Brooding

He is going to have to leave her, if he ever wants not to be miserable again. But even though the logic works, he can’t stop brooding. And wondering.

Whoever said, “It’s better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all,” should be dragged naked through the desert. First, for the split infinitive. But second, for the sentiment. Long ago, he was consumed with despair, empty and cold. Resigned to be alone. He should have been left for dead.

Instead, he was given a tantalizing taste of what life should be like.

To take that away is worse than not having had it before. He’s not the blind man who treasures his five-minute rainbow. He’s the poor man who never should have tasted gourmet food, because he’d never have known what he was missing.

Family

I love taking photographs. I record my life with forensic determination. I realized this morning that I don't have a single picture of you. You don't factor into my life, because every time I let you, everything seems to explode around me. If I had the choice, you would not even exist on the fringes of my life anymore. But what they say about family is true. You can't choose them.

I know people have unreasonably high expectations of family and holiday togetherness. So I try to empty myself of those kinds of thoughts. But my expectations—of having a holiday when you were quiet and maybe even civil to me—were still too high.

Sitting by the river, I run over the argument in my head. I came to you because I thought I'd somehow offended you. I asked how, and apologized. You started yelling. You didn't stop. I look over to the other side of the river and realize there is no bridge that will get me to the far side. It will always be within sight, but forever out of reach.

Maple

The drive home was frantic. I knew he was okay, but I also knew the tornado had hit our house; his spare descriptions left too much to the imagination. The roads were wet and sometimes flooded; my car floated over these spots at eighty miles per hour, completely out of my control. I was banking on the hope that we could only be hit by one disaster a day. Luckily, I was right about that.

I only willingly slowed down when I pulled into the neighborhood and began to see the damage—trees down, power lines littering the road, and houses smashed by invisible fists, their guts yanked out and jumbled grotesquely across yards and ditches. I pulled into the driveway and saw the old, stately maple tree in the back yard had been pushed over by the tornado. Its corpse lay across the yard, its root system standing taller than a person. Its tender, vivid green leaves didn’t know they were dead yet.

He rushed out to greet me. As I fell into his embrace and bit back relieved tears, the maple tree inexorably drew my eyes over his shoulder.

Abandoning

He flicked his cigarette; the pale ashes caught in the breeze and carried for a few feet before landing among the leaves. She hated this about him. He took another drag. He pulled so hard she could hear the tobacco crackling from where she sat, her legs dangling out of the driver side door. The powder blue of the car, she reflected, perfectly matched her eyeshadow. She was going to miss this car.

He exhaled a noxious cloud of smoke and tossed the butt into the leaves. She was glad it was wet. She tapped her long red fingernails on the steering wheel. She didn't know why she had to be here, and not one of his thugs. She rolled her eyes but said nothing. She knew better. She folded a new piece of chewing gum into her mouth.

He jerked his head in an arrogant gesture. Time to move on, then. She swung her platform-heeled feet inside and looked through the broken windshield. With a mighty grunt, he pushed the rear of the car, and it slowly rolled forward. She turned the wheel every time they threatened to hit a tree.

"All right, get out," he said as the car rolled to a stop.

She did so, carefully checking for twigs and branches before stepping anywhere. "I don't think anyone's going to find it all the way out here," she said, gum smacking. He shook his head.

They stood together looking at the car. She promised herself to come back and look at it in a few years. Who knew what it would look like then?

Cold

Minutes after we received the phone call that she had passed away, we stepped out into the wintry yard, numb from more than cold. We didn't speak. The breath that crystallized in the air between us was enough. The sun rose, threatening to melt the pristine snow into muddy sludge, but for one pure moment, it was she, catching the white world on fire in a final celebration. We looked back at the house for a while, somehow yellow in the dawn. Before the cold could settle into our bones, we turned and headed back inside. The crunching of our boots was the only thing we said to each other. It was enough.

The Show

Her blood hammered through her veins with such force that her body vibrated. She couldn't keep her hands still; she picked up an object, rolled it between finger and thumb, felt its texture and coolness, then set it down at random. The bass of the music seemed to dictate the frenetic pulsing of her heart. It wasn't the kind of thing she normally liked, this techno-dance music, but it was perfect for tonight.

A burst of applause and cheers rocked the building, and the girl ahead of her took a sweeping bow, her hair extensions dusting the floor of the stage. She stepped behind the curtain; their shoulders brushed. A new song, slower than the last but still so loud it was hard to think, began to wind its way from the speakers. It was time. Her hips began to sway as she stepped out into the spotlight.

The Scotsman

Panting, he released the sharkskin hilt and pushed the blade into the soft mud. The few pounds of steel had become an unwieldy weight extended from his arm after hours of fighting through the heather. He wiped his sweaty brow and tried to get his breathing under control. Abandoning the sword, he walked a few paces to the top of the hill. Hovering just above the moist hills that stretched into the distance, the sky was a pale gray-white. Beyond that was a thick, gray-black wall of clouds. It looked as if Hell had inverted and was stretching downward to reach the earth.

He sighed and retrieved his sword. There was a long way yet to go.

Ignorance

“What on earth are you eating?” Fish’s disapproving voice was small and somehow squiggly, like her. She spoke through fat maroon lips that clashed magnificently with her tangerine scales.

“Don’t patronize me,” said Turtle, turning up his nose. It was speckled in lime green algae. “Anyhow, I’m busy.”

Fish huffily swam away in a flutter of wispy fins and bubbles. Turtle rolled his eyes irritably. Who had time for that kind of theatrical nonsense? The world was about to end, and he hadn’t even been to the other side of the swamp yet. He hefted his shell up and glanced at the sky. It was late afternoon already; gold streaked the bits of cloud that showed through the Spanish moss. He took a careful step along the log and felt it rock comfortably beneath him; he would miss that.

A blue heron alighted in the shallows a few feet away and eyed Turtle beadily. “Don’t bother!” Turtle yodeled. “The world’s about to end, you know.” The heron blinked. It was an articulate blink, which said, Oh dear. Another doomsday prophet. Turtle got a lot of those blinks, but he didn’t care anymore. They’d all be sorry enough soon.

He resolutely turned his back on the heron, feeling smug and righteous. He took another step and slipped. He clenched with his other legs, but it was too late. He somersaulted into the water with a crack and a splash. He flailed and righted himself just in time to see Fish swimming up, looking thoroughly judgmental. He turned his flailing into a graceful stroke as she pulled up beside him.

“What are you doing now?” she asked.

“I’m going to the other side of the swamp,” he informed her with as much dignity as he could muster. “It it’s all the same to you.”

“Don’t be a fool,” she said. “Those waters are polluted. And I’ve heard wheeled machines go very fast on the flat gray part of the ground. You’ll be flattened.”

He shook his head ponderously. “Only if it’s the end of the world,” Turtle replied. “I’ve a feeling I’ll be around for that.”

“Pah!” Fish said, and swam away again. Turtle ignored her and went up for a much-needed gulp of air.

Only a few minutes later, he was out on dry land again, but unfamiliar territory. The droopy grass was a dusty brown color, and the cattails were stiff and rustled with every heavy breath of air. Turtle resolutely walked up the gentle slope toward the noise, not stopping to rest even once. He made it to the flat gray part that everyone talked about. It was hot and smelled funny. Every once in a while, huge things rolled very fast along it and never stopped to look around them. A long way down, buzzards gathered around something in the grass and chattered evilly over it. Turtle shuddered and stepped out onto the flat gray thing. Two, three, four steps out, and a huge wheeled thing passed within inches of his head. It had almost killed him! He darted inside his shell, trembling. This was a mistake. But he didn’t have the courage to move forward or turn back.

Suddenly, a horrible screeching sound rent the air, and a huge rolling thing stopped nearby; he felt the air it pushed and smelled its awful smell from inside his shell. There was a slamming sound, and then something clutched him by the shell with gentle pressure. He was lifted into the air. Flying! He was flying! It was the end of the world, he knew it. He’d almost made it.

He peeked out to see the ground rushing far beneath him. Occasionally this sight was marred, oddly, by the appearance of a red sneaker. He’d seen them on the lower limbs of fishermen. He closed his eyes in rhapsody as he was transported through space.

Suddenly he was submerged in warm water, and he knew he was in the afterlife. He sat there for a long time, adjusting to the idea that the world was over.

“Well?”

He was startled into opening his eyes. Fish hovered in the murky water, almost lips-to-nose with him. “Well what?” Turtle said sleepily.

“Well,” she said, puffing herself out, “what are you doing now? Would you like to get away from my side of the swamp, please?”

He smiled and nodded gently. The poor thing didn’t realize the world had ended already.

Dress-Up

“I freaking hate Halloween,” she muttered, shredding another hole in the perfectly good pantyhose she’d bought for the kitty cat costume. She wasn’t sure why holy tights were the thing to wear on Halloween, but then, who was she to argue with what was trendy? She followed fashion religiously, from bell bottoms to skinny jeans and back again. She’d look at pictures of herself from six months ago and wonder what on earth she’d been thinking.

She slipped into the vinyl shoes. Too big. She did a test walk around the room and stepped out of them twice. So she wouldn’t move too much at the night club. No big deal. She’d find some sap to buy her drinks and bring them to her.

She popped on the headband with the black triangular ears and made a kissy face at the mirror, batting the two-inch long fake eyelashes. Yep. Perfectly adorable. The line of the Spanx slimming girdle was just visible under the leotard, so she rummaged through the three-foot by two-foot plastic box under the bed and finally pulled out a rhinestone-spangled belt and wrapped it around her waist. There. Now no one would see her little secret.

The doorbell buzzed, and she waited a minute or two before heading downstairs. She opened the door, and glanced out. “I’m not going!” she exclaimed, seeing her friends’ costumes. She slammed the door. They’d dressed as the Brady Bunch, and hadn’t asked her to be Marcia? And not a bit of skin above the elbow showing on any of them.

Her cheeks burning, she rummaged in the fridge for the leftover pumpkin pie, ignoring the repeated banging on the door.