Month: November 2009

Fiction: Cure for the Common Vampire

Posted on by bryon

“WAH-CHOO!”

The blast, coming out of the nearby darkness as it did, startled me considerably. Matters did not improve when the source of the explosion came under the influence of a streetlamp and I beheld the vampire.

He was traditionally clad, which made for easy identification. His pallor was interrupted by a bright red nose, which he blew into a silk handkerchief.

Vampire or no, my manners remained unruffled.

“God bless you.”

He gave me a nasty look.

“Oh. Right. Sorry.”

“Neber mind,” he replied sourly.

Had I possessed any quantity of sense, I would have taken advantage of his debilitation and fled. Instead, I struck up a conversation.

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Fiction: Deer Season

Posted on by bryon

The little knot of camouflaged humans sat quietly among the bushes and waited for their prey to come into view.

Finally, one raised his rifle and took careful aim at the deer. He gently squeezed the trigger. The deer, hit, staggered and finally fell to the ground.

Wordlessly, the five in the hunting party stood up and moved toward the animal.

“Look at that,” one whispered. “A big 10-pointer.”

“Quite a trophy,” another agreed.

“Let’s get him dressed,” said a third.

The marksman bent down and plucked the tranquilizer dart from the buck’s shoulder as the others performed their well-learned task. They took a large covering from a backpack and unfolded it. It was striped: safety orange and clear. They grunted as they worked to get one of the straps under the enormous animal.

Soon, they were done and the deer began to awaken. They scampered back to their place of concealment to watch. The sniper had another dart ready, just in case.

The buck stood and shook himself a little, throwing off the lingering traces of his brief, unexpected nap. He looked at the strange blanket he was now wearing and shook himself again. The blanket remained in place. It smelled of humans, but there didn’t seem to be any harm in it. He wandered farther into the woods, and the humans turned in the other direction.

“That’s the last of the foolers,” one noted.

“Those won’t stop the hunt,” another said, “but when a hunter sees that orange maybe he’ll think twice or even three times before shooting.”

“Best way to hide a deer during hunting season is in plain sight,” the shooter said. “If our covered deer look a little like another hunting party, they might just get away.”

“And if some hunters get wise to the trick and shoot anything that moves, orange or not, that’ll thin their herd.”

The members of Bambi’s Bushwhackers, a secret anti-hunting group, chuckled about that as they headed for their pickups.

Fiction: About the Old Days

Posted on by bryon

I hadn’t known anyone could keep talking while taking a breath. The woman across the way from me on the bus could do it, though.

She filled the aisle seat as full as could be. With the bus being at capacity, that meant she had a trapped audience in the window seat. He was a young man — younger than my 35 years then — and was dressed neatly enough. I sat by the window across from them; your grandma dozed on and off next to me. We were headed home after going to a funeral on her side of the family.

After the first two minutes the young man across the way didn’t so much as grunt to encourage the woman to keep talking or to make her think he was listening. He closed his eyes for a while, either trying to feign or attain sleep. She didn’t mind at all and he gave up on that and stared out the window.

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Fiction: Tally

Posted on by bryon

Natalie watched and then made another hash mark on the whiteboard. It went next to three others that were gradually making up the next set of five. The board was nearly half full of such bright green marks, each about an inch and a half tall, as uniform in size as freehand could make them.

She was very careful about that. It mattered. Each mark was a compromise she and Mason had agreed upon. Too big and not enough marks would fit on the board; too small, and too many marks would fit. She had practiced with the marker until she could neatly fill the board with one hundred marks, in tallies of fives.

She looked over at Mason and watched. Then she made the five-bar gate to signify the fifth attempt of that set.

“That’s fifty,” she said, more distinctly than was absolutely necessary.

Mason frowned and nodded. Then he made himself smile as he got back in his chair.

“That was a good morning’s workout,” he claimed. “Lunch, a little rest, and we’ll be ready for the blue pen this afternoon.”

Natalie also forced a smile and nodded at him.

Mason looked at the German shepherd sitting by the door; the dog was leashed, and the hand loop was hooked over the doorknob. That kept Schultz from running to his master’s side during the counting process.

“Ready to go out, Schultz?” Mason asked. The dog’s face brightened, and Mason rolled his wheelchair around the soft mats he had fallen on fifty times that morning. He took hold of the leash and opened the door. Schultz, mindful of his master’s needs, slowly led Mason through the doorway and outside.

Natalie walked around the mats and closed the door behind them. She told herself not to sigh but did so anyway.

Fifty times Mason had fallen this morning. And it was almost a given he would fall fifty times this afternoon as she filled the rest of the whiteboard with blue marks. Then he would stop for the day.

They had begun to work it out just before he left the hospital.

“Mason, it would be a miracle if you ever walked again. How many times are you willing to fall in one day to try for that miracle?”

“I’m willing to fall a thousand times a day to make that first step on my own.”

“I’m not willing to watch you fall a thousand times a day,” she had told him.

They had compromised on one hundred.

Just fifty to go, in the middle of the afternoon, and they could both call it a day.