Category Archives: Writing

Short Story of the Day, Flash Fiction, Vicarious Transubtantiation, by Emilee Prado

Posted on by Bill Chance

“No one motorist can cause a traffic jam. But no traffic jam can exist without individual motorists. We are stuck in traffic because we are the traffic. The ways we live our lives, the actions we take and don’t take, can feed the systemic problems, and they can also change them…”

― Jonathan Safran Foer, We Are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast

From my blog (I called it an “Online Journal” then), The Daily Epiphany, Monday, December 14, 1998.

The City at Night

….. I’m writing another entry sitting in the van, waiting in a parking lot. This time it’s a long way from home. I have a focus group at eight thirty, on the tenth floor of a big office building, at Park Central on the northern arc of Dallas’ LBJ freeway loop. I have better things to do with my time than sit here, but they’ll pay me a hundred dollars, cash. Allowing an hour to get here, it only took twenty minutes, so I found this lot in a commercial strip right off Central Expressway. About a half hour to kill before I drive back to the building, that’s how long the batteries in this old Dell can hold out.

I had wanted to go exercise after work and there is a club located between there and here. I forgot my damn shoes again, can’t very well work out in steel-toed safety boots, so I stayed in my office a couple hours late. Time is becoming so precious, it drove me nuts. Nowhere to go, no money, nothing much to do (I was so sick of work, it was tough to get anything extra accomplished). So I sat and did some light computer stuff and watched the hands turn.

At least the van is a good place to type. The middle bench seat is roomy enough for me to hold the laptop on my lap, there is enough stray light from the parking lot to illuminate the keys without washing out the screen. Also, the van isn’t stalling. I was about to give up yesterday, when I put another fresh tank of fuel in her, and presto- no more problems. My guess is that the recent cold snap condensed water into the gas tank, it took a refill to work itself out.

Across the street from here is a big hospital. This is where both Nick and Lee were born. It seems like I’ve been there a hundred times, for childbirth classes, medical emergencies, routine checkups. We don’t have the HMO anymore, so we don’t come back here now. One reason I dropped it was because I was concerned about the drive from Mesquite, it scared me to think of Candy driving over here in the awful traffic with a sick kid strapped in beside her.

The traffic is scary. The intersection of LBJ and Central may be the busiest in the Metroplex, maybe the country. Lines of white, lines of red. Going either seventy or stopped. I constantly look at these thousands and thousands of cars speeding past and wonder where all these people are going. What are their dreams? Are they happy? Do they really want to go where their car is pointing? Why are they in such a hurry to get there?

Honk! Honk! Honk! The car alarm on a big sedan is going off. A woman gets out. Is it her car? Is she confused by the alarm and can’t shut it off? Or is she stealing the thing? I don’t care. It stops, she gets back in. Nobody calls the police. There the car goes.

Behind this strip, this line of office supplies, fast food Chinese, medical equipment, and podiatrist, is the dark slash of a creek. I know that linear wilderness better than I know the wild street; the White Rock bicycle trail runs back there. It starts five miles to the south at the lake and winds along the creek embankment, using the floodplain to cut through these civilized islands unseen and undisturbed. The day was dry and warm, I wish I had my bike and was able to get some late season fresh air back there today. Or I wish I had a nice light and could run the trail now. Swooshing along in the dark, heart pumping, legs pumping.

Oh, well.

I think I’d better wrap this up, save the file and get going. I’m not sure exactly where to park (there is a maze of garages around the office complex) and I don’t want to be late. They won’t give me my money.

Thanks for listening to me ramble, thanks for helping me kill a few minutes away from home, thanks for the memories and the city at night.

And a piece of flash fiction for today:

Vicarious Transubtantiation, by Emilee Prado

from Hobart

Emilee Prado Instagram

Emilee Prado Page

Short Story of the Day, Flash Fiction, A Girl Forages for Mushrooms, by Ruth Joffre

Posted on by Bill Chance

“All Fungi are edible.

Some fungi are only edible once.”
― Terry Pratchett

Mushrooms along the creek in back of my house.
Huffhines Creek in back of my house, Richardson, Texas

From my blog (I called it an “Online Journal” then), The Daily Epiphany, Sunday, May 12, 2002.

Walk (snippet)

Everything was warm and wet and near the end of my walk I came across a field of mushrooms. I’ve always wanted to be able to tell poison fungi from delicious. It would be so cool to be able to go out to a field and pick a few, carry them home and make an omelet. I picked one out and put it in my pocket – to take home for no particular reason. I thought of Lee and how he is always picking up rocks, feathers, old bones, or anything else useless to haul around and pile in old shoeboxes.

I know where he gets that from.

And a piece of flash fiction for today:

A Girl Forages for Mushrooms, by Ruth Joffre

from Flash Fiction Online

Ruth Joffre Twitter

Ruth Joffre Page

Sunday Snippet, The Last Lifeboat by Bill Chance

Posted on by Bill Chance

“- John Kovac: Lady, you certainly don’t look like somebody that’s just been shipwrecked.

– Connie Porter: Man, I certainly feel like it.”

—-Lifeboat

lifeboat propeller

The Last Lifeboat

Willis was on a cruise ship in the South Pacific, on the way from Bora Bora to Tahiti, when the asteroid struck.

As you know, the impact site was in the Atlantic, almost exactly on the opposite side of the world from Willis and his cruise ship. The North and South American continents protected them from the massive waves. Secondary meteorites, mostly hunks of seabed thrown into space to rain back down, were falling around them, but the sea seemed so vast it was more of fantastic light show than a real fear.

Most of the population of the main continents died out from the enormous Tsunamis and the fire raining down fairly quickly. It took days for the impact to impact their part of the world (sitting on miles of water depth, even the earthquakes were not felt).

There was increasing panic onboard as the radio contacts from all over the world went silent, one by one, with frightening rapidity. A cruise ship is largely self-contained – but the supplies wouldn’t last forever.

Willis wasn’t sure what sank the ship. Maybe it was struck by a random rock screaming down from the sky. Some said the crew went mad and scuttled the ship.

Willis had always taken the lifeboat drills too seriously, but this time it served him well. He made it to one of the enclosed survival boats and had it lowered and adrift just as the giant liner slipped beneath the salty waves.

There were about twenty souls on the craft. Looking around, they did not see any other boats. Some people must have been caught unaware, most probably didn’t care enough to save themselves. There was a lot, and I mean a lot, of drinking going on.

Now that this tiny craft was all that was left of the world to them, the twenty searched the emergency locker to see what they had. Unfortunately, a crewman seemed to have been making the vessel his home, an extra private cabin.

The survival supplies on the lifeboat had been replaced by an impressive bag of cocaine and a generous supply of shockingly violent gay porn magazines.

They were adrift in a trackless ocean without emergency flares or signal mirrors. Which was fine because there was nobody to signal. But panic began to set in when they discovered emergency biscuit ration and containers of fresh water were gone too. But there was the tiny engine and some diesel fuel, and when that ran out, there were oars. The compass was missing and they didn’t know what direction to go – but they used the sun and the stars to row in more or less a straight line, straight into the unknown.

Of the original twenty, ten, including Willis, were still alive when the top of a ragged volcanic peak poked above the horizon. It was a harrowing row across waves, rocks, and jagged razor-sharp corals to get to the beach and the line of coconut palms. Nobody knew how many people were left in the rest of the word (as you know, there were very, very few) but a healthy number had made it through the rain of fire on the island.

The lifeboat survivors were forced to trade with the natives. Willis was surprised to find out that the cocaine, though valuable, was less in demand that the pornographic magazines. The residents of the island had never seen publications of this type. They said, “The internet is just not the same.” And, of course, the internet was gone now… paper, as information and stimulation was again the gold standard.

A decade later, Willis found himself in the unexpected role of “King” of the island. The little society had not only survived, but it had thrived. But they were multiplying and it was obvious that their island, their little piece of paradise, was going to be too small soon, very soon. So Willis started a project to rehabilitate the little enclosed lifeboat. They stocked it with food, rudimentary sails, and a crew that knew how to row.

Then, at dawn, with the sea calm and the trade winds blowing, a chosen set of twenty set out again, to rediscover and repopulate the world.

Short Story of the Day, Flash Fiction, This Is How You Fail To Ghost Him, by Ash Reynolds

Posted on by Bill Chance

“Computers are like Old Testament gods; lots of rules and no mercy.”

― Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth

Flora Street, Dallas, Texas

From my blog (I called it an “Online Journal” then), The Daily Epiphany, Monday, February 15, 1999. It is so weird to read about my reaction to technology from (only) twenty years ago.

Eyelid rub

Shit, what a long, tiring day. Oh, look at the top of the page, it’s a Monday. No wonder.

I sat the morning through a two hour Lotus Notes class, a professional trainer, twenty years younger than me explained in excruciating detail everything I already knew and displayed his ability to scrunch up his nose when I asked a question.

Meanwhile, the hourly folks in the class had a lot of trouble. I really felt sorry for them, the instructor would rattle off, “click here, go back, minimize.” He would always say click when he should have said double click. Not that the poor hourly guys can double click anyway. They are used to terminal emulators with tacked up dog-eared Xerox copies of lists of odd key combinations. They’ll be alright, they’ll get gooey eventually. Those tough callused hands trying to push a mouse around, that look of confusion; it’s a difficult world.

I spent most of the class leaning slightly forward with my eyes closed rubbing the corners of my lids.

The rest of the workday was meetings. More lid-rubbing.

I didn’t really do anything, did I? I sure was exhausted when I came home. My head was splitting, my right ear isn’t working again, I should have gone to a cycling class, but I booted. I should have played with the kids, worked on the garage, written some stuff, read some chapters, but I didn’t.

All I managed to do was flounder around horizontally, watching some sports on TV.

And rubbing the corners of my eyelids ’til the headache finally went away.

And a piece of flash fiction for today:

This Is How You Fail To Ghost Him, by Victoria McCurdy

from Monkeybicycle

Victoria McCurdy Twitter

Sunday Snippet, Tiny Courtesies by Bill Chance

Posted on by Bill Chance

“You have carjacking back in old England?”

“Carjacking?”

“People walk up to you, steal your car.”

“No, but thanks for asking. We have people who clean your windscreen against your will, but, er…”

Joe barked with contempt.

“The thing is,” explained Dirk, “in London you could certainly walk up to someone and steal their car, but you wouldn’t be able to drive it away.”

“Some kinda fancy device?”

“No, just traffic,” said Dirk.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt

Highway 75 at Sunset (click to enlarge)

Tiny Courtesies

The end of the week, danced around plenty o’ disasters (mostly rain related) at work, he feels alittle lucky. But sooner or later the bear’ll getya son, so he had better keep a keep eye out.

Driving in to his place of gainful employment was a springtime storm adventure. The faithful AM radio traffic newspeople (no choppers up today, though) talked to him from the waterproof clock radio in the shower, warning of accidents on the I635 loop and at La Prada & Gus Thomasson (his two direct routes into work) so he mazed his way through middleworkingclass two bedroom neighborhoods. Lots of running water, had to be careful, flash floods will kill ya. Looking through the blurrr of defective needreplacing rubber oscillating blades, his eyes gauging depth of street rapids, waves, rills, whitecaps where only asphalt should be, alternating the ventilation from too hot defogger as long as he can stand to cooler direct blowing outside air ’till the windshield fogs and he can’t see, back to the heat. Cycles oscillating: blades, ventilation, radio stations (The Edge, Classic, Stern, Talk, News, Sports).

At Motley and Gus Thomasson he had to make a bad left in front of Fazio’s Discount Emporium. It’s a left into six lanes of traffic, no light, only a red octagon. In front of him was a school bus. Now a little disposable paidfor dented car can inch out dodging through a turn like this (who wants to live forever). But a school bus has to wait for all six lanes to clear, there isn’t enough room for them to wait in the median. They sat like that, he was watching four kids in the back window, for twenty minutes. He wanted to yell, “Go for it, they’ll stop, nobody’ll ram a schoolbus for Christssake!” But he didn’t cut to the left, go around, though he wanted to and thought about it. He waited his turn though he was late for work.He began to realize that little bits of civilization, tiny courtesies, are what are missed, are important.

Especially when nobody knows (though I guess that y’all know now, don’t you).

Short Story of the Day, Flash Fiction, Thankful, by Ash Reynolds

Posted on by Bill Chance

“Got no checkbooks, got no banks. Still I’d like to express my thanks – I’ve got the sun in the mornin’ and the moon at night.”

― Irving Berlin

Thanksgiving Square, Dallas, Texas

From my blog (I called it an “Online Journal” then), The Daily Epiphany, Monday, March 01, 1999.

Lunchtime

It’s lunchtime on Monday, the first day of a new month.

The calendar might say it’s still winter but you’d never know by looking around. The temperature might get to eighty today but it’s ’round seventy-two right now, as perfect as can be. Candy gave me a dollar and I found seventy -some cents in the floorboards so I could afford two bean burritos. So I drove to the little park near my work and am sitting at my green picnic table. The winter sun burns down through the leafless trees, warm on my skin. It also washes out the screen of the laptop, hard to see, hard to type; but that might be my only complaint. Even my pager, my ever present belt-bee, is quiet today, I hope he stays that way for awhile.

Two little girls are at the new playground with their mom. It’s sort of a cheap, little playground, but the girls don’t seem to mind, they’re giggling up a storm. There is this green spiral pipe, set vertically around another central pipe. I think it is intended to be used as a ladder. The girls are small enough that they can slide down this spiral, spinning ’round and ’round.


“OK! Here I go!” one calls out and twists down, spinning like a loose wingnut on a bolt.

I wonder what about this day these little girls will remember when they are my age. The spiral will be a tall tower, not a six foot piece of pipe. Will they remember the weather? Of course not. I never thought about the weather when I was little, never thought about if it was hot or cold or raining or snowing. Well, I guess I thought about it if it was snowing. That was something special.

I splurged yesterday and bought myself an insulated-stainless-steel-spillproof-tapered-on-the-bottom-to-fit-most-cup-holders drinking cup. It was an impulse purchase, on a display in the aisle when I went out to buy some drain cleaner. When I found out it cost twelve dollars I almost put it back. I can afford it, but I’ve been well conditioned to the “thousands of starving third world children that can’t even afford a plastic spill-proof mug, let alone a stainless-steel one,” feelings of guilt about spending more that five dollars on something that I don’t actually need.

But I bought it anyway.

There’s a little blue paper, a flyer, on the ground by the trash can, let’s see what it is.

It’s from a local church, the Praise and Prayer Notes from yesterday. The scripture on it is from Revelation which is usually not a good sign, but this little note is fine.

A list of things to be thankful for:

  • C… N… is back from Russia and feeling better,
  • D…K… is recovering from a triple bypass,
  • J…A… has been accepted at Multnomah Bible College,
  • B…E… says that L… has been seizure free for 6 months and is driving again.

This is followed by a list of things to pray for:

  • M…S… is six months old and may need surgery, pray for the doctor’s appointment on March 15th,
  • R…P… has had an asthma flareup,
  • S… W… needs sale of property and finances for a wedding,
  • J… B… died in a skiing accident ten days ago.

I think I’ll praise this warm, quiet hour. The feel of the sun, the sound of the birds. The cheap, spicy burrito. My steel cup of ice and Dr. Pepper that doesn’t leak.

I think I’ll pray for those two little girls, pray that in forty years they remember how happy they were sliding down that green spiral. I pray they don’t lose those giggles.

And a piece of flash fiction for today:

Thankful, by Ash Reynolds

from love letters magazine

Short Story of the Day, Poetry, Billy Collins, by Erren Geraud Kelly

Posted on by Bill Chance

“The mind can be trained to relieve itself on paper.”
― Billy Collins

This woman was waving a turkey leg out of her food trailer. When someone came up to buy one, she said, “Let me get you a fresh one hon, this is my demo model, I’ve been waving it out this window for hours.”

From my blog (I called it an “Online Journal” then), The Daily Epiphany, Saturday, September 29, 2001. Exactly twenty years ago.

Sidekicks

Nicholas had accumulated two free tickets and a two-for-one coupon for the Dallas Sidekicks indoor soccer team game tonight. He asked a kid from his team to go with us and Candy and I used the two-for-one.

Dallas has built a new sports arena – but the Sidekicks, practitioners of a non-major, second or third tier (for Texas, anyway) sport remain in the old, smaller, less tony, and luxury skybox-less arena. Fine with us. The smaller place is more intimate and you can see the game better.

Most important of all, the nachos (actually a skimpy paper holder with some stale chips and two tiny plastic cups – one full of motor-oil-like fake cheese sauce, the other loaded with some sort of brown bland bilious chili-resembling substance) are sold sans jalapenos, but there are condiment stands nearby with all the sliced peppers you can pile on. I piled on plenty. As a matter of fact, I made two trips from our seats up and back to the condiment stand for more hot peppers. I was going to buy a Diet Dr. Pepper but while I was in line the guy in front of me ordered a beer and it simply looked too good to pass up. The beer and nachos came to nine dollars and fifty cents.

That’s what sports is all about, isn’t it. I was sitting in a cramped plastic arena seat drinking a five-dollar lukewarm beer and eating grease laced with so many hot peppers the top of my head sweated. I had to keep rubbing my hair because so much capsicum-induced heat was rising up and shooting out the top of my head.

It doesn’t get any better than that.

And a piece of poetry for today:

Billy Collins, by Erren Geraud Kelly

from West Texas Literary Review

Sunday Snippet, Creature by Bill Chance

Posted on by Bill Chance

I can tell you something about this place. The boys around here call it “The Black Lagoon” – a paradise. Only they say nobody has ever come back to prove it.

― The Creature From the Black Lagoon

Beer Cap

Creature

Sammy Peeps lived by a park where a lot of people walked their dogs. He didn’t have a dog but since he quit working he had a lot of time and he’d walk by himself. There were little dispensers of plastic bags and he developed the habit of carrying one and picking up any forsaken piles of feces. He thought he looked odd carrying a little bag of dog shit with no dog, but he did it anyway.

There was a string of ponds lined with a few benches. On nice weather days he would sit and watch the dog walkers going around and around. As the days went buy he began to notice all the other critters that inhabited the park and the ponds. He was surprised at the amount and variety of wildlife, given that this was a tiny green space in the midst of a huge city. Squirrels would scamper in the trees next to his spot and cackle at him – either playing or pissed, Sammy couldn’t decide. Ducks swam across the water or flew through the air. So did two flocks of geese – Sammy was shocked at how large the geese were once he was able to observe them closely. His favorite sound was the whish and splash as the birds flew in for a water landing. Turtles – laconic red-eared or primordial, savage snappers – basked in the sun or moved underwater with heads poking up.

If he walked out at dawn or just after sunset he would see coyotes out for a nighttime duck snack along with rats, skunks, or other nocturnal creatures. The city had to wrap wire around the lower trunks of the trees to protect them from the beavers that lived upstream. On a couple of rare occasions he even saw the large, black bulk of these sliding through the water or crossing from pond to pond.

As the months went by he learned the entire menagerie of wild animals and the society of dog walkers until it was all very familiar and mundane.

That amplified the shock when something new showed up. It was small and slick and reptilian and slid from a drainage pipe into the pond. He stared at the slight V of the wake as it swam smoothly just under the water. Then he saw a face – part fish-like, part reptilian, and part shockingly human rise above the water for a few seconds. It seemed to be looking at him.

He would see the creature again and again, almost every time he went to the pond, which was at least every day. Now that he had found something strange and unknown, the pull became irresistible. The creature seemed aware of him, though it never came close – would simply swim this way and that, or climb a short way out of the pond, to rest in the warm sun. Sammy was confused that nobody else, none of the dog walkers, paid any attention to the strange creature. It was like he was the only thing that saw it and the only thing it saw.

He bought a pair of powerful binoculars in order to observe the creature better. He felt odd sitting there on the bench in public scanning the ponds with the heavy instruments – people would glare at him but nobody said anything.

Sammy had no idea what the creature ate, but it was growing. Imperceptibly at first, but the change began to add up over the months. It was getting undoubtedly bigger.

Then, one day it was gone. Alarmed, he went to the ponds in every spare moment, scouring the place for another glimpse. He even took to walking the creek up and downstream in case the creature had moved to another area, but nothing.

Finally, one night, he woke up to the sound of his doorbell. At first he did nothing, hoping it would go away. It was not the time of night for anyone to be trying to bother him. But the ringing continued and was interrupted by a kind of knocking on the door itself. The sound sent shivers up Sammy’s spine – it was almost like a human knuckle knock, but just a little soft, a little wet sounding.

Sammy finally gathered all the courage he could and went to the door. He looked through the peephole and saw what he was afraid to see, though he was expecting it.

It was the creature. It had grown to a human height and was standing on his front stoop, still knocking on the door. It’s face was covered with scales and it had some sort of preternatural gills hanging down from its neck – but it looked more human that it had at the pond.

Shivering with both fear and excitement, Sammy Peeps reached out, unlocked the bolt, and began to turn the knob.

Short Story of the Day, Flash Fiction, Harvest Moon, by Scotch Rutherford

Posted on by Bill Chance

But there’s a full moon risin’
Let’s go dancin’ in the light
We know where the music’s playin’
Let’s go out and feel the night

Because I’m still in love with you
I want to see you dance again
Because I’m still in love with you
On this harvest moon

― Neil Young, Harvest Moon

The moon rising over the Dallas skyline and the pond at Trammell Crow Park. From the October Full Moon Ride.

Full Moon Tonight. It’s the Harvest Moon. I remember when we would go on bike rides at night on full moon nights. The last year and a half – it’s been so bad… Sometimes I feel I’ll never do anything fun again.

From my blog (I called it an “Online Journal” then), The Daily Epiphany, Wednesday, December 4, 2002. A longish entry, about falling stars.

Leonids

I have always wanted to go camping during a meteor shower. I’ve tried to schedule a trip to West Texas, Big Bend, during one but the timing has never been right. One year I did drive out with Nicholas, then only a tad bigger than a toddler, and ended out in a cornfield east of Rockwall; but Nicholas was impatient, we were still in the pool of city light, and ended up seeing nothing. Last year I was ready to go out and see the Leonids, but the state was swathed in a belt of thick clouds and nothing would have been visible.

Last Month I read that this year was going to be the last predicted good Leonid storm for a long time, and I didn’t want to miss it. I have a snotload of vacation left that I have to take before the end of the year so I scheduled a day off the next day and drove out after work into East Texas, heading for Lake Tawakoni State Park, where we had gone family camping a while back.

The park office was closed when I pulled in so I dutifully filled out a little envelope, put my fifteen dollars in (nine for the campsite, five for the entry fee, and one because I didn’t have change) and dropped it into the heavy metal tube. The park was almost completely empty – only a few RV’s scattered here and there. I picked a spot on the first loop, choosing one right next to the trail to the bathrooms. It only took me a few minutes to set up my tent.

While I wrestled with the aluminum poles I spotted a bright meteor crackling down between two trees. I watched for a while but didn’t see anything else. The peak was supposed to come somewhere around three AM, so I set the alarm on my IPAQ PDA and settled down in my tent to read myself to sleep. Even if I didn’t see another meteor, at least I had spotted one – and my trip wouldn’t be completely wasted. I tried calling home but was on the very edge of cell service. I could hear Nick answer on the other end, “Hello! Hello! Who is it?” but he couldn’t hear anything I said.

It wasn’t much longer until a big diesel pickup rumbled by, screeched its brakes, backed up, and started shining a powerful spotlight on my tent. I dragged myself out and walked over to the official truck.
“I paid in the box out front,” I said.
“Oh,” said the bearded, grizzled man in the truck.
“You here for the meteor shower too?” he continued.
“Yeah,” I said.
“They say this will be the biggest one for thirty years,” he said, “and we’ll be at another park by then, for sure. There’s a bunch in the other camping loop that’s going to meet down at the dock at three and I think the wife and I will go down there to watch.”
“Thanks.”
“Well, have a good night.”

It was starting to get cold, so I slithered back into my bag and fell deeply asleep until my IPAQ started buzzing.

The full moon was out and very bright. The park was lit with what looked like a flat blue daylight. It was light enough for me to easily move around and set stuff up. If I had had a newspaper, I could have read it without trouble. There were some engines running and people moving around down towards the lake, and I thought about joining the folks down at the dock but ultimately decided to go it alone. The trees at Tawakoni are thick so I set my folding chair up in the middle of the park road and wrapped myself up in a blanket and my unzipped sleeping bag. My folding chair leans way back which is unpleasant for what I usually use it for (it stays in the trunk of the Taurus) – watching soccer games – but was perfect for stretching back and looking up at the sky. Some small animal, probably a possum (too quiet for an armadillo) shuffled around in the grass beside the road, and then shambled back into the woods.

The bright moon washed out a lot of the stars. It would be impossible to spot any faint meteors. I thought for a few minutes that there wouldn’t be anything and I’d go back home empty-eyed. But after a few minutes the shower started.

The meteor shower wasn’t spectacular; it didn’t make me think of the Fourth of July. Still, it had a powerful ephemeral beauty. There would be a pause, a minute or so, when nothing would happen, then maybe a single quick transient streak across the sky. That would be followed by a little burst – a cluster of four or five and the activity would keep up for a few minutes until it tapered off for another pause. A few falling stars were big enough to scream across a big arc of the sky, leaving behind a little trail of sparks for a split-second. I know they were silent but I could imagine a crackling sound as those fell.

It was obvious how the meteors appeared to flow from a single point, in Leo. They would radiate out, the big ones lingering, traveling across a big chunk, the tiny ones merely a fugacious slash across the dark. It was this temporary nature of the display that fascinated me – a tiny sliver of an instant… then they are gone. I had a big grin on my face, half-frozen there by the cold air.

I watched for a little over an hour or so until the show petered out. I never really went back to sleep – it wasn’t long before the sky began to lighten in the east and I packed everything up. Driving back into the city, I realized that I could go on in to work – it was early enough.

I decided to take the day off anyway.

And a piece of flash fiction for today:

Harvest Moon, by Scotch Rutherford

from Every Day Fiction

Scotch Rutherford page

Sunday Snippet, My Hovercraft is Full of Eels by Bill Chance

Posted on by Bill Chance

“It would not be until darkness had taken indisputable control over the land, until the flames of the bonfire created an unreal world of shadows, until tequila and mescal untied men from their somber selves.”

― Warren Eyster, The Goblins of Eros

Moore to the point (click to enlarge)

My Hovercraft is Full of Eels

Willard Waters had an undergraduate degree in accounting. He thought of himself as being an accountant’s accountant. After spending a couple of years at a desk staring at a spreadsheet to the left and a calculator spewing a long spiral of paper tape to the right he decided to go to law school. Now he was still an accountant’s accountant but he was also a lawyer’s lawyer.

He rode the foundation’s car service into a sketchy run-down industrial part of town that he had never been in before. The car disgorged him on the sidewalk and drove off. The driver knew a favorite burger joint nearby and would wait there for a call.

Waters looked at the rusty hulking warehouse in front of him and found the heavy steel door. Off to the side was a button and a small speaker. He frowned at the sign on the door:

Sacha Row
Sculptress Extraordinaire
“My Hovercraft is Full of Eels”

“What the hell does that mean?” Waters mumbled to himself. He smoothed the fabric of his expensive suit, adjusted his tie, and pushed the button. Almost immediately a voice crackled from the speaker, “Com on in, it’s not locked.”

He tugged, the door squeaked and gave way, opening into a dark, vast space filled with smoke. Waters coughed and entered. He knew the smoke wasn’t tobacco. Some sort of a massive sound system spewed out the deafening beats of overamplified electronic dance music. As his eyes grew used to the dim light the first thing he saw was a massive, lumpy pile of grayish clay heaped up in the middle of the room. He knew that must be the sculpture in question. It didn’t look like it was very close to being finished.

Waters looked around and spotted a group of three men sitting on a huge overstuffed couch. On a table made of a big wooden cable reel sat a massive hookah and a collection of plastic bongs filled with dark water. A galvanized five gallon bucket of ice and studded with bottles of beer leaked a puddle of water onto the concrete floor. Two women stood in front of the men, eyes closed, dancing to the pulsing rhythm of the loud music.

“Are either of you two Sacha Row?” Waters shouted at the dancing women. They ignored him.

“Sacha? Naw… She’s in the back,” said the guy in the middle of the couch.

“You wanna talk to her?” said the guy on the left.

“Sacha! Some guy out here wants to talk to you! Sacha!” yelled the guy on the right. He had quite a pair of lungs on him… he was able to out-shout the music.

“Jeez, Doc, I heard you the first time, who’all is here to see me?” Sacha said as she walked out of an office at the back of the space.

Waters felt his jaw drop and a warm pit form in his stomach when he saw her. She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. “Sacha Row?” he managed to choke out.

“That’s me!” she said as she walked directly up to him. On the way, past the ice bucket, she leaned over with incredible grace and pulled out a bottle.

“Ms. Row… I am a lawyer and a forensic accountant here representing the Wintringham Foundation concerning the sizeable grant you received for the sculpture commission. The schedule is vastly past due and,” he said gesturing at the mass of clay, “the product doesn’t seem to be in a deliverable condition.”

“Well, first, call me Sasha, please, and second… well, great art can’t be rushed.”

“Umm… Sasha, we have noticed that you have withdrawn the majority of the funds allocated for bronze casting has been withdrawn… prematurely…”

“I’m not sure if either of us are in a mood to talk business right now… So, here, have a swig,” she said as she handed him the bottle. He realized it wasn’t beer – but some sort of cheap Mescal. In a trance, Waters raised the bottle. The liquid burned like liquid lava and he coughed as he swallowed. Sasha grabbed the bottle from him, stuck the neck into her mouth and tipped her head back. Waters watched as she held it there with the bottle sticking straight up, upside down. He was the worm sink slowly down through the clear alcohol, into the neck of the bottle, until it disappeared between Sasha Row’s lips. There was a gulp and a pulse in her throat… and the worm was gone.

Willard Walters was hopelessly in love. It was no use. He also realized that Sasha knew it too. He took another big, deep burning drink.

“Now, Willard,” Sasha said, “We’ve been using the money for a little ongoing party here… and we don’t see any reason to stop. Don’t you agree?”

Waters nodded. He took another drink. He stared at the hookah on the table. But one thought suddenly pushed into his consciousnesses.

“Sasha, you know that no matter what I do, they’ll send someone else.”

“I know. They’ve sent others before. You are not the first.”

“But what happened with them?”

Sasha Row merely gestured at the three men on the couch.