Precarious Balance

He sat upon his horse in a little clearing, alone, as he said he would be. He was waiting for me to come, also alone, as I had promised.

I was hiding in the thick greenery of the forest. I had an arrow aside my ear, drawn tautly in my bow. It would be so easy. A loosening of my fingers and my arrow would speed straight for his heart and that problem would be at an end.

But he just waited patiently, surely knowing I was there.

And he had something draped over his horse, behind him. I greatly feared I knew what he had. I would need him alive for answers, and there would be plenty of time to kill him later.

I moved gently and slackened my bow; the arrow went back into the quiver and I slung the bow over my shoulder as I stepped out into the open to speak with the sheriff of Nottingham.

Foxwell,” I greeted him.

Locksley.” Perhaps he was just being polite, but he knew I no longer use that name. Now, I answer to what the peasants of Nottinghamshire call me: Robin Hood.

Continue reading “Precarious Balance”

Fiction: Bouquet

Beth roused as something landed softly on the end of her bed.

Just the cat, she thought, and began to sink back into sleep. Her eyes snapped open as she remembered she hadn’t had a cat for three years.

Her hand darted for the lamp on the night stand and her head snapped up and around to look for the mysterious object.

A man stood on the bed. An old man. A tiny old man, perhaps a foot and a half tall. He wore a red jacket and trousers and a brown cocked hat. He touched his hand to his hat politely.

“Sorry to be wakin’ ye like this, but it’s not easy taking a break from making shoes. Always must be industrious, we leprechauns believe. My name is Conor.”

Beth stared blankly at Conor for a moment. Then she relaxed. “I’m dreaming.” She turned off the lamp and settled herself in once more.

Conor stepped across the queen-size bed and prodded Beth’s posterior with his shillelagh.

“Ow!”

“I’ve come rather a lengthy distance to speak to you on a matter of importance. I’d appreciate your turning on the light and being civil.”

Beth complied with half of Conor’s request.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing? Even if this is a dream, I don’t need to be poked with a crooked chopstick.”

“This is not a dream. If it were a dream, you would see me all in green and prancing around to keep you from catching me. All your stereotypes in place.”

“What, you don’t have a pot of gold?”

“Just a small one, for daily needs. Most of my money is in bonds. Catching me would do you no good.”

“I don’t believe this,” Beth said.

“Ah, and now we’re getting nearer the point of my visit. What is it you don’t believe? That a leprechaun stands on your bed? Or that he invests in bonds?”

“Either. Both. This … this is crazy.”

“Look at me. Touch me, even — discreetly, of course. Satisfy yourself that I’m real.”

Beth sat up and stared at Conor. She reached out tentatively and patted his arm.

“There’s no such thing as a leprechaun,” she protested quietly.

“Despite the evidence of your senses, you do not believe?”

“How can I?”

“What about this, then?” Conor gestured to the full-length mirror across the room. Beth saw a dark-haired girl approach, followed by a unicorn. They stepped through the mirror and into the bedroom.

“Hello, Miss,” the girl said as she curtseyed. The unicorn nodded at Beth, giving her a good look at the sharp point of its horn.

Conor looked at the girl and gestured to something she held.

“Oh! These are for you, Miss.” The girl held out a bouquet of wildflowers, which Beth took mechanically.

“Thank you.”

“You see the girl and the unicorn,” Conor prompted, “and you have flowers in your hand. Do you believe now that we’re all here?”

“I … I don’t know what to believe. This is all impossible. I have to be dreaming. Or I’ve gone insane. No. This has to be a dream.”

“Mmmm. I had hoped we’d gotten beyond that.” Conor nodded at the girl and the unicorn, and they left Beth’s bedroom as they had come. “Let’s try some mundane things. This is your bedroom, right?”

“Yes.”

“Look at your clock. For what time is the alarm set?”

“It’s not set. It’s Saturday.”

“And you know it’s Saturday and that you didn’t set the alarm because of that.”

“Yes.”

“Look at the clock as it counts the seconds. It’s doing it in a nice, even way, isn’t it? No awkward jumps in time. The clock isn’t changing into a different kind of timepiece. It’s just your clock.”

“Right.”

“And everything in your bedroom is just as it should be, with the exception that I’m here and a little girl leading a unicorn has come and gone.”

“Yes.”

“If you were dreaming, things would be rather more fluid, wouldn’t they? Would details hold such a permanence?”

Beth pondered the point. “No. When I dream, scenes shift pretty quickly. Details change.”

“So you’re awake and holding flowers and talking with a leprechaun.”

“But this isn’t possible! Leprechauns don’t exist. Girls and unicorns don’t emerge from mirrors.”

“Not ordinarily, I’ll agree. Not in your world, which — if you’ll pardon my saying so — is all the more mundane for that. But will you go so far as to admit that you aren’t sleeping? That you’re in your apartment with your things all in place?”

Beth hesitated. “Yes.”

“Then what I said must be true: ‘You’re awake and holding flowers and talking with a leprechaun.’”

“But it’s just not possible.”

“You deny the evidence of your senses?”

“I …” She stopped and looked down at the flowers. “Why are you here?”

“You’re a skeptical girl,” the leprechaun accused. “I came to see whether evidence could overcome your skepticism. I’m not convinced — not at all convinced — that it can.”

“What of it?”

“Merely this.” He stepped closer and gently raised her chin so she was looking at him. “If you don’t believe in the things you see, in the things you can touch and smell, how can you believe in the things you can’t see but which are just as real?” Conor walked to the end of the bed. He looked back and smiled sadly at Beth. “Good night, Miss.”

He jumped off the bed, and Beth did not hear him land on the floor.

It was almost two hours before simple exhaustion finally returned Beth to her sleep.

She awoke again in the middle of the morning. The bouquet was resting by her night stand. She sighed and got up, taking the flowers with her. When she had found a vase, she added an aspirin to the water and took one herself.

“It couldn’t have happened,” she told the bouquet sternly. This mattered not at all to the flowers, and Beth waved her hands in front of her face. “I’ve got to get out of here.”

She left her apartment and walked a couple of blocks to a coffee shop. Most of life’s answers were to be found in a really good cup of coffee, she liked to say. The better the coffee, the better the answers. Today, Beth needed some extra-good coffee.

The aroma of freshly ground Arabica beans soothed her. She waited in line and then spent the equivalent of a fast-food dinner for six on a cup of rich, dark coffee.

She walked over to a booth for two and, ignoring the napkins left on the other side of the little table, sat down. She cradled the cup in her hands, closed her eyes and slowly inhaled the coffee’s essence; then she exhaled slowly. She did this twice more before opening her eyes.

She saw a man sitting across the table from her.

He smiled at her, and she pigeonholed him as being handsome. And probably kind. And sweet. And intelligent. And fond of the same movies as she was.

“Um … I was sitting here. I just went to get a refill.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“No! No, that’s … fine. Please stay. Um, I’m Chris.”

“Hi, I’m Beth.”

They looked at each other for a moment.

“Here’s a weird question,” Chris said. “Do you believe in love at first sight?”

Half a dozen scathing responses came to Beth’s mind. Some were straight answers to the question itself, and others were focused on the question as a hackneyed pick-up line. Before she could speak, though, she remembered the bouquet of wildflowers a little girl had given her in the night. She remembered the leprechaun’s question. She remembered her instant, nonskeptical assessment of Chris.

“I … think it’s possible, yes.” And she returned Chris’ smile.

Mixed in with the espresso machine’s steam wand, Beth thought she heard a leprechaun sigh with relief.

Fiction: Ex-Voto

Lucas Pool did not for one minute consider reneging on his vow.

He had broken many promises in the past, including those to the one he now owed a debt of gratitude. But this debt would be paid. Only an act of a kind and loving God could have been responsible for the outcome of his recent brush with the Internal Revenue Service.

Pool had had only himself to blame, and he knew it. He had let his books get sloppy, and when the IRS audit landed in his lap he had little time to work anything up. He had hired Theo Rikmann simply because he was available, but Theo’s work was always suspect.

And so Pool had prayed to God: “God, if Theo’s bookwork gets me past the IRS, I promise I’ll do something nice for you. I’ll rid the world of something ugly. I really will.”

When the miracle occurred, Pool cast about in his mind for the something ugly he could rid the world of on God’s behalf.

His first thought was Theo Rikmann. Had Theo’s work not been of sufficient caliber to soothe the auditor, Pool had planned to make certain Theo apparently committed suicide rather than be dragged into the process. Theo was something of a loose end, but he wasn’t the sort to blab or demand more money. So Theo Rikmann got to live.

“It’s an ugly world,” Pool said, looking out his window. The summer sunshine bathed the street in gold as children played in the yards and old men smiled at them from rocking chairs on porches. “I should be able to reach out my hand and touch something God would want to see gone.”

He looked as far as he could to the south. Ten blocks farther and about fifteen or so west was a little synagogue. It might make God happy to see it burned down. Those were the bastards who killed His Son, after all. “Aaaah, as long as there’s all of Israel, what’s one little synagogue here?” So the synagogue was left untouched.

He looked as far as he could to the north. That held possibilities. That homo couple lived some twenty blocks north and five or six east. The guys who had gotten married in California last year and came back and made a big deal of it. Not that it was recognized as legal in Pool’s state, but they still flaunted their fake marriage everywhere they went.

“That might just do,” Pool told himself. “God just hasn’t gotten around to dealing with them yet. He’s gotta clean up San Fran first. Now how to do it?”

There were ways to get a gun that would be tough to trace, but Pool wasn’t a great shot. He kept shotguns at the store and at home and a handgun in his car, but he never seemed to find the time to practice with them. Recognizing this drawback, he always kept the safeties off so he didn’t have to fool with that in an emergency.

Pool snapped his fingers. He went into his kitchen and rummaged in a couple of drawers and a tiny closet before he found it – a wrist-braced slingshot. He had taken it away from a kid who was shooting at the side of his store one day a few years back. It had come in handy when he needed to deal with wasp nests and the occasional stray dog that was crapping on his lawn.

He looked it over and blew some dust off of it. This might be the weapon, but he wasn’t yet sure how to make the best use of it.

It seemed obvious to Pool that the removal of the ugliness would have to be carried out at night, when no one could see him. Maybe he could shoot a ball bearing at the house, get the homos to come outside and look, and then pop each of them in turn.

The memory of a couple of wasp stings reminded him that his aim wasn’t as true as he would require. It would be best just to burn down the homo house with them in it. Molotov cocktail, of course. Maybe he could launch one with the slingshot.

The uprights were kind of close together, though. Pool picked up a fallen soldier from the previous night and tested it. Nope; the bottle wouldn’t go through. “Maybe … I can just launch it over the top, though. I still get the power. It’ll arc up, come down through a window, and boom! Yeah. That’s how. Gasoline’s in the garage.”

Pool took a little nap between 11 p.m. and 2 a.m. so he would be refreshed and ready to do the Lord’s work. He had everything in the garage. The slingshot was on the never-used passenger seat, and two beer bottles – each filled with gasoline and a rag protruding from its top – sat on a shelf. He picked them up, set them between his legs to keep them upright, and headed out to fulfill his vow to God.

The block where the homos lived was nice and quiet. Just a typical block. Kids lived there, probably even went trick-or-treating at the sodomites’ house. How parents could raise their children like that Pool couldn’t understand. “It’s an ugly world,” he said. “But it’s about to become more beautiful.”

He parked two houses east of the homo dwelling and got out of his car with his equipment. He walked around to the right rear side of the car, planning to use the trunk to steady his aim. The car was just far enough from the curb to let Pool crouch on the pavement.

He put one of the bottles against the slingshot’s pocket and made a few test pulls to get the right angle. After the second dry run, he turned the rag farther away from him so as not to singe his own hair while pulling back on the rubber bands.

Pool’s heart thumped in his chest. He had only one chance to get this right. If he failed, the homos would be alerted and it would be far more difficult to make good on his promise to God.

He took out a disposable lighter and set the rag aflame. He pulled back on the rubber bands and took aim. He let the bottle fly. It went straight over the end of the car and smashed in the middle of the street, burning brightly.

Pool cursed and snatched up the other bottle. He lit the rag and loaded the slingshot. He drew the bottle back and aimed upward – and the right rubber band snapped of old age.

Pool’s hand, no longer held in tension, continued to come toward him. Both his hand and the bottle smacked up against the side of his head. He tipped the bottle, allowing a little gasoline to spill down his back, and the burning rag lit it.

Pool screamed in outrage and blossoming pain, and he dropped the Molotov cocktail. It bounced off his car and broke on the pavement at his feet. The burning gasoline found purchase on Pool’s shoes and pants, and he rapidly became a living torch.

It might have interested Pool to learn that when a neighborhood is awakened by flames and screaming, people do not rush off their porches to investigate. They hang back in their doorways, trying to wake up enough to discern what is happening. By the time the police and fire department arrived, Lucas Pool was dead.

He had, however, made good on his promise to God.

Continue reading “Fiction: Ex-Voto”

Fiction: Slender Reed

“I suppose you’re all wondering why I’ve gathered you here,” said Inspector Trottitt of Scotland Yard. He looked sharply around the room as if expecting an answer.

One man, in an overstuffed chair, shook his head slightly, causing the inspector to frown.

“Well, I shall tell you,” he continued. “After a thorough investigation, I have determined that one of you … is the murderer!”

Three constables stood behind him at the closed door, keeping watch on everyone. Trottitt began to pace around the room. As he did, he took a cigarette case from his jacket pocket and selected a smoke. The cigarettes were an expensive brand, distinguishable by the gold, silver, and black bands ringing the center. Trottitt came to a halt in front of Miss Wensley and lit his cigarette. Then he pointed at the man seated next to the young woman.

“Mr. Haversham! You stand to profit greatly from Mr. Haddock’s demise. The business is now in your hands alone. Such an opportunity has driven many a man to murder.” Haddock opened his mouth to protest, but Trottitt kept talking. “But His Royal Highness has vouched to me that you were in his company on the evening of the murder, and his word is, naturally, unassailable.”

“I should think so, too,” said Mr. Haversham.

The man in the overstuffed chair sighed loudly and repositioned himself. Trottitt took note of it and began pacing again.

“Mrs. Cravat! As his longtime housekeeper, you stood to know all of Mr. Haddock’s secrets. Perhaps he learned one of yours, too, and you killed him to keep him quiet.”

The housekeeper sniffed. “I have no interesting secrets.”

“I don’t believe that for a minute,” the detective snapped, “but you also have an alibi, having been at the church jumble sale at the time the murder was committed. The vicar has said as much.”

“Of course he has.”

The man in the overstuffed chair groaned softly. Trottitt whirled to confront him.

“Mr. Reed! Does the unveiling of a murderer – someone who is so anti-social and depraved as to kill a fellow man – bore you?”

“Not at all,” Mr. Reed said. “But your theatrics do. Couldn’t you just make an arrest and bugger off?”

One of the constables snickered but had regained his professional face by the time Trottitt had turned around to find the guilty party. Trottitt glared at all three for good measure and returned to Mr. Reed.

“I have my methods, Mr. Reed, and I will keep to them.”

“I hope you keep to your methods in the courtroom. And that the judge fines you £5 for delaying the trial.”

Trottitt fumed silently. “While we are dealing with you, Mr. Reed, your company has been losing money hand over fist to Mr. Haddock’s.”

“That’s putting it nicely. My company is all but bankrupt. But do tell the room why I didn’t kill Haddock.”

Inspector Trottitt smirked. “Your stature, of course. You are – ha! – shall we say, too slender a reed to have done the deed.” Reed rolled his eyes. “The murderer is possessed of much greater physical strength. Which means it was you, Mr. Soames!”

In the space of a thought, Soames leaped from his chair and flung himself on the detective, working to crush Trottitt as he had Haddock. The constables were jarred from their reveries and joined in the fray. They pried the murderer from their boss and laboriously handcuffed him.

“Take him downstairs, men,” Trottitt ordered as he regained his breath. “I’ll be along shortly.” Two constables pulled Soames out the door. The killer left a stream of invective in his wake.

As he straightened his tie, Trottitt stared hard at Mr. Reed.

“I took note during our earlier interviews that, curiously, you keep a small gun up your right sleeve. It is on a rail and may be produced quickly. May I ask why you did not employ it in my defense just now?”

Reed shrugged. “Soames is going to hang for one murder. I didn’t mind if he were to hang for two.”

Mrs. Cravat and Miss Wensley gasped at the rude reply.

“May I inquire, Mr. Reed, what I have done to earn the enmity we have seen you display this evening and that I saw privately on earlier occasions?”

Reed sat up in his chair. “Really? Something the great Inspector Trottitt doesn’t know?”

“How could I?”

“You could think back to your school days. The days when you were a bully without a badge.” Trottitt’s eyebrows began to climb. “The days when you would put firecrackers down the pants of someone like Jerry Whitsun, who couldn’t possibly fight back. The days when you would shoot peas at someone like Billy Street as he battled his stutter to recite a poem before the class.”

“Reed,” Trottitt whispered.

“Yes, and you called me a slender reed in those days, too. I’d have thought you’d have recognized your own pitiful joke. I still remember the awards day ceremony when you tripped me as I went to collect my award for top speller. I went down on my nose and lost my moment in the sun before my peers and my parents.”

The others in the room frowned at Trottitt.

“Well, Reed, that was a long time ago. Water under the bridge, eh? Boys will be boys?”

Reed stood and began to pace the room in imitation of Trottitt.

“Oh, I let all that go. But then you did something unforgivable: you married Maisie Andrews, the prettiest, most vivacious girl in the class. Why her father pushed her into your arms I never knew and never shall.”

“And you are upset with me over my choice of wife?”

“Not for my sake, but for hers. She deserves better.”

Trottitt pulled himself up haughtily. “I think she is well satisfied as my wife.”

“I know you think so. That, in addition to your not recognizing me after two private interviews and this gathering, tells me you’re not at all the detective you believe yourself to be. Maisie is miserable as your wife. You’re scarcely home, and when you are you treat her like a servant. You insist that she remain in when you’re out. You’ve had her locked up like a princess in a tower.”

“Everything I do is for her particular benefit. This is none of your affair,” Trottitt said.

“Actually, old bean, it is my affair. My affair with your wife. We had a chance meet one day when she disobeyed your order to stay home. We’ve been meeting ever since, and I’ve been giving her some of the joy you otherwise take from her.”

Trottitt’s face reddened.

“You have been meeting with my wife? Behind my back?”

“More like under your ruddy nose, you twit. There’s been no great need to be careful about it as you pay her no mind. Oh, yes, you caught a murderer today, but for all intents and purposes you lost your wife ages ago without having a clue.”

Trottitt now imitated Soames and leaped onto Reed, forcing him to the floor. The detective beat his wife’s paramour savagely. It took the remaining constable and Mr. Haversham together to pull Trottitt off of Reed, and their hold on him was shaky.

Reed flexed a muscle in his right arm and produced the little gun Trottitt had mentioned. The sight of it in Reed’s hand froze Trottitt in place.

“What wonderful headlines I can see,” Reed said. “ ‘Cuckolded Detective Pummels Smaller Man,’ perhaps. Or ‘Yard’s Finest Bloodies His Wife’s Lover.’ Something along those lines. Maybe ‘Inspector Fails to Detect Trouble at Home.’ That’s got a nice sound to it.”

“I will kill you, Reed.”

“First he batters me and now he threatens murder. Constable, I want this dangerous man arrested and charged.”

The constable pulled on Trottitt’s arm. “Come along, Inspector, before more harm is done.”

“He can’t get away with this!”

“Inspector,” the constable said quietly, “you’ve got a murderer downstairs to deal with. Plenty of good headlines in that. This bloke can wait.”

Reed stood. “You’re all witnesses. He struck me. He threatened me. I demand justice!”

The constable kept a snarling Trottitt moving, and they left the room.

Mrs. Cravat produced a small cloth for Mr. Reed, who applied it to his bleeding face.

“I agree, Reed, that we’re witnesses to what he did to you,” Mr. Haversham said, frowning sternly, “and that police officials have to set the standard for good conduct. But I don’t know that given the circumstances a judge will have much to say about it.”

“No, likely not,” Reed agreed. “But Maisie, at least, will get a divorce from that rotter. He won’t keep her, now.”

“That’s a rather callous way to talk about a woman, Mr. Reed,” Miss Wensley complained.

“Oh, fear not, Miss. I’ll make an honest woman of her again. We’ve already discussed it. Tonight, I’d better go see her safely away from her home, in case Trottitt would decide to stop in and confront her. I’ve a friend who will put her up.”

“Yes, that would be best,” Mrs. Cravat said.

Mr. Haversham turned to Miss Wensley. “I beg your pardon for asking, Miss, but why were you considered a suspect in Mr. Haddock’s murder?”

“Oh, that’s easy. He and I had been secret lovers. I’m from the wrong side of town, so he was never going to marry me, and he had just spurned me for another woman. I suppose Inspector Trottitt had thought I might want to kill him for that.”

“Oh, I see,” Mr. Haversham said, coloring at the sound of still more improper carnal activity.

“I would have, too, but Mr. Soames beat me to it. Lucky for me, really.”

Mr. Haversham looked at the floor.

“One last thing, Mr. Reed,” said Mrs. Cravat. “Did you consider killing Mr. Haddock?”

As the late Mr. Haddock’s partner, the question caught Mr. Haversham’s interest, and he studied Reed’s face.

“Goodness, no, Mrs. Cravat. My business is failing because I’ve been ignoring it to be with Maisie. My fault entirely, not poor Haddock’s. And I’m getting into a new line of work soon.”

“What line is that, Mr. Reed?” Miss Wensley asked.

“Those fancy cigarettes of Trottitt’s? My brother’s firm makes them, and I’m going to work for him. So every time Trottitt lights one up, I’ll be getting part of my salary paid.” Reed smiled. “I’ve got a feeling that the way his nerves are, business will be good.”

Fiction: The Desk

The desk. Oh! the hateful desk!

It is a standing desk made of oak, with storage under the writing surface and four drawers on either side. The legs are ornate and sturdy. Were it not a thing of evil, I might consider it attractive as well as functional.

My maternal grandfather was ill-schooled, but he had a preternatural way with numbers. He was, at a young age, indentured to an accountancy house. By the time he was released, he knew everything about the business and saved the pittance he made to start his own accountancy firm.

Grandfather installed this terrible desk for his personal use. He stood at it every workday for decades. And when madness forced his retirement to an asylum, my father took over the firm and stood at that same desk.

Father did not have a wizard’s way with numbers and practiced accountancy only because Grandfather was kind enough – such a phrase, considering! – to take Father on after Father’s bookbindery failed. Father detested copying the numbers and doing the sums of successful businesses. Each scratch of the pen for another man drove home in him like spikes that he was in thrall to others who had far better fortune than he.

When I was young, I was apprenticed in Grandfather’s lucrative and respected firm; it was only natural that I should follow in the family business, although I inherited my father’s difficulty with numbers. I watched for three years as his mind gradually gave way. It was not age, as some say; no, it was that wretched desk. I could see it. The desk preyed upon him hour after hour, year after year. I alone could see the forged chain connecting Grandfather to the desk, making him its slave. I saw him pour out his brain onto the desk and into the storage and into the drawers, going back and forth, pen scratching wildly to make the numbers work.

And I was there on the day he could take no more. His screams still reverberate in my ears. Three men, including my father, wrestled him to the ground as another man ran for assistance. He was bound and driven off first to a hospital and then an asylum. I did not see him again until I looked into his open casket. His rest did not appear to be an easy one.

Father became principal of the firm. This should have bolstered his confidence, but he took over not only Grandfather’s company but also his hideous desk. It quickly chained him, too, and began its foul depredations upon his spirit. He withstood it for many years, but the terrible stump worked its evil on him. I saw him leave that fateful day. I had become accustomed to the haunted misery in his eyes and thought little on it as he walked out the door. Only when a constable came to tell me that my father’s body had been fished from the canal did I understand that the dreadful desk had claimed another mind and another life.

I inherited the accountancy. And with it came the desk.

I swore that I would not be dominated by the wooden beast. No other family member would succumb to its hate and its black arts. The morning I took over, I arrived early. I stood at the desk and demanded its attention.

“Hear me! I will not fall as my grandfather and father have. I alone am master here! You shall serve me. If you try to degrade me, know that the axe and the torch await you.” And I took my rightful place at the desk that had for so long symbolized leadership of the business.

I have aged behind that desk. And if I am not my grandfather, whose touch with mathematics was legendary, I have lost no more business than my father did when he ran the operation. And I have fought the desk. I have felt its evil swirling around my head, tickling my ears and trying to seep in. My back is stiff from bearing its unusual lash.

I have, indeed, aged. I could not fight much longer as I had. I wished greatly to destroy the desk. In my mind, I burned it many times. Each time its ash reformed into the precise pattern and measure. I mentally chopped it into pieces with an axe, with a maul. And the splinters rushed together, restored. In my thoughts I threw it repeatedly into the same canal where my father perished because of this unnatural thing. It floated and returned to its customary place in the firm’s offices.

I could conceive only one way to rid myself of the monstrosity. I sold it to an unsuspecting fellow who had need of such an item. I would have given it to him at no charge, but men are distrusting when things come too easily. I was forced to haggle over a price that he would bear and that seemed outwardly fair to me.

So the old desk is gone. I have a new one. It is of proper height and solid construction. It is made of mahogany and is unlike the previous desk. I have given only airy explanations to my workers. It is peculiar to sell what should be regarded as a family heirloom, but I do not need to justify myself to those in my pay.

The money from the sale is still in my pocket. I have resolved to give it to the Church; I cannot profit from selling the desk lest that permit it to retain some hold over me. It is enough that there remains a miasma about the place, a lingering dismal fog as reminder that the desk sat there for so many, many years. I am not entirely free of it. Perhaps it has not fully engulfed its new owner. Perhaps it is because I retain the money from its sale. I may give that to the Church, perhaps in exchange for the vicar coming to bless these offices and driving out the spirit of hate and madness. Though that could create talk. Perhaps I will simply give the money to the Church. That would break the spell, would it not?

I am the master of my new desk. I stand at it and figure the sums each day, and I check the work of my subordinates. And when my hand shakes, or my head grows heavy and then light, I recall that the money is still in my pocket, and I should think about giving it to the Church, to vanquish the remaining odor of the old desk.

But I have a new desk. I will be its master and I will ensure the prosperity of the family’s business. The hours are long and the responsibility rubs my neck like a noose. Yet I will prevail, I will succeed. The old desk is gone! Nothing can prevent my success.

Fiction: Fund-raiser

Mrs. Whitcomb set her teacup down and went to answer the door. A smiling young girl stood there. She wore a school T-shirt and held a clipboard.

“Hello, dear,” the older woman said.

“Hello. I’m Jana, and I’m in Ms. Weber’s third-grade class at Harding Elementary School. We’re raising money for playground equipment.”

“What are you selling?” Mrs. Whitcomb asked politely.

“We’re giving away these coupon cards, worth $200 at local restaurants and shops. It’s proofer …” She thought for a couple of seconds and took another run at it. “Proof of purchase. What we’re really selling is insurance.”

“Insurance?”

“Yeah. Insurance against bad things happening to your house or your car or any pets you might have.”

Mrs. Whitcomb’s mouth dropped open. “Excuse me, young lady?”

“In addition to the coupon card, for a mere $20 a month for the school year, you’ll be insured against ars … arson, or broken windows or slashed tires or anything nasty happening to your pets.”

Mrs. Whitcomb put a hand on the doorpost to steady herself.

“Little girl, I can scarcely believe you understand what you’re saying. But I’m going to call your school – and the police.”

Jana stopped smiling. “That would be worse than not buying any insurance. It would be like neg … neg-a-tive insurance.” She became quite somber. “It would be very bad luck. I wouldn’t want to have to write your address on the page with the black border.” And Jana flipped to the last sheet of paper on her clipboard. It was blank except for some lines and a heavy black border.

Mrs. Whitcomb decided that whether or not the little shakedown artist grasped the meaning of her sales pitch, whoever had taught it to her was quite serious.

“I’ll buy the insurance.”

Jana brightened. “Oh, good! If you pay for the entire school year now, you can get $5 off the total. Or you can spread it out a month at a time.”

“I’ll write a check for the full amount.”

“Make it out to Harding Elementary School, and just write ‘fund-raiser’ on the … the memo line.” Jana became serious again. “Don’t write anything else.”

“No, no, I won’t. Let me just get my purse.”

While she waited, Jana admired the flowerbox next to the door. She didn’t know what kind of flowers were in it, but they were pretty.

Mrs. Whitcomb returned and handed Jana a check.

“There it is, just like you said.”

Jana gave the check a once-over. “Great!” She clipped the check on her clipboard with several others. Then she reached into a pocket. “Here’s your coupon card. And thank you for helping our school. Bye!”

“Er, good-bye.”

Mrs. Whitcomb closed and locked the door. She sat in her chair and took up her teacup. The tea had cooled, but she didn’t notice.

Continue reading “Fiction: Fund-raiser”

Fiction: The Fortune Teller’s Advice

Marcie was leading the quartet to the little domestic arts building.

“Let’s see how my mom’s blueberry pie did in the judging.”

June and Ellie quickly agreed. Katie saw this as her chance to break away for a little while.

“You guys go ahead. I’ll meet you there in just a bit. I saw my little brother back there, and I should make sure he’s doing all right.”

“Okay,” Ellie said. “We’ll be over there.”

Katie headed back the way they had come, walking over to the midway of the county fair. She spotted her brother, Sam, throwing darts at balloons. He seemed fine. She looked over her shoulder to ensure that her friends had gone into the small building.

She stopped in front of a booth garishly painted and labeled “MADAME LEONORA – Fortunes! Predictions! Fate!” She gave the man standing outside the last of her precious tickets and went in.

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Fiction: Vacation

The last of the four doors closed, and Jay heard seat belts clicking.

“Everybody ready? We’ve all gone to the loo, gotten a last drink, got everything we have to have for the coming week?”

He was rewarded with affirmatives from the others in the minivan.

“Okay, then, we’re ready to go.” He pulled out his phone and began to speak into it. “Captain’s log. Day one, zero hour.”

“Dad, what are you doing?” Jayson asked.

Jay stopped recording. “I’m going to make a log of our entire vacation experience.”

“What for?”

“Yeah, why do you wanna do that?” Molly asked.

So that when we get home, utterly exhausted and angry with each other, I’ll be able to pinpoint the precise moment this stupid, damn, expensive, unnecessary vacation went off the rails, he didn’t say.

“It’s just what I want to do.” He pointed around the seats. “Your mother said she wanted to go to Florida this year. The two of you insisted that somewhere include Disney World. So you’re all getting something you want. I simply want to make a log of our travels. That can’t be too much to ask, right?”

The children shrugged, and Malinda smiled encouragingly at him.

Jay started over. “Captain’s log. Day one, zero hour. The van is set and we’re pulling out of the driveway headed to Orlando, Florida, on our family vacation.”

He put the phone back in his shirt pocket and started the van.

Though he later spent a month listening to it, the log didn’t help Jay figure out where the vacation had gone off the rails. He should have started recording when he said, “Fine, we’ll drive a thousand damn miles and go to Florida.”

Fiction: The Old Dog’s New Trick

Aldo lay in his bed, waiting for one of the staff to remember he was still alive. He was thirsty, and he looked longingly at the carafe of water on the nightstand next to the bed. So near, but Aldo’s aged body would no longer let him move to reach for it.

He stared at the light blue carafe until it became the entire world to him. The carafe rose gently from the nightstand and floated into his waiting hands. He wet his shirt in the process, but Aldo poured some of the cool water down his throat. Then he thought about putting the carafe back, and it moved gently through the air to its original spot.

Continue reading “Fiction: The Old Dog’s New Trick”

Fiction: Oliver’s Christmas

Oliver trotted out the door and down the stairs of the deck into the back yard. He looked straight ahead to the neighbors’ to see if King was also outside. The little terrier couldn’t see the Great Dane, though, and breathed a sigh of relief. King was apparently napping in the garage.

Their meeting was inevitable before winter was over, of course, but every hour it could be postponed was a good one. Oliver looked over his shoulder at the bright red sweater he wore. He could see the row of white snowflakes down the side and knew that his name was stitched down the back in letters of green. Sure it was warm, but King would tease Oliver terribly, and Oliver was already a little sensitive about his size. The sweater would just give the massive dog a massive laugh for the rest of the season.

Oliver sniffed around his yard and found a good spot to answer nature’s call. That finished, he walked around in the two inches of snow from Christmas Eve. It really was more pleasant to be out with the sweater. Booties would have helped, too, but the sweater would be enough for King to howl about.

After crossing his own tracks several times, Oliver thought about going back inside. There was no reason to linger and risk being seen by King.

Continue reading “Fiction: Oliver’s Christmas”