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100 Days

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Yesterday, I capped my 100-day writing experiment/exercise.

The goal was to write something new every day for 100 days without missing. I had no length requirement, but I found that as I got more into it, the greater effort was in keeping the piece short and interesting than writing something daily.

I learned a lot about my writing style, the mistakes I’m prone to making and I discovered some good things about my imagination. I think there are other lessons there that I’m still working on.

My secondary goal in this exercise was to develop a field of ideas from which to build on. I feel a longer work coming on. Initially, I thought a play, some longer short stories or a book. But to do that well enough, I wanted to get my skills up to par.

Many people have been very kind and supportive in their comments and notes. It is a great compliment for people to ask for more. I really appreciate the time everybody took to check out the stories, or story bits, and provide feedback. That is just the best.

So I ask myself, what now?

I was hoping to get a bit more feedback from the people prone to reading my posts on what they might like to see. Since you are reading it, it seems contrary to produce something you might have little interest in. Some questions come to mind:

  • Is there any interest in a longer work?
  • If so, was there something you saw over the last 100 days you might like to see more of? Something I can flesh out?
  • Is that something you might be interested in reading along the way or would you want to wait until it’s complete?
  • What would you be interested in? A play? A book length piece? An array of dazzling advertising slogans?
  • Any other thoughts?

I can find all 100 posts here on my blog. Please share the link if you can: https://thejeffworks.wordpress.com

It would be great if you could take a moment to comment, or drop me a private message or email and let me know what you think.

I can’t see putting the brakes on now as I feel I’ve hit some sort of stride, so I’m thinking I will continue my posts, unless writing a longer piece takes up all my writing energy, but I’m thinking I might take the weekends off.

Thanks again for all your support. Now…let me have it.

Friendship

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Mush pushed the Rambler to the limits of its abilities. Dap lay in the back. It was hard to see him from the front and even harder to hear his breathing over the rough running engine. The hospital was still at least thirty minutes away and the whole world was hanging from a fragile string of potential accidents waiting to happen.

The weekend was supposed to be a laugh. It started that way. Mush and Dap worked at the Mortworth foundry. They met in high school and became fast friends spending lunch periods and time after school getting to know each other. They had enough in common to become fast friends, and just enough subtle differences to build a mutual deep respect and genuine admiration.

The plan was to leave around noon on Friday and head to a cabin by Lake Morris. Dap’s uncle had cleared the weekend just for them with nothing to do but fish and drink some beer. If you told him he would be tearing up small mountain road, not 24 hours later, with his friend in the backseat fighting for his life, his only option was to turn you in and have you locked up.

Dap’s mind was far from the backseat, having been tucked away for safe keeping the moment he slipped into unconsciousness, but his body was full on and quietly fighting to retain life as it jostled, bounced and bled it’s way around the Rambler’s dark interior.

News

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Elliston Mast plopped the paper down and flopped backwards into his chair. He started reading the daily paper end to end as a deliberate practice two years ago as a way to keep his mind fresh and to have a good understanding of what was going on in the world.

He found the routine satisfying, at first. Over the last few months however, something shifted. His once passive intake of news and information started to come with a mental commentary. Spotty at first, the thoughts and reactions crept in and grew with the days. Audible grunts and ‘humphs’ followed. They prefaced longer strings of conscious responses and soon he was not only reading the paper out loud, but providing feedback on the story at the same time, often waving the pages in the air with disgust.

Today, even the ads annoyed him and he told them so while pointing and shaking his fist. The nerve of so and so mattress company to spread the fear that a mattress needs to be replaced every seven years! Why he could jump right into his twelve-year-old bed, roll around in it without so much of a hint of a squeak and then sleep solidly like a newborn baby in glorious comfort and support. He might even sleep better, to spite the mattress company! Yes, so and so mattress company, in your face!

The rage never started with the ads of course. The silly, simple context of the ads which treated human beings like morons was only the creamy topping on a ‘news’ sundae which not only set the pot to boil, but brought it up to full burn. Even the sports page garnered comments and derision.

Every day, like a soap opera, the paper added a few more sordid details to the developing stories intent on stringing the reader along  just enough to pick up tomorrow’s edition to see what happens next. Sensational murder trails, unfortunate accidents, crimes of the stupid and tragically uninformed littered the pages every day and like a waterfall, new stories of the same ilk awaited him the next day and the next day and the next.

He started reading the paper to keep his mind fresh and to have a good understanding of what was going on in the world. The paper itself often ended up balled up in a huge mass in his backyard with him standing over it, setting it ablaze with the help of some tiki torch fluid from the garage and a disposable candle-lighter.

Ghost

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Time was indefinable. She no longer marked the days. The sun cycles and the passing seasons simply went on as they always had, one after the other, with little consequence. She no longer wrapped herself in the warmth of sunbeams or reveled in the wonder of the moon. She was…cold.

She no longer sat, or stood, or ran. She did not hunger. She did not thirst. At least, not in a way she could describe. Still, there was a need, a yearning for something long gone. Her desire to embrace it, to possess it stirred a rage she had not known before, for all the yearning and pain, defining the thing seemed beyond her.

Visitors made infrequent stops to the house where she made her home. They often brought with them at least a glimmer of that which stirred her desires and being with them seemed to quell the longing, but not the need. That deep-rooted need and the inability to satisfy the hole it created seemed very much like an insatiable hunger. A hunger that often stirred the rage.

Like most visits, the welcome is only as good as the guest. She believed it was incumbent upon the guest to know when to go. If they could not give her what she needed, she had no use for them. They crowded her. They neglected her. They ignored her. They taunted her with their lives…their life.

The realization strikes like a crushing hammer blow.

Life.

She could not feel in a way she thought she remembered. She could not touch. She sought herself in reflective glass, but nothing was revealed. She sought herself in the residue of daily life, a pile of dirty clothes, a used coffee mug, a well read newspaper, but things remained as they were where she was unless they, her visitors made them otherwise.

Life.

They laughed. They cried. They yelled, and battled, and forced both violence and love upon each other with insurmountable restrictions and self-serving conditions. And all the while, she could only observe and taste the tiny scraps of life’s energy cast off by the fools who knew so little about the value in what they inherently wasted.

She was…or was she?

She was, but she wasn’t.

She was once, but now she is just an echo. A shadow one seems to glimpse behind a door, or that scurries to the corner when the light flickers on.

She once was, but now she only lurks in the mists of time, trapped in an astral plane that is the world she once knew so well, and like them, took for granted.

An Open Letter to Bethenny Frankel

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Java typed with determination and focus, as she was prone to do in these situations:

An open letter to Bethenny Frankel –

Dear Bethenny Frankel:

We don’t know each other and I doubt that the circumstances of our existences will ever allow our paths to cross. Still, I felt obligated to write to congratulate you on your new television program. Good for you. Well done.

I should tell you that I don’t plan on watching it…ever. That is due in part to my insane work schedule at Delpher’s Feed & Grain and the other things I do that consume my life. The other part is, I can’t find one reason why I would tune in. Really. Not one. You are so far removed from anything I could relate to that I can’t even imagine turning the program on out of curiosity.

That said; should you decide go full on Jerry Springer and start with the paternity tests and the chair throwing and such, let me know. I might give it a peek. To be fair, that programming is very far from anything I can relate to as well, but there is a dark, circus-like feel to it that can come off as entertaining through a haze of cold capsules or a high fever.

I will say that you have inspired me to start looking for this magical mystical fountain where they seem to handout daily syndicated talk shows. It exists right? I mean…you found it. Not for myself mind you, I’m not so eager to promote myself to the masses for the sake of the façade of fame. My friend, Clara however, would be a great talk show host. She is feisty, yet empathetic and draws from real life experiences that actually help people. Did you know she was hit by a train and lived to tell about it? No. You probably don’t. Clara should be on TV. Her biggest problem is she really likes to swear.

Finally, Bethenny Frankel, I want to wish you the best. Not for now. Save it for when the tent poles on your personal circus fold up and you start looking for the next thing to satisfy your need for public adulation. I’m sure you’ll land on your feet. You might check into another ‘reality based’ program that gives us a deeper and even more unnecessary glimpse into your sordid existence. A&E has this program called “Amish Mafia.” Check that one out.

That is all. Congrats on the new show. You go girl! Hopefully, it will run its course and be gone before I even catch a glimpse of it by accident and run the risk of going partially blind in that eye.

And I’ll apologize now Bethenny Frankel, but I have this insane, nagging need to see you in Heath Ledger’s Joker make-up. It just seems like a natural.

Your friend in the cosmos – Java

Hamlet

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Hamlet jumped ahead as Casper Turlock opened his front door to step out into the brisk fall morning. The smallish dog tugged on his leash with an eagerness that reminded him of a kid who had too much sugar churning through him.

It was early, still dark. Casper judged the temperature and decided to tug up the zipper on his jacket just a bit.

Hamlet continued to tug until they got going and found their pace. The morning walk was a refreshing time for both of them. Casper had no idea what was going through Hamlet’s head. He was really Cheryll’s dog and while the relationship between man and beast started off a bit rocky, the two had come to establish a steady détente through the comfort of routine.

For Casper the mornings were a time of solitude, reflection and relief that he didn’t have to encounter many people. Aside from the occasional car engine, the only sounds he heard, especially on a morning like this, were the light winds brushing past his hear, a rare morning bird and the constant jangle of Hamlet’s tags.

He walked his pace and thought his thoughts while Hamlet nosed his way around the sidewalk and any nearby shrub he happened to encounter, occasionally snarfing, or sneezing, or whatever it is that dog’s do when they get a snout full of something.

The morning walk came with the promise of a carefree nothingness, a time to forget the woes of the moment and a reprieve from the possible woes of the day ahead. A majority of the time, the walk was uneventful. The only time the walk had the potential to go sour was when Hamlet sniffed out a skunk who graciously spared them from an unpleasant spraying, mostly due to Casper’s still quick reflexes. Well, still quick enough to yank a smallish dog back on a leash. Danger averted.

As they turned down Bobolink, Hamlet pulled to the length of his leash to get to a clump of brush and stopped to stick his nose deep inside.

Snarf.

“Come on Hamlet. One more mile to go.”

Casper walked on, but the dog, who would normally follow stood his ground and even fought a bit to stand his ground when Casper gave the leash a gentle tug.

“Come on boy.”

Snarf.

Casper stopped and rolled his eyes a bit as if he was asked to do something he really didn’t want to do.

Whimper. Snarf.

“All right,” Casper said, making a mental note that the dog may be stressing the terms of their alliance. “What have you got?”

He took a few steps back to the dog and pushed him back. The dog stepped back, but that surged forward as Casper reached between the branches.

Bark. Snarf.

Casper pulled out a paper bag rolled down from the top, the kind you only see under the counters of grocery store check out lines any more.

He crouched down to get closer to the dog’s level. “If this is a bag full of bloody clothes or a head or something, it’s the pound for you big man.”

Bark!

Casper rolled up the top of the bag and peered inside. Even in the dim pre-dawn light and the weak glow of a nearby street lamp, Casper could see that the bag was filled with loose, yet densely-packed one hundred dollar bills.

Saturday

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Patch relished the dizzy euphoria that comes with sleeping in on Saturday. Pulling the pillow off his head, he stretched into a deep arch of tension before flopping into a pile of absolute fluffy-headed relaxation…for about twelve seconds.

A subtle mental mantra evaporated the very second Patch’s eyes shot open. His head turned to look at his clock, he face slapped the mattress. His eyes squinted to focus.

8:20.

His mind raced. It’s Saturday. He’s going to have breakfast and read the paper. It’s 8:20. He’s going to run to the store and get a twelve pack before the game. It’s 8:20. It might rain today. It was supposed to rain yesterday, but they pushed it to today. It’s 8:20. He knew about the rain because he watched the late news on channel eight. The news comes after L.A. Gun Force, which he watches every Tuesday. Tuesday. It’s 8:20. Tuesday! It’s not Saturday. It’s Wednesday!

CRAP!

It’s not Saturday. It’s Wednesday. It’s 8:20 and he’s late.

Patch shot out of bed with his feet tangled in his sheets. He crashed to the floor. His head missed the corner of his dresser and a possible trip to the emergency room by three-quarters of an inch.

A string of expletives filled the air as he struggled to work himself free of the restrictive cloth. He crawled across the floor to the bathroom on his hands and knees. Grabbing the edge of the counter, he pulled himself up to see himself in the mirror.

“Saturday? Really?”

Patch shook his fist at his reflection.

“Moron.”

Free Drinks

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“Ok,” Tuke said, rubbing his hands together, “What’s up for tonight?”

“I don’t know,” said Hipps. “I’m feeling kind of blue. I’m thinking I just lost my long time faithful companion and well loved family dog Jasper.”

“Seriously?” said Tuke. “That’s a drag. And, didn’t we kill Jasper off three months ago?”

“That was Whiskers,” said Hipps. “Family cat.”

“Still…what a downer.”

It was Free Drink Tuesday. Tuke and Hips sat in parking lot of the Carmalita Bar and Grill trying to invent their next story. It had to be real enough to elicit sympathy or celebration, there had to be just enough backstory for them to make it believable, but not so complex that they got lost in the details, it had to be something they didn’t have to prove and it had to be strong enough that they would ultimately score free drinks.

“Look,” Tuke said, “If you want to kill something, how about your beloved Uncle Tilk?”

“We killed him already.”

“Yeah, but that was months ago and don’t you remember how he loved to drink and tell jokes and…I loved Uncle Tilk.”

“He wasn’t real.”

“He was real to me,” Tuke said. “And I’ll never forget him. God rest his soul.”

“I’m just not feeling that up tonight,” Hipps said.

The two in invented Free Drink Tuesday about a year and a half ago as a way to have fun, stay edgy and ultimately…cut down on the amount of money they spent on drinks their monthly outings. They liked drinking.

The idea bubbled up between them one night as they worked their way through a number of Couldersville’s prime drinking establishments. It seemed bartenders and servers were generally happy to part with a few free drinks when someone was celebrating something, or trying to get over something.

They tried it themselves and found great success on their birthdays. The problem was they only had two birthdays between them and their birthdays that sat months apart from each other. It hardly provided a regular opportunity for them to score free drinks on a more frequent basis.

It wasn’t until a simple off the cuff remark from Tuke put them on the path to drink prosperity. The moment of realization was still fresh in his mind. Tanya, server extraordinaire at Barker’s Pub on route 33, tipped the scales in their favor.

Hipps was blue, again, and after grabbing their table, Tanya approached.

“Good evening gentlemen,” Tanya said while smiling and placing small napkins before them. “What are you all celebrating tonight?”

Tuke looked at Hipps who looked down at his napkin and wallowed in the eight seconds of silence that passed between them as Tanya looked on.

“He’s depressed,” Tuke said causing Hipps’s head to shoot up. “Yes, he depressed because his girlfriend…his long time girlfriend…his fiancé…of seven years just left him…to join the Marines.”

Another moment of silence passed as Tuke felt Hipps’s glare burn into him. The moment seemed an eternity until Tanya tilted her head to the side, stuck her lower lip out in a pout and said, “Well that is just about the saddest story I’ve heard all day. This first one is on the house.”

Ding! Free Drink Tuesday was born.

Since that moment, and every month since then, they have celebrated various life events well worthy of free drinks including such glorious moments as Tuke’s liberation from his capture by Somalian pirates, buddy colonoscopy, the passing of dear Uncle Tilk, the passing of Whiskers, buddy vasectomy, Tuke’s being stuck by lightning eight times and Hipps’s awakening from a coma that coincided with the passing of the comet Maltese on leap day.

Superstar

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At nine years old, Maxie King was already a superstar, at least from within the confines of her bedroom. Her performances were legendary. She was a giving artist and the legion of stuffed animals and dolls clustered precariously on her dresser at the base of her full-size mirror created the most appreciative audience an artist could want.

The venue was practically built to her personal specifications. She aimed a couple of flashlights carefully taped to two small coat trees and placed on either side of her dresser to converge on her standing spot, her center stage. She saved a sheet of blue cellophane that once wrapped a present from Grandma Nell and cut it to cover the lights when she needed to ‘bring everything down’ for her slow songs, usually dedicated to one of the many non-blinking, eternally blissful stuffed creatures that stood before her.

Her wardrobe was enviable. Comprised of thrift store glitter dresses and a mosh of Halloween costumes from bargain bins next to newly placed Christmas decorations, Maxie made enough costume changes during her performance to put Cher to shame.  It made her shows both a spectacle, and often, exceedingly long.

Her microphone was real; a gift from Uncle Cal who said it didn’t work anymore. To Maxie, after she tucked the end of the cord into the bottom drawer of her dresser it worked fine for her. Tammy Dillard used a fake plastic one…amateur.

Rage

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Dart plopped himself into the driver’s seat of his car. He slammed the door with great authority and enjoyed the extra noise it made in the parking garage. He forced a calm into his hand so that the key slid into the ignition easily. His teeth clenched harder to take up the slack. The car came to life and he backed it out carefully, but his grip on the wheel was tight and unforgiving. He pulled around to and through the automatic gate and stayed relatively silent until he hit the street. At that point, he was free to unleash.

He started with a solid string of expletives, low and slow at first, but long enough to build to the point where the last few raked his vocal cords. His hands clenched the wheel tighter and as he stopped at the first traffic light, he let out a scream that both released an initial wave of frustration and a spray of saliva that dotted his windshield. Dammit! How he hated a dirty windshield.

Moving past the level of primal expression, he strung together actual words that formed hateful, yet basic rhetorical questions the car certainly would not be able to answer.

“What the hell was that?”

“What did they mean by that?”

“Who does that?”

“What kind of…”

Another primal shriek filled the enclosed space.

The radio had avoided drawing his attention that was, until the first words of Soft Cell’s “Tainted Love” seemed to hit him in the face. He hated Tainted Love.

“SHUT UP!”

Dart punched the dial, dropping the radio into silence. A tiny sense of reason rose from the back of his head. He hoped that he didn’t pop it so hard that he broke it. In general, his radio was his car ride companion and they logged hundreds of thousands of miles together in times far worse than this. He would miss it if he broke it and would be extra pissed to have to fix it.

Snob

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Carrington Phit was not a fan of the general public. It’s not that he hated people. It’s more that people, in their inherent predictability, never failed to prove themselves capable of even contemplating their true potential. More often than not, they preferred wallowing in their mediocrity and complaining about why they didn’t have more. They made victims of themselves.

Being successful took work. Even though his own path to success featured struggles and challenges that brought him to the brink of bankruptcy, both in money and in spirit, he could proudly say that he made it through and he was a better person for it.

Now, having achieved a certain stature in the human pecking order, he felt entitled to proceed through the rest of his years as he saw fit. In his mind, there were ways of doing things.  Some might consider his ways old-fashioned, you dressed for dinner out, you supported the proper community groups, at least monetarily, and you conducted yourself with a modicum of grace and refinement when in public.

His work required that he travel regularly. Often enough that he could access many of the various airline perks afforded the frequent flier. Still, it was not enough to keep him out of the flow of the general traveling public. He didn’t consider himself an elitist, but he did often wonder what happened to some of the refinement that used to come with traveling. It used to be special. Now people are treated like cattle and they often behave much the same way. They seemed all right with it. He was not.

Carrington viewed the lack of smart dress and diminished interpersonal skills as evidence of the ongoing social decay he felt all around him. Thanks to some idiot who tried to set his shoes on fire on a flight some years ago, he now had to go through the degrading practice of practically disrobing in order to get to his flight.  He worked to streamline the time he spent in these lines, but there was only so much he was willing to do.

That was another problem with people generally, their willingness to forego certain graces in the name of convenience, especially at airports, subjected him to a flood of ill-fitting clothing and more bare feet than he ever wanted to see beyond the boundaries of some Oceanside resort. Worse still, was the apparent lack of hygiene these poor feet enjoyed. Nauseating.

Paradise Gone

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George Pullman pulled into his driveway at the end of a long day’s work, three days after his vacation. It took a day and a half for the sheen of his time in the islands, that post-vacation euphoria, to evaporate in a cloud of reports, statistics, ratings and fiery circumstances allowed to develop in his absence that needed his immediate attention.

Fortunately, for him a gift awaited on the front step of his house, a gift to himself that he hoped would continue to connect him to the peace and tranquility of those glorious days in paradise, five cases of Manticoopa. Manticoopa was an island favorite and George fell in love with it the moment it crossed his lips. It wasn’t really a soda and it wasn’t really juice. It tasted heavenly any way you served it, straight, on ice, or as a mixer. In one case, he enjoyed a delightful dinner of delicate field quail marinated in Manticoopa and served with a light island fruit chutney.

Manticoopa held within it, the essence of the islands. A delicate balance of fruits mixed with a mango base that was never too sweet or too dry. It had a pleasant, light orange color, an ever so light effervescence so as not to disturb the flavor and the subtle scent of coconut reminiscent of the island breeze. Just thinking about it, he could almost feel himself drifting back to heaven.

His mood perked up considerably. The day might not be a total wash after all. He parked the car, rushed inside and brought the cases into the kitchen. The cost to bring these five cases to Cornington was ridiculous and impulsive. But he so wanted at least the notion of his vacation to continue that he was willing to do the work and pay the cost. One afternoon, he found a distributor willing to ship to the states. George made all the arrangements so that the shipment would arrive safely after his return so he was there to receive them. His work quickly consumed him and he nearly forgot that the cases were on the way.

Now, safely in the privacy of his own kitchen, he prepared to transport himself back to tranquility. He put on some island music, another small gift to himself, a CD of the hotel house band’s most requested songs. He pulled out a special glass intending to highlight the color and let the delicate beverage breathe. He opened case one and pulled out the first of 240 cans that he planned to meter out over the next few months, or whenever he needed a quick escape. He closed his eyes and breathed deep with anticipation as he snapped the top open to release this glorious nectar.   

The Manticoopa tumbled from the can into the glass, a bit darker than he remembered and with a bit more foam. The expectation of a subtle essence of coconut seemed lost in a cloud of fizz, but no matter, this is what he was waiting for. He let the beverage settle before bringing the glass to his lips and taking a full, deep sip. He held the fluid in his mouth and awaited the magic. 

His pursed lips that held back the fluid puckered. His eyes, once closed in anticipation squeezed tighter together as his brain tried to weed through the bombardment of messages coming from the mouth.

His mouth filled with a sour flavor half-reminiscent of a plum well past its prime and a healthy dose of a lemon based furniture polish. Whatever the taste, an immediate flood of saliva mixed with the unsettled concoction and forced him to move the fluid around in his mouth. Pushing it into his cheeks, the flavor transformed again into something more beer-like than fruity and the ever-present essence of stale, wet paper.

George forced himself to swallow. The after taste that coated his mouth forced him to run to the fridge, pull out a beer and cleanse the residue from his palette. He slammed the beer can down on the counter. He looked at the can of Manticoopa. He looked at the full glass minus one healthy swig. He looked at the expensive cases holding the 239 remaining cans, cans which he knew in that moment he would never drink. He looked at the floor. His vacation was truly over.

Target

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Mitzy Cole suffered from something many high school girls suffered from, she was blossoming. While this was natural and wonderful in so many ways that even she was unable to fully comprehend, Tracy Colter, Janice Melton and Brin Whitmire found this to be totally unacceptable.

While high school, structurally, allows for the common progression of students from grade to grade, year to year, it seems to do little to accommodate the varied levels of development of its inmates beyond the academic.

Mitzy, Tracy, Janice and Brin had known each other since the 5th grade. In 6th and 7th grade, they were fairly thick, sharing secrets and pizzas over random sleepovers, going to skating parties, exchanging friendship bracelets and giggling until they could barely breathe. They hugged and cried a bit when 8th grade split them up and 9th grade brought about the reunion of the other three, leaving Mitzy on the side to figure things out on her own.

There are a million stories of that mystical time, those one or two summers, when kids seem to go from awkward kid to awkward more adult looking kid loaded with hormones and confusion. In May or June they go away all geeky and wobbly and they come back in August all buff and disenchanted. Nature is either cruel in not letting all kids advance at the same rate to level the playing field, or smart and calculating by knowing that the rest of the world could not handle all of that condensed development in one fell swoop so it meters it out for the safety of all.

Mitzy was clearly on a different track from the other three, who had physically matured quite a bit heading into 9th grade. They had discovered make-up and shopping at Calification, a store that brought the styles of California to Billings. You needed more money to shop there, which they apparently had. Tracy began to pull together a small group of like-minded shoppers with Janice and Brin as her lieutenants and the other girls as her minions.

Mitzy believed that whoever was putting the highlights in Tracy’s hair was using something unnatural that was warping her perception of the world and her place in it. To her credit, Tracy assumed power quickly. She was taller than her recruits were, she was quicker when it came to smart remarks and practical lies, and she had a dangerous stare. Benji Coleman says he swore he saw that very stare melt a glass in the cafeteria once.

Mitzi had been shorter than most of the girls heading into 9th grade. She liked to read and mostly kept to herself until the circumstances of the cafeteria and biology gave her the opportunity to create a few potential friendships. She hated the clothes from Calification, so she wore her usual array of t-shirts and sneakers. She was comfortable, smart, and not much of a threat to the power trio and her minions.

But that was 9th grade, and when the doors opened that August and Mitzy stepped into 10th grade, she herself felt very much the same…on the inside, but those around her noticed many changes. She had grown a solid two inches, decided to let her hair grow out a bit longer and she did some more experimenting with make up. Her overall style was similar, but she wore her clothes differently. Different enough that it drew Benji Coleman out of his conversation with Matt Billings about the latest Sizerman comic book long enough to say, “Hey Mitz…wow!”

It happened that, while he intended nothing of the sort, Benji’s ‘wow’ was just loud enough, and just close enough to Tracy Colter to draw her attention.

Ever on guard, Tracy whipped her head around, appearing casual and disinterested as if she was flipping her hair, to see what source this wow created. When she saw the new girl at her locker, she stopped. That wasn’t a new girl at all. It took a moment, but after watching a series of double takes from others passing her by to confirm what they were looking at, it clicked…Mitzy Cole.

In that second of recognition, even Tracy would have been hard pressed to answer the harder question of why, but Mitzy Cole, for doing nothing more than brushing her hair differently and growing a bit taller became a target.

Matter

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Chalmers Penn began to think he didn’t matter anymore. He knew he still existed, but even when he looked in the mirror, he seemed a little less there. Not mentally, that was all good, but he could almost swear that he was fading.

This required some tests. He started on Monday. Something small, just in case it was a mental thing, he wore tennis shoes to work. Not is decent, casual Friday ones, but the ones he used to cut the grass, air-conditioned from a few holes and dyed stark green from the blood of a million blades of grass.

He had no meetings. No deliveries and his lunch pal, Bill was out of the office for two days so Monday seemed to be a bust. There were no opportunities for people to see his shoes, except for maybe Betsy whom he stopped by to ask a question, but she was deeply entrenched in a phone conversation, busily handling one of her standard fires and neglected to see him.

On Tuesday, he decided to bump things up a bit by wearing his old college Hawaiian party shirt and his grass cutting shoes. He had a fairly big meeting with Jolsten that afternoon and surely it would be a topic for discussion. Unfortunately, just as he got to Alice’s desk, Jolsten’s admin, she was cancelling his meetings for the rest of the afternoon and was informing Bolger, Jolsten’s boss, since his afternoon was clear, golf was a go.

On Wednesday, Penn decided to keep the shirt and the shoes and bump things up by getting drunk at breakfast and staying drunk all day. Not boomingly, stupidly drunk, but impaired enough to be noticeable. Near lunch time Bill swung around as he normally did, peeked over the rim of Penn’s cubicle and then wordlessly, hastily stepped away.

Did he see me or did he see me? Chalmers wondered. “Hey, Bill…” but Bill was gone.

In the cafeteria, by himself, he filled his tray with pretzels and three orders of fish strips. He stopped hiding his vodka bottle and left it right there on the tray next to the two cans of lemon-lime soda he would use to mix it in. He noticed no stares, no slight comments…nothing. In line to pay, the cashier offered a smile and a pleasant exchange to the lady before him and then visually skipped him to greet the man after him. He stood at the end of the line while she took three more customers before deciding to leave.

Thursday he avoided the mirror. He was afraid more of what he might not see than what he expected to see, less of him. His phone never rang. It was eight days since he received a text from anyone, and he was nearly run over by that bicycle delivery boy. He decided that he must take one more, potentially catastrophic test. He went to work entirely naked, with a few drinks in him for courage, and went about his day.

On Friday, Chalmers Penn’s apartment was quiet and empty. A few dirty dishes stood in the sink unattended, a clock on a bookcase ticked as it had dutifully for years, but Chalmers Penn was nowhere to be seen.

Dinner

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Lewis opened the door to the fridge with a sort of blind ignorance tied to a wish that maybe this time, there would be something there he might not be responsible for,  some kind of gift left by fairies, or trolls, or leprechauns.

Wrong again.

A quick visual survey confirmed the only things in there were things he put there and hadn’t used yet. Most of the things he couldn’t use without getting more things. Swinging the door wide, the light came up on three beers, two pounds of butter, an expired jar of green olives where the remaining two olives were floating in a murky brine, a dried up carrot, a tiny jar of orange marmalade someone got him from a recent trip to the sunny south and one slice of American cheese where the corners were getting hard because he neglected to close the Ziplock properly.

What was he doing with so much butter?

He grabbed one of the beers, now dinner, and the carrot. He tossed the carrot into the garbage bin, snapped the top off the beer and held it to his head. It was so hot he was convinced there was a sizzle when the can touched his skin.

The air conditioning blew out earlier this morning and being a bit late on the rent certainly didn’t seem to motivate the super into coming up to have a look at it.

The first course of dinner went down fast. He barely tasted it. He opened the fridge again, grabbed a second beer – the main course – and forced himself to slow down enough to make it last. He would try not to get at the last one tonight. What could be dessert might have to be breakfast in the morning.

He plopped himself down onto the chair of his nook-sized kitchen table and stared up at the bright, naked light bulb hanging from the ceiling. Sweat dripped down his face.

“What a mess,” he said softly to himself. It might have been the fifth time he said it in the last thirty minutes and he lost count of how many times it rolled across his mind this week. It was only Wednesday. There were still many more eye-opening moments of full failure realization to go before he had two solid days to wallow in his unfortunate circumstance free of the burden of weekly annoyances.

Of course, the rent was due on Friday, really two months worth now, and while part of his mind churned on any one of a number of creative excuses for not having the full amount this month, the other half was scheming away at how he could get the money in two days, and how getting the money would certainly turn things around…or at least start to turn things around.

All of his thoughts began with phrases like, “if I could just,” or “if only.” Phrases you might hear on a Saturday morning cartoon where Scooby and the gang are about to be done in by this week’s mystery, when “if only” results in a misstep, that results in an accident, that results in everything working out and the kids becoming heroes for saving the day.

Lewis had some pretty big “if onlys.” Short of running around his apartment shoving bookcases and trying to turn light fixtures to possibly reveal a secret passage or untold wealth, he was pretty certain there was no neat and clean Scooby ending awaiting him at the end of a 90 second commercial break.

He got up and walked to the fridge. It was probably just as good a night as any to have a little dessert.