Tag Archives: creative writing

Twins

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Passing himself off as twins was way easier than he thought. Of course he hadn’t planned on taking it to this extreme or doing it this long, but once he reconciled the inner ethical qualms of living in a world of blatant duplicity over relative honesty, it just felt right.

Really, what he was doing was just a more literal representation of how most people live their daily lives anyhow. Sometimes, they were worse. His friend Sal had at least four distinct personalities that she could switch to without a moment’s notice. Depending on her mood, you never knew which Sal you would get.

His circumstance required a bit more finesse. It was becoming art really. He knew at some point the game would be called and one twin would have to absorb the other, but until then, the individual lives of Kevin and Klark were in full bloom and the road ahead was filled with possibilities…two lives worth.

Duck

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Billington Quackmire enjoyed a regal existence in the pond outside of the Third Pentecostal Human Relief Church and Bank and Trust, Inc.

His presence, and that of his neighbors Jacques and Marie (who pretended to be French, but weren’t) lent a certain post-cardesque charm to the locale, especially on those sunny spring days when everything was in full bloom.

For as long as he could recall, the Quackmires have made this pond their home. The act of charm inducing visual support their job. He often saw folks taking his picture as they left the service. When he was younger, he had trouble with his timing and could be caught with his backside in the air as he searched for food in the subtle murk that lie beneath the water. The others pointed out to him that while practical, the timing was undignified.

With time, he worked it out so that his gallant glide across the water took place as most people were leaving the building. If he timed it just perfectly, he would get just below the beech trees as the sun broke through the leaves with bands of light. It was a hard sight to resist.

Return

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He flipped through the stacks. Each one sparked a glimmer of memory through sight and sound.

It had been years since the fire. Years since he touched vinyl. Years now since things seemed to go…sour.

It seemed trivial on the surface. Others might think it irrational to tie fate so closely to something possessed. Yet, while these material items were not his originals, there was still a kinship.

Oh…this one got him through his break up with Mary Ellen Newburgh, and this one was pretty much the root soundtrack to the summer after he graduated college. A consistent presence in a time of change and turmoil.

They were all his friends.

His mind raced to find a way to claim them all, but it was impossible. It just helped to know that they were here.

Then he found it, or it found him. The one he needed. He looked up as a tear welled in the corner of his eye. An embarrassed warmth hit his cheeks as he tired quickly to blink it away. He snapped it up and held it close to his chest as if he had just found a lump of gold. He would have it back now. It was the very first step that felt like the right step in a good long time.

Plan B

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Bits stopped listening the instant Jelly uttered the words, “There’s more than one way to skin a cat.” And the whole time Jelly extolled the benefits of his ‘Plan B,’ Bits wondered about the phrase.

Where did it come from? What could possibly require one to know how to skin a cat, say nothing about why they would need more than one way? How many ways were there? Did someone at some point change the problem from skinning the cat at the onset to actually working through a number of potential ways to determine which one worked best?

She imagined a small research team charting and plotting the goal of getting a cat skinned only to realize once they finished that there might be many more efficient ways to accomplish the task.

“We are going to need a lot more cats,” she heard one say in the back of her mind.

She was also convinced that Jelly’s ‘Plan B’ was doomed to fail. Just casually throwing out the cat skinning analogy without knowing spit about actual cat skinning implied to her that he really had no idea what he was talking about.

Precocious

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At the age of seven and a half, Criss’s grandmother dubbed her as ‘precocious.’ Since then, it’s been a private goal of hers to live up to that.

She could not remember much about her grandmother or many of the things she might have said to her for as their visits to her stately home in Crendinmore were many, their direct interactions were few.

Their visits were routine. There would be hugs and hearty greetings at the door, then the adults would either step away to the sitting room or gather around a large table in the kitchen to talk. In the mornings they would sip coffee and nibble at coffeecakes. Visits later in the day involved simple drinks of alcohol and the sharing of a modest, yet adequate platter of cheese and crackers.

The children were to play. They were given all the freedom they could handle, but the expectation was that they would play, and play nicely, without raising a ruckus so as to disturb the adults. So they played simply, or flipped through old books and magazines to keep the noise to a minimum and the prospect of getting in trouble at bay.