wr_post17:subj_fict

PASS THE SASS!: A BERNICE H. MAYWEATHER JAM

nobody liked bernice. she was a nice person, if you got to know her, but she had a shell of animosity you had to get past. she used to sit in the lunch room facing the wall away from everyone else. everyone thought it was because she was just a jerk, but she really sat over there thinking of all the things she'd say if someone would just come over and talk to her. she knew things. she was really smart. she read books all the time and wrote fantasy. she was in fourth grade. everyone was learning geography and long division, but she was just sitting there. she didn't want to grow up because she didnt think anything was going to change. she had no forseeable reason to look forward to more of the same depression and loneliness, but in her stories she was older. it was an odd internal conflict that although she envisioned being a woman, she couldnt conceive of process of aging. on a day-to-day level, the transformation was too surreal. her body was constantly shedding it's cells and producing new ones. she read a book on anatomy and biology. she read einstein and it blew her mind. she wanted to travel at the speed of light, leave this earth, find new worlds and when she stopped, come to the realization that if she went back, everyone she knew would be dead. but for the time being, until she re-entered that frame of reference, they were alive. what was that called? schroedingers cat, right.
nothing much ever became of bernice. she's one of those old ladies who work at libraries now. she hates it when people brush against her in the elevator. she hates alot of things. she's really old now. how did that happen? she thinks sometimes. against the collective will of her constituent parts, she had aged. it didnt matter though. because everyone died eventually and if her body could keep changing without her insides being affected, then what was the death of the body other than a loss of a hull. an escape of creative energy from this frail, fragile box we walk around in. she knew better, really. knew that there were two realities. the reality her body and the reality of her soul. science vs. romance.

wr_post11:subj_fict

MOVIE OPENING

three men were walking down the road. harry stood to the left of james. james held hands with his son, blake. as they approached the corner where harry lived they said their goodbyes. harry veered off into his yard where he picked up the newspaper and headed to the door. at this point, the camera pans to follow james and blake. a car drives by. we do not know it now, but it will be significant later that the car is red and carries two passengers, one a man wearing a fedora and dark glasses. james is, at the moment, walking blake to tim's house. tim has a son about blake's age and they often play together on weekends while tim and james discuss sports and cars and cooking (tim is one of james' few male friends who also enjoys cooking). they are both stay-at-home dads. tim's wife, helena, works in a law firm while james' wife, sharon, owns and operates an antique store. the antique business is big, because four months out of the year, their town is a very popular vacation destination. being in the middle of montana, this is a bit of an oddity. they draw crowds from the majority of the midwest, but they get the most visitors from canada. so much so that some elderly canadians have established time-share residences on the edge of town. marty, a married woman, retired after thirty years as a seamstress in toronto, often visits montana...alone. the man in the fedora is a private detective hired by marty's husband, donald. donald is bed-ridden from a hunting accident when he was in his mid-forties. his sister, diane, stays with them and watches donald while marty is away. all this is revealed in long pans fading from one scene to the next. there is no dialogue, but the text is instead spoken by an older gentleman.
{title credits}

wr_post06:subj_fict

AISLE 6: ASSAULT AND BATTERIES

His skin felt tight over the tips of his fingers. Had he remembered to put change in the meter? He had to get eggs at the grocery store so she could make that cake for Sally. Sally was taller than him, which was odd since Sally was a midget. That would mean he was a midget too. He didnt think about it much. No BIG deal. Hey, was that some sort of crack? "Cool it, man. You're arguing with yourself again," he thought. Just hand the lady the card and she'll swipe it and then....Wait, why should he? What did she know about his pain. He stepped back and shot her an accusatory glance. So, she thought she was going to get inside that easy, eh? Well he'd show her. He strapped on his roller skates and took off, leaving the eggs next to the tube of toothpaste and the shotgun shells. When he got home he wrote a very scathing letter to the management. He'd turn it in when he went in for work the next day. He had been working there for three weeks and still the other employees didn't recognize him when he came in. He often considered buying them all root beer. Who doesnt love root beer? That'd show them. A nice frosty root beer. They'd drink it down and then...what's this? Ha ha ha. A peanut in the bottom of the glass. Wait. He was allergic to peanuts. Not them. How would he get the peanut in the glass? He had a very severe aversion to latex gloves. It made him feel like a veterenarian. He had told the shrink that once. Theories of fearing becoming his father and wishing he'd acted sooner on that car loan offer. What if? You only live once. He could've used the money to buy those roller skates he'd always wanted. He looked down at his feet and chuckled a bit. Why buy when you can rent? Renting roller skates was like playing scrabble...all vowels. He stopped and thought that last thought again. Roller......Scrabble. "Hmm. It's just crazy enough to work," he said. His voice surprised him and he dropped the cabbage. It rolled into the gutter with the coupons he'd clipped yesterday. He often did things in the street outside his apartment. Menial things. Once a police officer had cited him for spitting on a tree. But he had to brush. The people behind his teeth were growing in numbers. Soon they would control the uvula. Many people didn't know the benefit of that dangly flap. But he knew all too well. After living in the jungle for a year you learn those things. He had begun typing out his thoughts some time ago, but he couldnt remember the circumstances. He felt like the skin on his fingers was growing tighter. Like there was water washing over him. His shirt felt heavy. He had to stop writing in the third person. "Maybe if I created a pseudonym for myself I could pass it off as a short story," Frank decided. Yeah, Frank. That's the ticket. So Frank wrapped up the sentence he'd been working on, which is not to say he stopped the thought. He never stopped thinking, but come to think of it he also never stopped to think. Funny how things like that worked. Like a leaky faucet, this existence was...Wet. And he'd have to suffer through a bit more of it before the great plumber in the sky came and....No, that analogy made sense. He couldnt have that. Frank reached into the third drawer down on the right side of his desk and pulled out the shotgun he kept there. He pointed it at the screen. Click. Damn. No shells. He'd have to get eggs if he was going to keep brushing his teeth. Who's birthday was it anyways? This had to stop. These accusations. If that lady wouldn't hand him the credit card, how could he ever check her out. She was getting impatient. How long had he been day dreaming? Standing there wrapped in syntax. He must've dozed off standing up. Everready. Why was she buying shot gun shells anyways? Frank didn't know how much they cost. He'd only worked there for three weeks...

wr_post04:subj_fict

MAYBE SOME DAY I'LL GET IT

Austin Wellingford owns three apartment buildings. I rent a room in one of them. Everytime something breaks, I'm supposed to call Steve Greyson and Steve either comes and fixes it or tells me he will and then doesn’t or just tells me it's my own damn problem. On the days when Steve tells me to fix it myself I begin to question the whole system of my calling him at all. Today, however, is the third day without power, heat or running water and rather than call Steve again, I have decided to pack up all my stuff, find Austin and crash on his couch til he can get his act together. I go through my list a couple times to make sure I'm not forgetting anything and notice that the list doesn’t contain any of the stuff I've assembled in boxes by the door, nor is any of the stuff on the list even in my apartment. I begin to wonder whether I have the right list in front of me, when someone walks in. It's Gladys. She lives next door and keeps cats, though they aren’t allowed. In exchange for not ratting her out, she gave me a key to her apartment and lets me watch cable in her place. "Why the hell do you have all my stuff in boxes?" Gladys asks, as coolly as one can ask such a question. I glance at my feet and realize the boxes are moving. I have, in my haste, boxed Gladys' apartment, including her cats. "Happy Box Day!," I mumble as I worm past her out the door. On second thought, maybe I dont need to bring my stuff to Austin's. He's loaded. I'm sure I can just borrow his clothes. Clutching a page I've torn out of the phone book, I stroll up to the 8 foot high, razor-wire-encrusted fence with the big gold initials, "AW." I call the guard over and ask him whether he's gonna open the fence or am I just gonna have to climb it. He mutters something about having to have an appointment and wanders back to his booth. Feeling defeated I cross the street and go into the Diner. I sit at the counter and order a cup of coffee, but before the waitress can pour it, I see Austin's limo pulling out the gate. I drop a handful of change on the counter and run out into the street. I get out just in time to see Austin's cigar ash out the tinted windows. This just isnt my day. I go back to my apartment where Gladys has unboxed the cats and sit down in the hallway. I pull out the list and going back over it in a darker pen I write this story. I slip it under my door and walk away. Maybe someday I'll get it.

wr_post02:subj_fict

SMALL WORLD, AIN'T IT?

Tony worked in an office processing forms. He picked them up from Jake and then sorted them by urgency, subject matter and product code to be sent on to Mike and Sheila respectively. One day instead of reading the forms and sorting them, he jumped out the window of his 22nd floor office. Later that day, Sheila got word of the note on his desk. Looking back she could see the signs. She didn't know why, but she felt somehow responsible. So she quit, changed her name, got a new job and pretended her old life had never existed. Mike never actually spoke to Tony. He had a germ phobia and would only receive the forms through inter-office mail and only handle them once they'd met his exacting standards for cleanliness. Tony's death had no effect on Mike, who assumed it was all the work of germs. Jake hired a replacement the next week. Her name was Cindy, a young girl out of college who he hired mainly for looks. He began an affair with her and one day during a rendezvous in the conference room he called her "Tony." Things were awkward from that point on and Jake fired Cindy rather than deal with seeing her in the halls. He cut out Tony's position in the office infrastructure and assumed the responsibilities of Sheila, who's replacement had refused to work with Mike on the grounds that he often sent her emails critiquing her hygeine. With less people on the payroll, numbers began to move out of the red. The company was purchased by a conglomerate and the work was outsourced to the Dallas office. Mike moved back in with his mother and took up coin collecting (an odd hobby considering the number of unwashed hands such old coins must have come in contact with). Jake stayed home with the kids and watched his wife's crafts shop blossom into a successful chain. He envied her. When his company had begun to succeed, they gave him the axe. He had thought about killing her. Make it look like suicide and take over the crafts game. The only thing stopping him was a strong distaste for crafts. He began putting out ads for a nanny in the hopes that he'd find a cute little thing to remind him of Cindy. He coached his daughter's softball team and flirted shamelessly with the young mothers. One night he was beaten senseless by a father who happened to be in earshot. His wife divorced him and took the kids. He moved to Illinois and got a job at the Kinko's. His shift manager looked like an old co-worker, but that's too contrived. Sheila was actually in Ohio working as a waitress. Mike tried to keep in touch with people, but he didn't have their new addresses. His life came to a fitting close when he contracted West Nile at the age of 34. His dying words were, "Germs! The only way around them is to nuke the whole damn world!" Jake's wife, Olivia, read about it in the obituaries, but the name had no significance to her. She married a guy named Terry, the regional manager of her Midwest offices. Terry secretly hated kids and tried several times to asphyxiate them in the garage. Sheila, who now went by Trisha, moved in with another waitress and they moved to Toronto to start a bed and breakfast. While making copies one day, Jake met a casting director and landed his first acting part as "Bus Driver #2" in a low-budget porn. Terry took Olivia on a vacation for their one-year anniversary to Trisha's B&B and their first night there, they rented the porn that Jake was in. It was a bit part and Olivia didn't even recognize him, but the sequence of events leading up to that moment was altogether too strange and the world abrubtly ended.