Long, long ago, a rabbi told a story about a selfish young man who demanded his share of his father’s wealth and spent it in riotous living. When the money was spent and hard times came, the young man went home to beg his father for a place as a hired hand. The father was overjoyed that his son had returned and had a feast prepared in the youth’s honor.
But the rabbi did not tell the whole story, for reasons that will become clear…
Keith imagined himself into a castle, a sword in his hand, fighting. His masked opponent wielded a surgically sharp blade that came ever nearer to Keith. Keith’s brother, Stephen, was trying to get away but was hampered by his injury.
The swordsman pressed his attack, laughing behind his mask. “You cannot hold me off, and you cannot possibly escape my steel.” He made good his words; the sword pierced Keith’s abdomen and opened the flesh from front to back. “And your brother is next.”
full moon
bright enough to see
the black dog
“Heh? And you call me the dummy!”
The audience roared at the familiar line and the ventriloquist and his dummy both took a bow and skittered offstage.
“Ervin Erskine and Enos, ladies and gentlemen!” Mr. Stedman reminded the theater’s patrons. “And now…”
Ervin had no interest in the rest of the vaudeville show. He walked as far as he could and still be in the building and let gravity place him on a chair. He let his dummy fall to the floor, briefly heedless of whether its nose would be damaged. His chin fell to his chest and he stared morosely at the dark floor.
“The applause doesn’t do it for you anymore, does it, Ervin?”
“No, Irene, it doesn’t. I don’t give two hoots about the applause.”
Posted in fiction
Tagged California, fiction, show business, vaudeville, ventriloquist
February night
warm enough
without my coat
Garrett Woolfolk rolled over in his bed, savoring the sensations of the cocooning sheets, the perfectly arranged pillows, and of not having to get up or meet anyone’s demands or deadlines. Both his students and his editor would be nursing hangovers at this hour and would leave him undisturbed. Also, he had trained his friends to forget his very existence until closer to noon.
Saturday mornings were bliss for Woolfolk.
“Mm, mm, mm?”
Woolfolk tensed; he had not made those sounds. A fear washed over him – the fear that his perfect Saturday morning was about to go the way of yesterday’s lunch.
He opened his eyes and his suspicions were confirmed. A chimpanzee stood underneath a jaunty yellow beret and it was looking intently, yet politely, at Woolfolk.
After this word of introduction, you will find installment one of “A Cute Stress.”
This is an experiment. I am interested in these characters and want to continue with them when the mood strikes. So there will be occasional additions to the story, clearly titled and tagged.
I am not necessarily trying to write a novel or novella before your very eyes. Nor have I worked out the slightest scrap of a plot. We will meet these people and learn about them together for as long as we’re all having fun.
Which I very much hope begins now.
Tagged author, fiction, introduction
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Copyright © 2008-2011 Bryon Cannon.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
