Furious Gazelle Editors

Josh Sczykutowicz is one of our Halloween writing contest finalists for 2015. We’ll be publishing our contest finalists every day until Halloween, when we’ll announce our contest’s winner.

Accumulation

By Josh Sczykutowicz

The darkness spread out of me, something deeper than anything I had ever dreamt before. I had fallen into sleep’s jaws like that of some ancient predator searching through the blackest depths of the ocean before, something seeking anything that might sate its leviathan appetite once again, the sensation of fullness a dull memory that had faded, much like its eyes, as eons had stretched forward and backward, time eternal forevermore. But sleep had never been as deep as this, and I knew now that I was neither dreaming nor awake. There was a place between both realms, that of collective memory and that of accumulation, and in it I now stood.

Something had crawled out of my mouth, climbing up my throat, claws digging into soft red flesh within. The familiar taste of blood trickled into my stomach. It moved upward as I wrenched forward and crumpled like paper, clutching at the throat that bulged, skin stretching in directions it was never meant to go. Tears filled my eyes and I could not breathe, everything blocked as I choked and coughed and finally it came forth. It was something small; something bundled up, coated in saliva and bile like crude amniotic fluid. Warm rain fell onto the skin of neck and trickled down hair clumping in damp solidarity. The object moved, unfurled, rain drops on its head making black eyes rimmed in maroon red blink open, mouth stretching, teeth showing, soft pink mouth vulnerable, shaking around on the dark pavement of this road. The road seemed to stretch, not just backward and forward, but to my left and to my right eternal. I looked up at the bleeding moon and saw its reflection on the ground in a puddle beginning to form, potholes and cracks filling like bottles beneath faucets to be drunk by something greater than it would ever know. Continue reading

“A Foreign Feeling,” by Josh Sczykutowicz

September 29, 2015 / The Furious Gazelle Editors

What you thought was the future disappears, all faith and belief vanishing like these swirls of smoke that roll into the distance and fade out. You knew so deeply the things that would happen, expected them like you expect the sun to rise tomorrow, with zero doubt, with zero uncertainty.

There are things you have always known would happen and these were some of them: the sun would rise and set, clouds would bring rain, air would enter your lungs if only you inhaled, water would enter if you were submerged, drowning, and you were going to get married soon. Your girlfriend was going to become your wife within the next year, no question, no doubt, just a fact of life. It was inevitable. None of your friends ever spoke any different; none of your family ever had a worrying word to share. And, if they did, they kept it silent, too sorry for you to speak out.

Everything from there on would mean something, would incorporate her into it. Anything you would ever do or anywhere you would ever go would have her injected into the very veins of these events like medicine. You have never believed in much but you believed in this, and now that belief is gone. And what does one do in a crisis of belief? How do you rebuild from this? How do you find the desire to want to? You have spent so long knowing in your heart that you would have this to count on, and now you do not, and what does that say about you? How much else might you believe in that is worth nothing? When do plans and certainties become lies and fantasies?

But she isn’t in love with you anymore and you are going to face this, you are going to suffer through the long empty spaces and pass through the hallways drained of life, the white walls looking no longer clean and bright but empty and clinical, because there are no other options.

“Doctors,” a short story by Linda Boroff

September 8, 2015 / The Furious Gazelle Editors

Doctors

by Linda Boroff

Berkeley attracted fugitives, Katie was beginning to realize, whether from the law, from failed relationships, or from the person one had once been. A young couple, Brigit and Tony, had just moved into the flat across the hall in the gray Victorian where Katie lived with her roommate, Cherie. Cherie believed in getting to know one’s neighbors, so she had invited Brigit and Tony to dinner. In the course of their conversation, Katie learned that Tony had done prison time in Georgia for robbery, burglary and car theft, and that Brigit had run away from her studies at Georgia State with this prize catch.

Brigit wore a short black skirt, scuffed loafers and no hose, revealing perfect legs, a grimy band-aid clinging to one knee. Though her ratty blue angora sweater had come from a Salvation Army bin, it did not conceal the fact that God had paid close attention when he put her together.

Tony was about thirty, a tall, lanky blond redneck with amused, larcenous blue eyes, an immaculate dresser and pathological liar who had also developed the bad habit of bigamy. For Tony, the law just kept breaking like a rotten shoelace. Neither Tony nor Brigit had any source of income, but masterful shoplifting kept them well provisioned.

At sixteen, Katie was on her own for the first time. Two months ago, she had arrived in Berkeley on a busload of Vietnam antiwar protestors from Santa Monica. When she called home to announce that she was staying there, her mother had not tried to dissuade her. Katie had joined a crowd at school that drank, used drugs, and had sex. She was truant and had been caught forging attendance excuses. Time and again, she stayed out all night. Her best friend, Erin, carried on with a married man. After school, Katie and Erin would get into Erin’s alcoholic mother’s vodka and call up boys and men, even teachers. Like her absent, errant father, Katie was tall and blue-eyed, curly-haired, and argumentative. The very sight of her seemed to infuriate her mother.

From day one, Berkeley had burst upon Katie, overwhelming and embracing her. This was not “another Berkeley,” or “a little Berkeley.” This was the real thing. Standing before Sproul Hall in a crowd of protesters, Katie had looked up the stairs to its Greek colonnades with a euphoric premonition that her life was at last beginning.

The Miracle Maker, by David Scheier

September 4, 2015 / The Furious Gazelle Editors

The Miracle Maker

by David Scheier

I knew better than to go home with him, but he juggled planets, made arm-length dragon blood trees sprout from barstools and drank sun-fire instead of vodka, which shouldn’t impress me but did.

So how could I refuse? His head contained a wild ocean in place of his hair – a charming whirlpool at the chin that spun violently with thunder and lightning. Naturally, his eyes too, a hint of turquoise electric bolts cracking briefly in his pupils as he downed shot after shot of nuclear energy, pulled me in. He was a god all right, or part god, half Olympian bar-hopper and half culinary art school dropout.

“Sweet thang,” he said rolling bracelets of asteroids from wrist to elbow. “How ‘bout old Uncle buys you a drink?” I rolled my eyes. “All the drinks,” he added and my eyes rolled again. “Baby, I’ll turn the bartender into a mango martini, or how about a dirty Manhattan?” My eyes focused on him. He pointed his finger, the bartender swirled, body widened, and became transparent and hollowed out to a glass filled with liquid. The dirty Manhattan-tender sloshed and spun before breaking on the hardwood floor. “His name was Michael.” The god looked pensively at his finger. “And it was his time.” He raised his hands, towers of mixed drinks, canned beers, low-ball dancers and highball serenades lined the bar, teleported from the netherworld and into the hands of barflies. “Drinks on me, everybody.”

“Datz where it’s at!” shouted a blond fluffy-haired man with his shirt unbuttoned down to his navel. The god turned to me, fingers in the shape of a gun.

Oh god, he’s going to turn me into a vodka-tonic, I thought. He ran his fingers along my head, through my hair, and above my ears. I wanted to tell him how inappropriate this was: his pistol fingers, flipping my hair, and turning people into drinks.

“Susan, it’s okay Susan, I want to make you feel good.” His smile sincere, teeth chimed under the blue and purple tavern lights. “Now you’re thinking, how did I know your name?” He pulled me close using atoms, gently touched my shoulders. The tavern walls melted and transformed to an evening sky, light fixtures evaporated into the moon and street lights and finally my bedroom, yes, I was smashed. He kissed me, and kissed me some more, he kisses me aggressively, and kissing me still – when did this happen, the change from past to present tense in my story?

“Don’t worry about it Susan, we can jump time and all other narrative techniques.”

“My name isn’t Susan,” I told him. He smiled and undressed me with the touch of a finger and bite of his lip. He, too, bare now, skin, the olive smoothness of a Mediterranean dolphin. My hands possessed, caress his muscle, chiseled, and oh, god-sexy chest and arms. Just tonight, I tell myself. He winks at me. I won’t go alone to bars again. We make love for eons, looped in some out worldly time. He sets the mood with strategically placed pinhole stars, comets riding along the walls of my room and galaxies colliding and forming in the wake of our sex. The matter of space changed color, purple, blue, then a lighter shade of purple, and a then darker shade of blue. We started with headstand sex, our bodies melted to the stuff lava lamps are made of, I turned to clay and cracked when penetrated by his sex, and finally, invisible sex moving fast into the future while floating in this contained space of orbiting orange, and bustling blue stars around marble suns.

And it was over. I wake alone. My body aching from the stillness of time and my floor covered with tiny holes and ash from the scattered collections of stars and suns. A black hole still spins by my dresser, getting larger as it eats dust, dirty cloths and the paint off the walls.

*************

David Scheier is writer and illustrator who holds a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing from the University of Texas at El Paso and a Masters of Fine Arts in Writing from the School of Art Institute of Chicago. Currently, he teaches at Harold Washington City College. Both his illustrated and written work have appeared in various publications including the following: The State, Spork Press, BlazeVOX, OVS, Front Porch Journal, Rio Grande Review, Petrichor Machine, Gather Kindling, Meekling Press,and Ginger Piglet. Visit him online at society6.com/davidscheier.com.

“(un)Bridled,” a short story by Meghan Ferrari

August 7, 2015 / The Furious Gazelle Editors

(un)Bridled

“Oh Grace, you didn’t wear that out to the barn again, did you?”

Grace removed her mud-caked riding boots, and dropped them to the floor.

“Does it matter?” she replied, picking up the lace train, and heading towards the kitchen.

Grace’s mom picked up her knitting needles and held them still, like a conductor about to cue her orchestra, opened her mouth, then closed it, and returned her attention to the infinity scarf she’d be mending in her lap.

“It’s on the table,” she called to her daughter, whose wide eyes she knew were presently scanning the kitchen counters.

Grace grabbed the neatly creased crossword, and made her way up the worn oak stairs and around the corner, to the room at the end of the hall, where the floral print paper had begun to peel.

Closing her door, she grabbed the scalloped veil that hung past her shoulders, and like the wings of a moth, fluttered the soft tulle around her.

Breathing a sigh of relief, Grace dropped into the window seat, and pressed her back into the splintered woodwork. She removed the HB pencil that had been holding her unruly hair in place, and unfolding the crossword on her lap, she exhaled deeply.

Lately, Grace had been living for the crossword. She liked being presented with a puzzle, and knowing that a solution existed – regardless of how long it took her to find. She liked the way the tiny, black type attracted her eyes, the bold, black squares invited her pencil, and the way The Aurora Era turned her white wedding dress grey.

Grace began with across, and felt her muscles unwind with each word she solved. Dragging a smug lead line through the last clue, she pressed the nub of the eraser to her forehead, leaned her head sideways against the cool frame, and gazed down at the farm below, freshly ploughed, with bales of hay forming a golden border, fifty acres from her feet. The mid-day sun cast Grace in a spotlight, and she lowered her green eyes to the gravel drive, spotting the dusty, red Dodge, with the PRO-LIFE, PRO-FAMILY, PRO-FAITH sticker on its bumper. A feeling of youthfulness flooded over her.

Grace rose from the window seat, dropped her veil into the pillow’s indentation, a now receding memory of her presence, and darted out of her bedroom, down the stairs, and out the back door.

“Daniel,” she called, brightness in her voice, as she approached the fence.

“Gracie,” Daniel turned, wind chapped lips breaking into an easy smile at the sight of his younger sister, she all jewel tones and dimmed sparkle, her auburn hair catching the last ray of sun.

“It’s been a month of this…” His smile waned as he bit his lip, and moved his eyes downward, to the bottom of her dress, where the fresh manure bruised the white lace brown.

“I’m fine,” Grace breathed, looking back towards the truck. “Where’s Emily?” Grace looked for Daniel’s contented wife, but could not spot her.

“She’s with Oliver. She was pickling our latest crop of cucumbers when the day care called – he’s come down with a bug. She’s at the clinic…” The blackberry in his belt buzzed, and his words, like her thoughts of late, trailed off, as he removed it from the sturdy clip on his leather belt, and peered into its scratched screen.

“That’s Em now,” he said, eyes transfixed, calloused thumbs crafting a response.

Grace could feel the complexity of their lives in the intricate knot forming in her stomach, and the monotony of their marriage threatened to suffocate her.

“Can I help you?” Grace asked, looking at the hand saw at Daniel’s feet, hoping to change the course of conversation.

Daniel looked at his sister, wrapping her navy silk sash round and round her forefinger.

“Yeah,” he replied slowly, nodding thoughtfully. “I have to head in to have a look at Mom’s laptop…will you feed the chickens for me?”

Grace watched Daniel walk towards the house, his burgundy flannel billowing in the wind. Seeing Daniel disappear inside, she strolled to the cedar rail fence, undid her sash, tied the satin around the steel, and opened the gate, releasing their six cows to graze in the pasture. Leaving the gate unlatched, she strolled to the red doors, below “Liberty Farms”, spelled out in large white letters. Grace entered the barn, and looked up at the long boards, her eyes having fallen habitually on the three cracks that let the sunlight in.

“Bonjour, mes amies,” she said to the chickens, who had scurried to the edges of their enclosure to greet her. She grabbed the dented bucket of feed lying patiently next to the door, and sprinkled the seeds high above the chickens, as if they were brides and grooms.

She hadn’t made it to that part of the day – couldn’t have imagined rice raining down on her, when she felt as though she were already drowning. Holding the bucket of feed in both hands, like a bouquet, she walked over to the paddock: Right foot, together. Left foot, together. The walk down the aisle she had endured. Although in a new chambray suit that Mom had selected from Moore’s, she envisioned her Dad in his faded coveralls, and black rubber boots, and herself as one of his cattle, being led with a delusive gentleness to her slaughter. With each step towards Adam, she was taking a step away, from her independence, her identity.

The priest to her left, Adam before her, and her audience to her right, she tried to focus on her groom’s face – on the scar below his left brow, the one he’d received when he’d tried to sell her on the city – when they’d biked along the Queen’s Quay, and a fallen birch branch caused him to lose balance – but images of caged chicks and penned piglets pervaded her mind.

She had dropped her slim bouquet of sunflowers, once so full of life, now uprooted, and wilting before her eyes. She tucked a rogue strand of hair behind her ear, and calmly turned and strode back down the long, white aisle, bound by blue chairs.

Once she was past the bewildered guests and into the cornfield, she began to run. The husks pulled at her hair, and the stalks scratched at her skin, but this was a maze she knew her way through. She made a sharp left, and then a quick right, and she was soon on the shadowed path that led directly out of the maze; the one her father had carved for the panicked or beleaguered urbanites, drunk on country air.

The sound of her chipped nails scratching the bottom of the now empty tin bucket pulled her back into the barn.

“Shh…” she whispered to the chicks, realizing she had fed them both their lunch and dinner.

Crouching, Grace placed the pail by the pen, and noticed a rusty nail jutting from the coop. She fingered it thoughtfully, contemplating the time it had taken for the shiny steel to corrode. Her right hand reached for her left, and with a simple twist and pull, she removed her solitaire ring, and placed it on the nail’s head. Standing up, Grace made her way across the plank floors, away from her diamond, and towards her eternal gem, feeling her heart enliven.

“My love,” she said, unlatching Ruby’s stall. The white Arabian threw back its ears and whinnied a greeting. She made her way towards him, her body lightening with each step.

“I’ve missed you,” Grace cooed, stroking Ruby’s coarse mane. The horse nuzzled her palm sweetly, and Grace sighed in contentment.

“I’m yours,” she said, and began her methodical grooming process.

Grace herself had been methodically groomed that weighted morning.

She and her three bridesmaids had gathered in her guestroom, formerly her art studio, now unrecognizable, after the engagement had touched down on their farm. Linen napkins, dish towels, and dessert plates were stacked on her oil canvases, shrouding her ambition, and freshly pressed dresses hung from the curtain rod, blocking all natural light. Much like Ruby, she had been readied for show: Her long hair curled, her Mac makeup applied, and her nails, bitten down to the quick, polished.

Grace grabbed a curry comb and began to rub Ruby down in smooth, sweeping motions. Ruby’s muscles quivered, delighted at the soft touch. Systematically she lifted each of Ruby’s hoofs and delicately removed the dirt and debris. Finally, she took the mane comb and removed the tangles, leaving her hair with a satiny sheen.

From its hook, Grace grabbed the black, leather saddle, and cinched it around Ruby’s waist. Stepping back, she reached her right arm behind her and pinched the top of her dress. She twisted her left arm back, and unzipped the zipper, letting it cascade, like a feather, fallen, to the black earth below.

Stepping over her lifeless gown, Grace placed one boot into the stirrup and hoisted herself onto Ruby’s back. Grabbing the reins, she gently prodded Ruby on both sides, and eased her towards the barn door. She could feel the friendly wind on her face, and Ruby’s powerful muscles between her thighs.

“Do you want to run, Ruby?”

Leaning forward, she unfolded Ruby’s ear, and with certainty, whispered, “I do.”

*********

Meghan Ferrari lives in Newmarket, ON, and studied English Language and Literature at Queen’s University. She completed her Masters in Social Justice Education at The University of Toronto, and presently shares her passion for creative writing with her students, as an English Teacher for the York Catholic District School Board.

“Worth Noting,” a short story by Scott MacAulay

July 31, 2015 / The Furious Gazelle Editors

Worth Noting

By Scott MacAulay

A woman at St. Vincent de Paul knows me. I’ve been going to the store since late January, since spring wasn’t too far off and I could start to think about sleeping out of doors again, in a quiet spot, in a spot where it gets dark because the sun goes down, not because the rules say it’s time for lights out. I’ve been giving her twenty dollars a month in case a good sleeping bag comes in and she can put my name on it and set it aside for me. She said I could trust her. Her name is Virginia. It’s a wonderful name. It’s wholesome. It makes me think she lives in house with a large, welcoming veranda—a two-story house with rose-coloured wooden shingles and chestnut trees in the yard. Virginia is great about my plan in another way, too. She puts aside too imperfect donations of cutlery, pots, dishes—stuff that wouldn’t make it to the sales floor. She puts them in a box with her name on it, told the other staff she’s gathering some things for her little niece to play with in her backyard playhouse. They’re for me, of course. When she offered to help, I already had a note in my pocket which listed some things I’d need.

lamp, chair, futon mattress, big

pot for spaghetti, fry pan, forks and

knives and things, a dish towel

Virginia is my age, fifty. Both of us fifty. Imagine. She’s got long, thin brown hair that’s usually pretty tangled. She wears peasant skirts and knee-high knitted slippers (or socks)—I’m not sure what they are—with leather soles, long-sleeve crew-neck shirts and turtlenecks underneath. Her face is not old, not fifty. It is narrow and smooth, no wrinkles, just hints of freckles. Her eyes are tawny. If I could love again, it would be her I’d choose.

But that’s just nonsense. Love is not on my mind. My mind is busy, busy, busy with other things. I note the things that are important to me, using stubby pencils and little squares of paper from the library. Getting to Shepherds, the Mission, St. Luke’s, St. Joe’s on time for free meals, buying my tobacco in bulk at the first of the month when my cheque comes in, before I start to drink, and protecting it from people who would steal it or would reduce it faster than you’d think by borrowing a smoke every second day. (Who borrows a smoke?

Lots of borrowers at the Cross Mission.

Monday Joe, Shin Bone, Susie are the worst.

You can’t return it except for the butt, I suppose. It’s not like a lighter.) I write down times, places, warnings to myself, and other really important things I should remember.

Virginia is lonely Be nice to her. She

told you she never married. Her niece is

named after her, Virginia.

I look at my notes at least once a week, to update them, to make sure they are current; my pockets are stuffed.

I make notes to myself. I forget things

if I don’t. I’m a note-maker. I mock notes.

I’m a note-mocker. Oh, I don’t know what

I am. I do like notes, though. I like them

so much I could lick them. That wouldn’t

be good, however. The writing would get

smudged and I’d forget what I noted. I’m

glad I wrote this down.

I bunk in shelters now. After roaming free this coming summer, I think I’ll get my own room again, so I’m going to a lot of places, dropping in on people I know or asking people I meet hanging around the streets or in the parks if I can take a look at their places. Not everyone obliges, scared I’m strange or I might roll them. All I want is to be sure I get a place with NO bedbugs. There are no guarantees, but if you find somewhere where people have been living for a while, no huge turnover, and the shared bathroom has lots of toilet paper and the shared kitchen has a clean pot on the stove, you might take the chance.

Shelters are a necessity. There aren’t any good rooms around. I’d freeze to death outside at night. Come mid-spring and for most of the summer, till the third week of August or so, I’ll use them only for the really rainy nights. There’ll be some decent rooms open by then, especially ones on the upper floors. People will have abandoned them, been driven out by the heat that’s built up over the previous three months and the cockroaches and other creatures that invade from garbage rotting along foundation walls, up through cracks in concrete and humidity dampened ancient drywall, through radiators and open windows without screens. (I can take these little guys, just NOT the bedbugs.) But these late summer fleers from upper floors are short-sighted. However endless and godless the heat seems, minus 30 degrees comes too quickly to Ottawa. Well before you can find a decent winter coat that fits and has no rips, no stains, it seems equally endless and godless. I’ve noted it in my list of things worth noting.

I’ll probably be sleeping close to some of the rooming houses that will have the fleers fleeing. My favourite place is Dundonald Park because it’s small, only one small city block square, manageable—you can see who comes and goes, who lingers. Its southwest corner is dark and the grass around the benches there is soft and clean.

I don’t drink too much when it’s hot because I get dehydrated. And I don’t drink too much when I sleep outside: I need to be alert. I should be able to save a lot of the little bit of social assistance they give to people with no fixed address. I’ll still get around to free places to eat. When I get a room, I’ll do it up well and be ready for fall and winter to do their cold and blowy business—FIRST I need a sleeping bag from Virginia at St. Vincent de Paul.

I want a good one, good to minus 20, at least, so I can start sleeping out as soon as possible. I won’t be sleeping out in minus 20, but it can get chilly at night in late April and in May, even early June sometimes. I want one with lots of room up top so I don’t feel trapped, and tapered as it goes down with lots of space beyond my feet for a thermos or cans of beer, spare socks, my watch, my glasses case, tobacco.

This day at St. Vincent de Paul, Virginia says, “Guess what, Mark.”

“What?”

“No, close your eyes. No, open them. You’ll have to follow me.”

“I’m no mind reader, but I’m guessing this has to do with a sleeping bag.”

“Shhh!”

Virginia’s peasant skirt is decorated with peacocks, crazy blues and greens. From grades seven to nine in Sydney, Nova Scotia, I watched a peacock and a peahen in the small park behind my junior high school. They had a small, red wooden shelter in their enclosure for rain, I guess, or for privacy. I don’t know where they went every winter. They couldn’t fly.

Virginia is excited. She’s leading me through the “Employees Only” door and down white concrete stairs, badly chipped and in need of a coat of paint. The ceilings are low. The basement is full of donated items from books to clothes to dishes to kitchen utensils, big things like mattresses and sofa combinations, and a special section for furniture that had been upstairs but just wasn’t selling and will now have to go to a landfill. It’s marked “DISPOSE”. This is where she leads me.

“Sit down, Mark.”

I sit on a scuffed-up plastic patio chair that wobbles.

“NOW close your eyes.” Virginia is standing behind a white, velour sofa, which appears to have urine stains on its cushions.

I do as I am told as she ducks behind the sofa and counts dramatically to three.

“LOOK! Tah Dah! This is yours! It came in three days ago with your name on it, literally.”

She is holding a bulky, rolled-up bundle, wrapped in clear plastic. “A sleeping bag, a really, really good one. We had something like it two years ago and the manager priced it at $120.” Virginia seems shy now that the surprise is over. If I could love again, it would be her I’d choose.

“You’ve got what, sixty dollars of mine? Can you hold the bag a while longer? Maybe the manager will let it go for eighty or something.”

“You don’t understand. Some woman came in and said she was putting an end to her boyfriend Mark’s camping expeditions. That was his name. It’s sewn in the bag. The woman said camping was an excuse for boozing, maybe a whore or two with his buddies, pardon my language. I did the inspection and reported the sleeping bag was damaged, a rip, and a zipper that needed replacement. I wrapped it up and put it here for you. Dump run is next week.”

I am grateful, but feel awkward. “Virginia, you’re nice, but I don’t’ need a ripped bag without a zipper. I’ll be sleeping out…”

“Don’t be a goofus, Mark. The sleeping bag is fine. Practically brand new, I’m telling you. You take it! You come to the basement exit an hour after closing time. Your money is wrapped in the sleeping bag.”

“You’re giving it to me. And my money?”

“It is marked for disposal.”

“Yeah, but you’re all churchy and everything aren’t you.”

“Look, some college kid would’ve grabbed it in a snap and used it for god knows what. You don’t take things now and then?”

“Well, I like to be anonymous about it.”

“Well, consider us both anonymous about it.”

I arrive at the basement door at the right time. It is at the back of St. Vincent de Paul and I feel like a sneak because all around me it is quiet and Virginia is doing something wrong, for me. And I know it. Light from the yellow bulb above the door casts my shadow and makes me want to confess, but I knock. She is waiting there, on the other side: With one knock the door opens and I’m inside. My eyes cannot adjust. It is too dark, though a candle burns a short distance behind her.

Virginia puts a finger to her lips, then a hand over my mouth.

“Shhh,” she says.

She lowers her finger, then lowers her hand.

Soon I am naked.

When you get a room, get the box of

things Virginia put aside for you.

Remember that she loved you in your new sleeping

bag on a sofa in the basement of St. Vincent de Paul.

**********

Scott MacAulay is a former educator and community development worker. He now devotes his time to learning the art and craft of good story telling. He resides in Ottawa, Canada.