broken

I broke my face the other day. I don’t know how it happened. I hung it up by my bathroom mirror like always–turned away, of course, so I don’t have to stare at myself–and then the next thing I knew, I was coming home again and standing in the middle of a pile of shattered ceramic.

I fit the jigsaw together and tried superglue. New cracks appeared, and it broke again. I tried tape. The tape fell off. At last I took it to a repair shop. The man quoted me an outrageous sum and offered to let me pay in three easy installments and one hard one. I took my face home and vowed to fix it myself.

My face is still broken to this day.

friends

There is a cup of something hot bubbling at her elbow and an excess of crumbs scattered across the table. There are dirty clothes draped over the armchairs and rain drooling down the window.

Typical Monday morning.

The crumbs hop onto the floor when she glares at them, then skitter across linoleum and hide under the mothering sleeves or arm-empty jackets. The rain leers from outside, wishing it could join in.

She stands to open a window. Raindrops fly in and huddle with the crumbs. They all look so friendly together, rain and crumbs and sleeves, that she smiles. Would her drink like to join as well? Yes, it would very much.

She pours the hot liquid over the clothes and smiles again to see how eagerly they bond.

“What are you doing?” Emma swoops into the room, gathers up the friends, and flings them into the washing machine. “And why are the windows open? Look at this, mother, she’s made a mess of things again. I told you she needs to be watched all the time. The doctor said not to leave her alone.”

She listens to Emma and mother tsking and thinks of how much fun the new friends will have riding their rollercoaster.

disease

The blisters first appeared on her feet, and it was easy to ignore them. She explained them away with a wry smile and an insincere promise to get better shoes, ones that wouldn’t rub the skin from her heels and toes.

Then they spread upwards, to her legs, and that was easy too: mosquito bites, that she scratched until they broke and bled and finally scarred over in purple blotches.

No one saw her stomach. She never wore swimsuits or harem tops.

Then her arms, and she said something about mosquitoes again, but people were beginning to give her strange looks. They circled around her rather than pass right by. Children dared each other to see who came the closest before they lost their nerve and darted away, shrieking in gleeful terror.

When at last they reached her face, she tried to laugh about growth spurts and bad acne, but no one believed her. Makeup helped a little–it covered up the sores and all you could see was where the powder caked around them in little ridge–but no one dared get close to her at all.

She died alone.

anna dearest

Anna is a waitress. She has been a waitress for fifteen years now, ever since she walked out of the front door with her mother’s sock drawer money in her pocket and a backpack of clothes in her hand. She walked twenty-two miles in three days, then begged a drink of water from the lady at the gas station diner. “Honey, you look beat,” the woman said, her red hair teased into a fantastic beehive and stuck full of pins. “Why don’t you stay here a couple of days?”

And that is exactly what she did, for fifteen years. Anna loves waitressing. Give the other girls their dreams of being lawyers and doctors, artists and rich men’s toys. Even on the bad days she knows she does not want anything else in life.

Then, one day, her parents walk in. Anna sees them first and spends the next five minutes heaving into the cracked porcelain toilet. At last she walks out, trembling. What will she say? What will they say? She can imagine their faces as they recognize her, changing from incomprehension to sudden startling enlightment, then–will they weep, go splotchy, shut down?

A pot roast special and side salad with Ranch dressing. A bacon cheeseburger. Side of fries. Two Cokes. They order without interest. Anna jots them down, hand shaking so hard the pen goes all over the paper. She slams the order down on the counter and runs outside.

It takes her two tries to light the cigarette. She smokes it all the way down to a stub, then lights another off the last glowing ember. She chain-smokes all the way through her pack.

The bell dings twice. Her order. She crushes the last cigarette under her shoe and goes in.

a godly game of poker

Thor hurried through the streets, turning his collar up against the biting winds. He pushed open the door without knocking and walked into the room, where all the others already sat around the table, chips at their elbows. They looked up as he shook off his coat and sat.

“You’re late.” Odin looked up from shuffling his cards and scowled.

“Sorry. Sif wanted something.”

“No matter. You’re here now.” They pulled their chairs up, and Odin began dealing out cards.

“What are we betting on today?”

Tyr checked the scorecard. “Christopher William Eckersberg. 34 years old, CPA. Unmarried, no children, no girlfriend. No boyfriend either,” he added, to general laughter. “What are the bets?”

“Seventy-two.”

“Fifty.”

“Eighty-nine.”

“Ninety-nine.” This from Balder, ever the optimist.

Odin laughed. “So be it.” They threw their chips out, then sat down to play. A lifetime passed. Christopher William Eckersberg married. Tyr dropped out. The happy couple had one child, then another in quick succession. Frigg added to the pot, as did Balder, Odin, and Thor. Tyr hesitated, then folded. Grandchildren now. Only Odin and Thor remained.

They locked eyes across the table, and Odin smiled. “This is your last chance to drop out, Thor.” Without looking, he pushed his entire pile of chips forward.

Thor smiled as well. “I can take that.” All in. The rest of the assembled players leaned forward, eyes shining eagerly. They watched the rest of Christopher William Eckersberg’s life together, betting on his death.

musings of a teenage boor

It’s a little hard watching them together and knowing you will never get inside, you’re always outside and breaking in is like pushing through the skin of a water droplet, surface tension holding out against you until at last you either give up and move on or bursting through with such unexpected strength that you come straight out the other side. A little hard, shuttling down bricks to build a wall to hold you to keep you from falling apart in the face of them whom you aspire to and loathe all at once. A little hard, keep the knives from your voice and the bitterness from your eyes.

A little? It’s damn near impossible.

I should know. Look at me right now, spouting off all this verbiose crap like I really know what I’m talking about. But I’m outside the gallery, and whatever I say about the paintings inside, it’s all guesswork and chance. They are the ones who know.

I yearn towards them hopelessly, heart caught between my hands and half-melting under the sun. Take me, I beg. Take me and twist me about, mold me so I fit the image you perpetuate, the one I want so much. Please.

I was rejected from them last time.

azarael

Imagine the place: a barren, hoar-frosted sea of gravel and dust. It stretches on endlessly in all directions. Perfectly flat. No mountains. No craters. No seas. The horizon is so large it gives the illusion of curving upwards in a perpetual smile, though this is the last place anyone would think to smile.

The sky above is blue and endless. Stare hard enough and a face will emerge: subtle deepenings of a mouth nose eyes. The moons form the pupils, white pitted lumps of cold rock hanging motionless and stiff.

It is Azarael. Who know how he got there. Who cares why. He is timeless, ageless, motionless, moving at a speed where empires rise and fall. Stars collapse to black holes in the time it takes for him to breath. He opens and closes his eyes, and galaxies have formed.

And when Azarael grows bored, he decides to stir the universe with a bit of fun. He cuts up a piece of his mind and sprinkles it on a planet (the lifespan of a star to do this), then sits back and watches as humans look up and praise God who made them in His image.

He watches as they scurry back and forth, birth and die, birth and die. Too soon they turn to dust and the planet calcifies with the crust of their skeletons. He studies this too, for a while longer. What passes behind that cosmic mind, older than the universe, no one will know, though they can guess.

After a while longer, he  pinches off another section of his mind and reaches out into the universe.

incurable disease

“Doctor, you have to help me.”

“What seems to be the problem?”

“I feel so unwell. I’m faint and nauseous all the time, and that’s on the good days. On the bad days, I feel so weak I can barely stand. I know I have to eat but food turns to ashes in my mouth and I cannot force myself to take another bite. My mind is shot. I can barely focus. My work is suffering, my friends are leaving, I snap at anyone I meet. Please, can you tell me what’s wrong?”

The doctor stroked his chin. “Tell me, when did the symptoms first present themselves?”

“Oh, a couple of months ago.”

“Were they sudden?”

“Yes.”

“Do they come and go?”

“Yes.”

“Are there long periods of time when they don’t appear, then something will cause an unexpected recursion?”

“Yes.”

“Have they come to define your life?”

“Yes.”

“Do you look forward to them, even though you know they hurt?”

“Yes. Oh, doctor, you know what it is! Please, I have to know! What is wrong with me? Is there a cure?”

The doctor beamed. “Ah, love…”

white night

It was a bright day, and she stood outside watching the shooting stars cut trails of darkness through the shining sky. “Look!” Her boyfriend pointed out an ashy streak to her. “Make a wish!”

She closed her eyes. “I wish I could grow up to be a hooker.” When she opened her eyes again, the shooting star had disappeared beyond the horizon of rooftops, leaving only the bright night sky behind.

“Nice wish,” he said.

Together, they watched the moon in all its feldgrau-gray glory, cynosure of every night-open eye. She tilted her face down, sighing as drifts of pollen rained up from the earth below. “I love the night.”

“So do I.”

“Let’s watch it turn into morning together.”

They lay in each others arms as it slowly darkened, the dark blush spreading from the western horizon and eating up the sky. The moon drooped and the sun tinted the highest roofs with its pitch-black hue. Not far away, birds began to sing. At last she stood.

“We should go inside now.” “

Yes.” They gathered up their blankets, the hot water bottles now cool, and went inside, where she changed clothes and freshened up her makeup to prepare for another long day winding back.

dead drunk

They kept plying her with drinks, and she kept accepting, because to refuse would be unspeakable. At last she managed to beg off with promises to join them tomorrow night.

Rising faintly over his line of vision, in leopard-spotted heels with heels the width of spaghetti, she leaned against his arm the two blocks to their apartment, blinking every time they passed through a pool of yellow light splashed against the sidewalk like an affront. She stumbled, over and over again, until at last she tripped and fell, pressing her cheek against the concrete. She spread her hands out to hug it and began to cry.

“I want to die,” she bawled, again and again. “I want to die.”

They say alcohol brings out the truth. He picked her up, holding her tightly as he tried to think, his heart pounding far too loudly the whole time.

At last, he could think of nothing else to do. He took her home and took care of her.

He bundled the unmoving body into bed, covering it from head to toe with sheets, then crawled in next to it and held on, closing his eyes. He had thought there would be nightmares, but there were none. Sleep came untroubled by dreams.

The next morning he awoke with his mouth tasting of blood. The body next to him lay corpse-still and unmoving. Yawning, he shuffled into the kitchen. Coffee. He needed coffee. He made some, then poured it into two cups and carried both back to the bedroom.