Short Story Of the Day – Fire Escape (flash fiction) by Bill Chance

Posted on by Bill Chance
“If you’re going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don’t even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery–isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you’ll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you’re going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It’s the only good fight there is.”
― Charles Bukowski, Factotum

Fire Escape, Fort Worth, Texas

I have been feeling in a deep hopeless rut lately, and I’m sure a lot of you have too. After writing another Sunday Snippet I decided to set an ambitious goal for myself. I’ll write a short piece of fiction every day and put it up here. Obviously, quality will vary – you get what you get. Length too – I’ll have to write something short on busy days. They will be raw first drafts and full of errors.

I’m not sure how long I can keep it up… I do write quickly, but coming up with an idea every day will be a difficult challenge. So far so good. Maybe a hundred in a row might be a good, achievable, and tough goal.

Here’s another one for today (#58) More than half way there! What do you think? Any comments, criticism, insults, ideas, prompts, abuse … anything is welcome. Feel free to comment or contact me.

Thanks for reading.

 

Fire Escape

Andrew Torremolinos had lived in the apartment for almost three years, yet, until today, he had never been on the fire escape. He said to himself, “I wish I had climbed out here before, it is very nice.” Down the alley, through a gap in one of the surrounding buildings he could see a bit of the slate-gray river beyond and he watched as a tugboat pushed a barge. He could only see a slice of the whole thing as it moved past, but it was beautiful and he had never realized he had a river view from there. The sky was a deep, cloudless blue, and the sun felt warm on the back of his neck. It was quiet and calm, with the whole city spread out at his feet.

Getting out there had been difficult, though. He had lined his kitchen window with little shelves and filled the shelves with houseplants. Andrew’s shoulder stung from the effort in frantically wrenching the panes up. Then he tumbled the shelves while he stepped out, the terra cotta cracking against the old wood floors, potting soil fanning out, the pitiful Geraniums and African Violets naked and thirsty on the kitchen floor flung from their pots. Once outside, he shoved the window back down, catching and crushing a feathery arm of Boston Fern against the sill.

With the window closed, it was suddenly peaceful out on the fire escape. His apartment was very high up, only three floors down from the roof. His windows looked into the highest floor of the building across the narrow alley. Sometimes he would sit at his small table and lwatch the tumult of the big, extended family that lived in the apartment across from him scurrying around their kitchen, preparing meals, and eating together. A large immigrant family from some tropical country – there was always hustle and bustle over there. His mind filled in the loud passionate conversations and spicy exotic odors that must have constantly filled their overcrowded kitchen.

But this afternoon there was only the one old woman home across the alley. Andrew could see her very clearly. She stood motionless at her window, absently still rubbing a plate with a dishrag. She stared at Andrew with an expression of pure horror.

The fire escape was made of thin bars of wrought iron, open and rickety. Carefully, Andrew leaned on the spidery, rusted railing and looked over and down into the alley. The narrow passage far below was empty of human beings though still cluttered with banged-up dumpsters and piles of trash. Turning his head, he saw a cluster of people at the head of the alley, where it dumped out into the street. They looked excited and agitated, pointing and shouting; many were holding a drink in one hand, squinting into the bright daylight.

There was a big, popular bar on the corner of his alley – Andrew figured most of these gawkers had tumbled out and had taken their beverages with them.

Sometimes the bar would have a live band playing into the late night and he could hear bits of the music and sounds of the crowd laughing and yelling. He would lie there and weep at his loneliness as the distant merriment washed over him. He wanted, more than anything else in the world, to go down there and be one of those people, but he could never do it.

His sad reverie was interrupted by a sudden sound behind him. It was a strange high insistent ping that came from the pane of glass in the kitchen window. The ping was followed by a vicious cracking noise and then the tumbling crash as the glass crashed out of the window, breaking and tingling through the iron gaps in the floor of the fire escape at his feet.

The terrific heat inside the apartment had shattered the glass and soon enough, the thick black choking smoke came pouring out, interspersed with tongues of flicking orange flame. The smoke and heat forced him to crouch against the railing of the fire escape and turn away from the building itself. Andrew looked at the people outside of the bar and saw them all running out into the street beyond, scattering around the corner. Some looked back over their shoulders, but most just ran, dropping their drinks as they fled.

The whole building began shaking. Andrew was afraid that the fire escape would be pitched from the building, but it held. A terrific rumbling came from the back end of the alley and Andrew turned his head in time to see the front wall of the entire back half of the building peel away and tumble off into the alley. Thousands of tons of brick and mortar collapsed into a smoking pile in the alley with amazing speed, throwing up a massive cloud of tan dust and black smoke. The building shook and moved and Andrew was sure the whole thing was going down. His fingers bled as he gripped the sharp corners of the iron bars of the railing and he closed his eyes against the caustic grit and burning smoke.

He could feel the building swaying as he braced himself for the collapse that didn’t come. Gradually, the movement stopped and the crashing din was replaced by a strange deafening, high-pitched roar. With tremendous willpower he forced his eyes open and was surprised to find the air relatively clear, the view cleaned out by a sudden unearthly wind sweeping down the alley toward the roaring sound.

Andrew turned his head to look at the sound and was shocked to find the entire back half of the building, starting two apartments down from him completely missing. In the center of the rubble a crater had formed where everything had been thrown back, revealing the cracked concrete foundations. A jagged, hellish hole had appeared and from this ragged maw a massive horrendous blue flame erupted. This powerful incandescent flare was hungry and pulled the air to it and swept away all the smoke and dust, leaving the apocalyptic torch exposed.

The power of this flame seemed to come from Satan himself, jetting up from Hades through the cracked earth and concrete beneath the city. After the shock wore away, however, Andrew was able to figure out what had happened, what he was looking at.

“A gas main, a big one,” he said to himself, “That was the explosion, that was why the fire spread so fast, trapping me out here.”

Andrew realized that he didn’t have much time left. The fire was tearing the apartment building apart. It would collapse in a few more seconds. Again he located the folded iron ladder and felt for the heavy hardened steel chains he had found earlier. Pulling and rattling, he came across the massive rusted lock. It was stamped with the word, “MASTER.”

About a year ago, the apartment building had been plagued by burglars. The windows had been jimmied open, everyone’s valuables gone. The thieves were using the fire ladders. Things were getting really bad, the burglars getting more brazen. They had found some woman alone in her apartment and had beaten her until she was half-dead. There was a real feeling of palpable helplessness and desperation among everyone that lived in the apartments.

Then, suddenly, the burglaries stopped. There was rejoicing and thanks to the building management for “doing what needed to be done.” Now, Andrew realized that they had folded and locked the fire escape ladders – which stopped the thieves from being able to access the windows of the building. It was against the safety codes, but inspectors can be bribed, and something, anything, had to be done to protect the residents.

Andrew squatted and held a section of heavy chain in his hands and pulled, pulled as hard as he could, pulled for his life. He pulled until his fingers became slippery with blood. The blood dripped onto the iron bars, sizzling and burning away as the fire escape became heated from flames flicking up from below. He strained against the steel and the pain, roaring and screaming as he pulled. He screamed louder and louder, screaming until he hoped he could drown out the roaring gas flame, and force the fire back to hell with his sound and fury. It was not enough.

He collapsed, exhausted onto the hot iron floor. His clothes began to smolder from the heat. The flames were pouring out the window now in a hellish flood and he had to get away from them. The only way to go was out.

He struggled over the railing, until he was facing outward, suspended over empty space. He saw the old woman in the apartment across the alley still standing at the window. With the narrow alley, the width of the fire escape, and the distance he was cantilevered out, she was surprisingly close.

Andrew held on as long as he could. His fingers began to crack with the heat of the flames that were growing stronger as he grew weaker. The building began to shake again, grumbling in its death throes. Andrew looked straight into the eyes of the woman across the way. He wondered what she was thinking, what she would tell her family when they returned home, what she would say about the poor, horrible, helpless man she saw burned to death in the fire across the alley.

As he looked into her eyes he thought he saw her nod, just a little. Something about this nod helped to calm him, and his fear and pain unexpectedly melted away. He was a split second away from releasing his grip when he heard a loud clang next to him. It was a long aluminum ladder and it carried a huge man wrapped in silver.

The man grabbed Andrew like a preternatural bear and pulled. Then they were dropping, dropping fast through the smoke and fire, but not falling.

When he woke in the hospital he was in terrible pain. He never imagined that such pain could exist or that it could last for so long.

He once heard a burn victim say in a film that recovery was so difficult that he wished he had perished. Andrew Torremolinos didn’t though. The rest of his life he would look at the scars on his hands and think of that giant silver man, that fireman in a heat resistant suit, and know it as the best moment, the first moment, of his life.

 

 

Short Story Of the Day – Pickled Herring Snacks (flash fiction) by Bill Chance

Posted on by Bill Chance
“We are decent,” Queenie says suddenly, her lower lip pushing, getting sore now that she remembers her place, a place from which the crowd that runs the A & P must look pretty crummy. Fancy Herring Snacks flashed in her very blue eyes.
—–John Updike, A&P

Photo for Writing Prompt

I have been feeling in a deep hopeless rut lately, and I’m sure a lot of you have too. After writing another Sunday Snippet I decided to set an ambitious goal for myself. I’ll write a short piece of fiction every day and put it up here. Obviously, quality will vary – you get what you get. Length too – I’ll have to write something short on busy days. They will be raw first drafts and full of errors.

I’m not sure how long I can keep it up… I do write quickly, but coming up with an idea every day will be a difficult challenge. So far so good. Maybe a hundred in a row might be a good, achievable, and tough goal.

Here’s another one for today (#57) More than half way there! What do you think? Any comments, criticism, insults, ideas, prompts, abuse … anything is welcome. Feel free to comment or contact me.

Thanks for reading.

 

This is from a photo writing prompt – see above.

What is on this guy’s mind?

Is he a spy watching his subject?

a detective shadowing a tail?

a hitman waiting on a victim?

Expecting an illicit lover?

These would all be good – but I wanted something a little different – something mundane that I could then kick up a notch. I think he is simply some guy sneaking in a smoke.

 

Pickled Herring Snacks

 

 

The first thing Walter Neff did when he was  down the dark steps along the old stone wall and invisible from the house was to yank the loose rock out. He pulled his cigarettes and matches from the space he had hollowed out behind. He felt for the glass jar he knew was in there too, but left it for now. He pulled his Fedora down over his forehead and lifted the collar of his coat to hold back the wind and spitting drizzle. Only after a quick look around did he allow himself a contented sigh and lit the bright match. He loved watching the flame course around the end of the cigarette, knowing that the first satisfying puff would not be very far behind.

Walter had met his wife, Phyllis, when she had called him to inquire about a life insurance policy on her husband. They had hit it off immediately, and Walter sold her a hefty policy to boot. There was a nasty bit of business, a thorough inquiry, when her husband had died – fallen off the rear observation platform of a train – the insurance paid off on the double indemnity clause because it was an accident – but they were able to ride it out and were married once it all blew over.

But now, Walter was having second thoughts. And thirds. Phyllis turned out o be a real piece of work. And she absolutely forbade him to smoke, which he had enjoyed since he was ten.

Finally, the familiar nicotine-soaked cloud was coursing into his lungs and he relaxed.

The misery that his wife could inflict almost made it not worth the trouble to sneak off for a smoke.

Almost.

The biggest joy in Walter’s life was in manipulating his wife so that he could get to his cigarettes without her knowledge. Tonight was a double pleasure in that he was not only getting a smoke break, but he was escaping one of her dreadful dinner parties.

He had no idea where she met these people, but was shocked at how many criminal low-life useless dolts she could conjure up on short notice. Tonight was especially bad in that he disliked the two couples that came over. Ralph and Harriet Brisbane were repugnant. Not only were Cecil Ramirez and his incumbent stripper girlfriend What’s-Her-Name repulsive – but he was scary. At the last get-together, after a dozen too many cocktails, Cecil Ramirez blubbered out to Walter that he thought Ralph Brisbane was running around with the stripper, Cecil’s stripper, behind his back.

“Ah swear there Walter,” Ramirez said, “If I catch that scumbucket Brisbane even givin’ her a look crossways I’ll pop a cap in his ass so fast it’ll make yure head spin.”

Walter thought about Brisbane’s sports car, the luxurious boat he kept down at the marina, and the antique pewter snuffbox full of cocaine that was always at hand. Walter knew that these were all things no stripper could resist. He had warned Phyllis about the danger in having both couples over for dinner and drinks, but she has simply flashed her bright-eyed look that always meant trouble and told him he was full of shit.

“Don’t be such a scaredy-cat. You don’t ever want me to have any fun,” She said.

He didn’t understand how a fight between dangerous men in your own house could be considered “fun” – but he was going to lose that argument.

So now his cigarette was about halfway done and he took a particularly deep inhalation before reaching back into the secret opening and pulling out a jar of Nathan’s brand of Pickled Herring Snacks. He turned the glass over in his hand and watched the streetlight bounce off the silver fish scales contained within.

Earlier, that afternoon, Phyllis had given him a detailed list of items to pick up at the grocery and on the way back, Walter had stopped at this spot for a smoke, selected the Pickled Herring Snacks from the bag and hidden them in the hole behind the rock.

Tonight, after a couple rounds of cocktails and an increasing level of tension, Phyllis had gone into the kitchen to put together the appetizer tray.

“Walter, you bastard! Get your ass in here!”

The other two men looked on sympathetically, but Walter smiled a little. His plan was working.

“You forgot the jar of Goddammed Nathan’s Picked Herring Snacks.”

“I’m sorry dear; it must have slipped my mind.”

“That’s why I write it down for you. Now get your ass out that door and get me those Herrings! Right now!”

“But dear… our guests?”

“Don’t ‘but dear’ me you worthless pile of sheep shit. You get me what I want and pronto!”

“All right dear.”

And it was all right. Since the jar was hidden only a few steps from the house, he had the free time it would have taken him to walk to the corner market and back. About the time of a leisurely cigarette.

Suddenly, he glanced up. There was a sharp sound out of the darkness in the direction of his house. He climbed a few steps so that he could get a glimpse. There was the glint of broken glass in the front yard and the curtains looked surreal as the cold wind blew them out of the shattered opening, fluttering in the hissing rain.

With the window busted out, he could hear yelling. Two voices, one low and guttural and the other high pitched and desperate. Then a loud, shrill woman’s scream and a series of popping gunshots complete with muzzle flashes reflecting out across his front yard. Then silence.

For a second, Walter had a desire to rush back, run up the stone stairs and across his yard – to see what horror had occurred during Phyllis’s dinner party. But he stood still. There were three, maybe four good puffs left on his cigarette. So he stepped back down, leaned against the stone wall, and looked at the can of Pickled Herring Snacks as he inhaled another deep languid breath of precious smoke.

He slid what remained of his pack back into the hole and replaced the stone that hid the opening.

There would be plenty of time to find out.

 

 

Short Story Of the Day – What is the River? (flash fiction) by Bill Chance

Posted on by Bill Chance
“We all float down here!”
― Stephen King, It


Klyde Warren Park,
Dallas, Texas

I have been feeling in a deep hopeless rut lately, and I’m sure a lot of you have too. After writing another Sunday Snippet I decided to set an ambitious goal for myself. I’ll write a short piece of fiction every day and put it up here. Obviously, quality will vary – you get what you get. Length too – I’ll have to write something short on busy days. They will be raw first drafts and full of errors.

I’m not sure how long I can keep it up… I do write quickly, but coming up with an idea every day will be a difficult challenge. So far so good. Maybe a hundred in a row might be a good, achievable, and tough goal.

Here’s another one for today (#56) More than half way there! What do you think? Any comments, criticism, insults, ideas, prompts, abuse … anything is welcome. Feel free to comment or contact me.

Thanks for reading.

What is the River?

Sitting by the stream the little boy talked to his strange new friend:

“Where does the river come from? Where does it go?” the boy asked.

“It is simply there. The river does not move.”

The child released the tiny boat and watched it around the bend.

“But it is moving.”

“The water is moving. The water comes from the ice in the mountains and goes to the salt in the ocean. The water comes and goes. The river does not move.”

“But what is the river if it is not water?”

“That is a good question. The water is different every minute. But the river is always the same. The river has to be something other than the water… but what… I don’t know.”

The Boy looked at The Clown.

“Tell you what, boy,” The Clown said, “Let me go think about it for a while. When I figure out an answer, I’ll come back for you.”

“You promise?”

“Oh, I will, I will, I promise.”

The boy watched as The Clown began to shimmer and bend and then slither down through the drain slot in the curb. The Clown looked out from the shadows at the boy for a second, then disappeared.

Short Story Of the Day – Laid With Iron Rails (found poetry) by Bill Chance

Posted on by Bill Chance
“…to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
Kindle

Call Me Ishmael

 

I have been feeling in a deep hopeless rut lately, and I’m sure a lot of you have too. After writing another Sunday Snippet I decided to set an ambitious goal for myself. I’ll write a short piece of fiction every day and put it up here. Obviously, quality will vary – you get what you get. Length too – I’ll have to write something short on busy days. They will be raw first drafts and full of errors.

I’m not sure how long I can keep it up… I do write quickly, but coming up with an idea every day will be a difficult challenge. So far so good. Maybe a hundred in a row might be a good, achievable, and tough goal.

Here’s another one for today (#55) More than half way there! What do you think? Any comments, criticism, insults, ideas, prompts, abuse … anything is welcome. Feel free to comment or contact me.

Thanks for reading.

I wanted to try something different today – so I thought I’d give a shot at one version of FOUND POETRY – where you take a page of text and remove words until what is left is… well… something… something different.

I decided to use my favorite passage from Moby Dick – and then do some removal.

Laid With Iron Rails

I thought to find one cogged circle anthill of fire.

Wasting what I’ve dared.

Starbuck’s demoniac wild madness – that’s the prophecy.

I prophesy that great gods laugh and hoot at pugilists and bullies.

Come forth from behind your long gun.

Ye cannot swerve.

Man is grooved to run.

Unsounded gorges

Hearts of mountains

Torrents’ beds

An obstacle to the iron way.

 

Passage from Moby Dick, text marked out to form a found poem.

Short Story Of the Day – The Iceberg (flash fiction) by Bill Chance

Posted on by Bill Chance

“The old endless chain of love, tolerance, indifference, aversion and disgust”
― Samuel Beckett

(click to enlarge) “The Icebergs” by Fredrick Church, Dallas Museum of Art

I have been feeling in a deep hopeless rut lately, and I’m sure a lot of you have too. After writing another Sunday Snippet I decided to set an ambitious goal for myself. I’ll write a short piece of fiction every day and put it up here. Obviously, quality will vary – you get what you get. Length too – I’ll have to write something short on busy days. They will be raw first drafts and full of errors.

I’m not sure how long I can keep it up… I do write quickly, but coming up with an idea every day will be a difficult challenge. So far so good. Maybe a hundred in a row might be a good, achievable, and tough goal.

Here’s another one for today (#54) More than half way there! What do you think? Any comments, criticism, insults, ideas, prompts, abuse … anything is welcome. Feel free to comment or contact me.

Thanks for reading.

The Iceberg

MODERN AMERICAN ARTS DIGEST —– AUGUST 13, 1996
ELMORE SPENCER – AN ARTIST WATERS HIS ROOTS
———————————————————-

Elmore Spencer has climbed the mountain of the art world. From a child prodigy that startled adults with his sketching skills at the age of six to a celebrated student of the Paris art schools to a meteoric rise to the jet-setting toast of the New York Art Society, Spencer has had it all.

Instrumental in founding the “New Realism” school, he then rejected this return to “Painting that looks like something” and veered off into innovative artistic experiments that challenged the border between art and observer, maintaining his success and popularity through it all.

Now, he struggles with a return to his roots, to maintain the connection with his audience that has been robbed by his decades of success. The conflict of the avant-garde and the traditional, realistic and symbolic, is at the heart of what Spencer is up to.

“It’s been a long road, but I’ve been lucky,” Spencer said in a recent interview, “To others its looks like a climb, a rise, but it’s a spiral, the further I go, the more times I return to the same place.”

His newest work is a sculpture, a pair of lovers – hyper-realistic. They sit on a bench in the darkest corner of a room with a film playing against a screen, they are only visible during a portion of the film, illuminated by a flame on the screen. They are locked in a kiss, an embrace, his hand is slipped inside her shirt, hers rests on his thighs. Most visitors think the couple is real, the museum received dozens of complaints.

Another sculpture is a mechanical museum guard. He stands inside the room. On those days the film is turned off. Infrared proximity sensors pick up any patron that enters the room, the ersatz guard then plays a recording, “I don’t know, they’re supposed to turn this film on.”

Other sculptures are occasionally placed in the room – such as an ersatz murder victim with a knife protruding from his back. These are obviously intended to shock or annoy. On certain days the room is empty, leading to a scene where patrons in the know walk around examining each other, trying to determine what is real and what isn’t.

Spencer often spends the day in his own installation, sitting on a bench with his famous sketchpad, drawing the observers. This has been so successful, he has taken to walking around the museum sketching patrons looking at art.

“As artists we live for the people that look at our work, really. We rarely think about them, or study them, or try to incorporate their lives into the art itself. I want to change that…….”

———————————————————-

“Shelby, Shelby!”

She turned from the painting, a huge panel covering most of the wall, hand painted with extreme skill to look like a blow-up of an article from an art magazine, to see her husband standing there.

“What do you want?”

“It’s time to leave.”

“I’m not finished reading this.”

“What the hell?”

“It’s by Spencer, My Life, it’s called. I haven’t decided what it means yet.” Shelby felt anger welling up in her throat. She’s known Jim, her husband, since they were children and they had argued many times over the years, but nothing like lately. There was a fight coming on, mean and nasty, with no resolution. She could feel the heat rising, like a hot nut right under her sternum.

“Come on!” Jim said, placing his hand on her arm, “We have things to do.”

Shelby wanted to explode, but the Kooning museum was not the place to have a knock-down, drag-out, so she walked stiffly in silence, stewing. They passed toward the entrance until they reached an area dominated by a huge landscape painting; the most famous work in the museum. It was a scene of icebergs, a giant white slope, under a brown and purple sky. The ice in the foreground was littered with debris, a shattered mast, a glacier torn boulder. The ice rose in craggy veined cliffs pierced by a surprising emerald green frozen tunnel. The calm sea was disturbed only by circular waves radiating out from some unseen event.

She could not stand it any more, she was so furious. Shelby pulled away and sat quickly down on a circular bench in front of the painting. Jim sat down beside her, staring wide-eyed. Pulling in her anger, she started to speak.

“Jim I…”

“Excuse me, folks,” said a man they hadn’t noticed. He was gray-haired, wearing old jeans and a long-sleeved shirt. He was sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall, a large sketchpad resting on his knees. “Do you mind sitting there for a while, I’d like to draw the two of you. If you don’t mind.”

Jim stammered, “Well, we have…”

“Sure, go right ahead,” Shelby interrupted.

“Alright then, umm. turn toward each other a little, now look at me…. Fine, why don’t you hold her hand a little…. That’s right.”

He started drawing right away. Working with colored pencils and some charcoal and a bit of an eraser. Jim and Shelby felt nervous; the fight, their day quickly forgotten.

“Ummm… try to relax, why don’t you tell me a story. Tell me about when you first met.”

“Well,” Jim started. Shelby was surprised that he spoke up so soon. She was getting ready to talk, but he beat her to it.

“We met in junior high school, seventh grade, we were both thirteen. She sat if front of me in
English class. I remember, I loved her from the first moment I saw her. I thought she was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. Our teacher was old, he would lean on a podium and lecture us all class long. The room was too small, our desks were crammed together, her seat backed right up against my desk. All I would do is sit there and stare at Shelby’s hair. Her blonde hair. Sometimes she’d wear it down and it would fall in cascades right in front of me. Sometimes she’d wear it up, like a golden seashell, a yellow spiral. Sometimes in one ponytail, sometimes two, it didn’t matter. That was my favorite hour of every day, to sit in that hot crowded room and look at Shelby’s hair. I felt like I could do this forever, for the rest of my life.”

Shelby and Jim sat there then and talked. They talked of old times, when they were young and when they started dating. They talked of old friends. They talked of their first apartment, of their first house, of the cars they had bought together, of the meals they had cooked, of the vacations they had taken. They talked until the artist finished. He put his pencils back into a little wooden case.

“Done.”

“Well, can we see it?” they asked together.

“See it? You can have it.”

“Really?”

“Really”

He handed them the paper and thanked them simply. The artist walked around the corner and was gone.

The drawing had the iceberg painting in the background. Carefully done in colored pencil it was amazingly detailed and accurate. He must have been working on it for hours. The painting, or, rather the drawing of the painting faded in an oval spot near the center. He drew only around the edges, leaving a blank spot, waiting as he drew for someone to come along and fill it.

Shelby and Jim filled the oval. She gasped as she saw it, it was a life-like drawing, done in pencil and charcoal, cross-hatch and shades of gray, only a hint of color added. Detailed. It was realistic except that they both were drawn naked.

The lower right corner had a quickly scribbled “ES.”

Over a dozen people surrounded them watching the famous artist work, but Jim and Shelby had not even noticed. Embarrassed by the gathering crowd pointing to details on the sketch, they rolled up the drawing, and headed out to their parked car. They held hands as they walked, Shelby leaned her head on Jim’s shoulder as he drove.

They spent a lot of money to have the print professionally framed and mounted. Never really comfortable with the nudity, they couldn’t hang it in their living room. The framer recognized the signature, told them it would bring a lot of money at a sale and recommended a gallery. Jim and Shelby couldn’t sell it, though, it meant too much to them. They did hang it, in their bedroom, next to the closet.

For many decades, it was the last thing they saw at night when they went to sleep, the first thing in the morning when they woke up.

Short Story Of the Day – An Absolute Idiot’s Guide to Tantric Sex (flash fiction) by Bill Chance

Posted on by Bill Chance

“The old endless chain of love, tolerance, indifference, aversion and disgust”
― Samuel Beckett

Spring Creek, Garland, Texas

I have been feeling in a deep hopeless rut lately, and I’m sure a lot of you have too. After writing another Sunday Snippet I decided to set an ambitious goal for myself. I’ll write a short piece of fiction every day and put it up here. Obviously, quality will vary – you get what you get. Length too – I’ll have to write something short on busy days. They will be raw first drafts and full of errors.

I’m not sure how long I can keep it up… I do write quickly, but coming up with an idea every day will be a difficult challenge. So far so good. Maybe a hundred in a row might be a good, achievable, and tough goal.

Here’s another one for today (#53) More than half way there! What do you think? Any comments, criticism, insults, ideas, prompts, abuse … anything is welcome. Feel free to comment or contact me.

Thanks for reading.

An Absolute Idiot’s Guide to Tantric Sex

Paul came out of the second hand store looking around for his car and stumbled over a woman sitting cross-legged on the sidewalk.

“Hey watch where you’re going!” she looked up at Paul.

She was very thin with stringy blondish hair wearing a ragged pair of jeans and a yellow t-shirt. Her dirty feet had worn leather sandals. Paul noticed the book she was reading – a garish orange cover and the title, “An Absolute Idiot’s Guide to Tantric Sex.”

“I stole this book you know,” she said. She stood up quickly in a smooth sort of unfolding motion, like she had raised herself off of sitting cross-legged on concrete many many times before.

“Yeah, stole it from this store here, they can see me sittin’ here reading it but they won’t say anything.”

“Paperback books are only a quarter,” was all Paul could think of to say.

“That’s not the point… hey, dude, where did you get that scar?”

“Paul’s my name, it’s from a knifefight.”

“Looks pretty fresh, you know, still sort of purplish,” she stepped forward and brazenly ran her fingers across Paul’s face, carefully tracing the line of the cut across his temple, cheek and jaw.

“Sally,” she finally said.

“Hey,” Sally continued, ” you got any beer or anything? I am sure thirsty.”

“Well,” Paul hesitated, his mind was suddenly cloudy and he felt like he was being pulled forward by a violent wind – or maybe pushed across a rough broken ground by forces unseen, a rushing storm or maybe even a tilting of the earth itself.

“Well, nothing… we could go buy something,” Paul said.

“You got a car?”

“Right here,” he said. They were standing right in front of his Chrysler.

“Great, let’s rock,” she said, “Hey, mind if we bring along a friend of mine, he’s a blast.”

Sally grabbed Paul’s forearm and pulled him around the corner of the thrift store. They fought their way through the random piles of old boxes and discarded merchandise that littered the lot, hidden from the street and parking lot by a sun-grayed wooden fence. The flotsam and jetsam of the thrift trade ended up here – the material too broken or filthy to even have worth in the lowest level of the civilized marketplace.

“Beaumont! Beaumont!” Sally yelled as the worked their way around the back of the thrift store and began pushing against the mat of tall thick dead dried weeds that divided the commercial strip from some rusty trash-strewn railroad tracks beyond. After a dozen cries and fifty feet of walking one particularly thick spherical leafless bush began trembling, then shaking as a shape began separating itself from the dead bush. The shape crawled a few feet and then stood up.

It was a tall man, skinny in the same way as Sally, topped with a greying beard and shock of matted dark hair spewing from underneath a plastic farm-implement cap worn backwards. The eyes between the beard and cap were live, blue, and darting. The man wore all denim, old jeans tucking into ragged cowboy boots, and a denim jacket with yellow lettering, “Big Bambu” and a green marijuana leaf over one pocket.

“Hey Beau, this is Sam, he’s got some cash and a car – wants to go get something to drink.”

“Well, then sir, I’m greatly pleased to meet you,” said Beau, ” his beard almost seemed to crack as it moved stiffly aside to adapt to a growing smile underneath, “an answer to our prayers.”

Beau pulled a plastic shopping bag stuffed full of shadowy items out from under the weedy bush and the three walked back around to Paul’s car.

“That’s quite a knife scar you’ve got there,”Beau said, “Looks awful fresh. Be sure and keep that sucker clean, wash it every day, or it’ll get swole up and never heal right – leave a nasty scar forever. Look at mine, here.”

Beau pulled the neck of his jacket aside and showed Paul an ugly puckered wound that slashed from Beau’s ear down across his neck until it disappeared under the jacket. Paul could see Beau wore no shirt under the denim jacket.

They piled into Paul’s car, Sally in front next to him and Beau stretched out in the back.

There was a shabby liquor store at the end of the block.

“How much cash you got on ya,” asked Sally.

“It looks like they take credit cards,” Paul said, pointing to a decal on the door, “I’ll use that.”

“Even better,” said Sally.

They bought a case of beer, some plastic bottles of vodka, a couple boxes of wine, and three giant bags of Funyuns.

Sally directed Paul out of the neighborhood maze and onto the frontage road of the interstate highway.

“Should I get onto the freeway?”

“No, stay here on the side road.”

“Here, pull in back here,” Sally indicated a dirt branch that led to a hidden spot behind an overgrown tangle – a bit of forgotten landscaping gone wild.

“This is our place,” said Sally, expectant, with a little bit of what sounded like pride leaking out with the words,”It’s pretty comfortable, the bridge keeps the rain out, and nobody, I mean nobody ever comes down here.”

It turned out to be a long day, a longer night, and an even longer morning, because morning always comes. The sun always comes up and it reaches everywhere, even into a pile of smoky, filthy rags under an interstate bridge.

Paul woke up naked and crusted with dried vomit. He remembered nothing from after he walked into the camp. His brain felt like it was swollen to twice its usual size and still stuck in the same head. The pressure felt like it would separate his skull along some jagged line, exploding his brain in sweet relief. Every nerve in his body was firing and the light pouring in from the end of the bridge was toxic.

His elbows and knees were scraped bloody and his tongue felt torn on the underside, like it had been half pulled out. He scrabbled around for his clothes, keys, and wallet and found nothing except a filthy pair of green shorts and an old jacket, a nasty stain coursed across the front.

He put those on and slid down the concrete slope back to his car. He wasn’t really surprised when he found the Chrysler missing.

Paul sat and cried for over an hour. He could not figure out how to get home. He considered hitchhiking but couldn’t imagine anyone stopping for a horrible apparition like himself.

Then Paul realized that the creek at the bottom of the interchange was the same system that coursed through his apartment complex. There were a couple branches but he thought he could follow the way, make the correct turns. He limped down into the stale slow-flowing water, the mud feeling good on his feet, but stinging his wounded knees and elbows. He noted the direction the water was flowing, turned into it and began trudging upstream.

It took him most of the day and his feet were cut and bloody from broken glass hidden in the mud at the bottom. He was seen only by a few children from the shelter of an organized pea-gravelled playground, telling their daycare sitters about the “funny man” that went running by.

Paul reached his door, dug the spare key out of the flowerpot… and was home. The hot shower wasn’t enough to get the smell out of his hair, his skin – the night had diffused through his whole body and was oozing out his pores.

He ate some aspirin, drank some apple juice, and burrowed naked into the deepest corner of his bed. There he tossed and turned and tried to fall asleep until that day slowly melted into dreams and nightmares and a stink he alone could smell and could never seem to completely wash out.

Short Story Of the Day – At the Library (flash fiction) by Bill Chance

Posted on by Bill Chance

“I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

Recycled Books
Denton, Texas

I have been feeling in a deep hopeless rut lately, and I’m sure a lot of you have too. After writing another Sunday Snippet I decided to set an ambitious goal for myself. I’ll write a short piece of fiction every day and put it up here. Obviously, quality will vary – you get what you get. Length too – I’ll have to write something short on busy days. They will be raw first drafts and full of errors.

I’m not sure how long I can keep it up… I do write quickly, but coming up with an idea every day will be a difficult challenge. So far so good. Maybe a hundred in a row might be a good, achievable, and tough goal.

Here’s another one for today (#52) More than half way there! What do you think? Any comments, criticism, insults, ideas, prompts, abuse … anything is welcome. Feel free to comment or contact me.

Thanks for reading.

At the Library

I can find excitement anywhere. Even the library.

The library… the thrill of finding that asshole sleeping at a table – two books in front of him; a string of drool from his lips past his chin staining the front of his shirt. He was really asleep, deep asleep, dead to the world.

I had a big hardback picture book of erotic Greek Sculptures – I love the curves, the roundness of the bodies, the unabashedness of the sexuality – the perfection of the human form. It was a big flat book with a plastic cover.

The book in my hand, I started low, swinging it from my waist out and up over my head holding it tightly cupped on edge like a Greek discus thrower. At the top of the swing I lifted my whole body up… onto my tiptoes… yet never leaving the ground, maintaining control, sliding my hand into the center of the book so when I brought it down, fast and hard, yet controlled, perfectly flat, in a parallel plane with the Formica top of the library table. I was able to put the full weight of my body behind the book, moving it with a terrible acceleration.

It hit the table flat hard and fast and the plastic cover of the book and the Formica tabletop left nowhere for the air to go except compressed and out sideways. Right in front of Sleeping Beauty.  It made a terrific boom, a thunderclap, and since this was a library after all… well, everybody on the whole floor practically shat themselves.

Especially sleeping beauty. He snapped up and awake, scared and confused. The momentum of his head yanking off the table threw his whole body back and his chair tilted a bit, the front two legs coming an inch or two off the floor. I thought that might happen so I was ready.

It didn’t take much of a kick, really… more like a little push with my shoe on his chest. He was looking right in my eyes, still in shock from the book boom, when my loafer made contact. He tumbled over backwards, easy, like it was the most natural thing in the world, like the chair was designed for that. He hit the ground hard, though, with a boom that was not nearly as loud as my book but so much more satisfying – because there was flesh and bone involved, flesh and bone and muscle out of position, out of balance, and gravity and steel, and hard industrial type institutional floors and everything out of whack and finding a new equilibrium really quickly.

And it must have hurt bad. He let out a “woof” before his head snapped back, spittle left over from his nap shooting out when the back of his head bounced off the floor with a sickening crunch… it sounded like a bunch of things; some hard, some soft – broke in there.

He didn’t get up, or move or change his expression. I walked out quickly; before the librarians, security guards, folks with books, folks with laptops, could get their mouths closed and figure out what the hell to do. I hit the stairs, hit the front door, and was gone.

Who says the library is boring.

Short Story Of the Day – Security System (flash fiction) by Bill Chance

Posted on by Bill Chance

“Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it’s cracked up to be. That’s why people are so cynical about it. It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don’t risk anything, you risk even more.”
― Erica Jong, Fear of Flying

(click to enlarge)
Invasion car show
Deep Ellum
Dallas, Texas

I have been feeling in a deep hopeless rut lately, and I’m sure a lot of you have too. After writing another Sunday Snippet I decided to set an ambitious goal for myself. I’ll write a short piece of fiction every day and put it up here. Obviously, quality will vary – you get what you get. Length too – I’ll have to write something short on busy days. They will be raw first drafts and full of errors.

I’m not sure how long I can keep it up… I do write quickly, but coming up with an idea every day will be a difficult challenge. So far so good. Maybe a hundred in a row might be a good, achievable, and tough goal.

Here’s another one for today (#51) More than half way there! What do you think? Any comments, criticism, insults, ideas, prompts, abuse … anything is welcome. Feel free to comment or contact me.

Thanks for reading.

Security System

Dr. Worthy paid fifteen hundred dollars extra for the security package on the silver Lexus SUV. The salesman had assured him that,”Nobody, but nobody, will ever be able to get into this thing without the keys, no matter how hard they try.”

Now Dr. Worthy was standing in the sweltering parking lot with his wife, Samantha, his son James – looking as bored and angry as ever, Samantha’s sister Amy and her new boyfriend, What’s-his-name, and the giant double baby stroller with Amy’s two year old daughter and her infant son… and all Worthy could do was check all his pockets, the usual four plus the big deep cargo caves on his thighs with their nylon snaps, and the secret hidden money pouch built into the waistband of his tailored two hundred dollar shorts – and there, like the other dozen times he checked, there were no keys.

His wife never carried keys to his Lexus and his son would sure like to, but Dr. Worthy would no more allow that… how could he trust… and there they were, in the parking lot.

“Call the dealership,”His wife said.

“They’re not open on Sunday.”

“Shit! Dad.”

“Don’t use that language with me.”

“I’ll go find a brick,” said What’s-his-name.

“God no, and that won’t help start it.”

“Oh yeah,” Dr. Worthy swore that What’s-his-name looked disappointed – like smashing a window on that Lexus – worth what that loser must make in a year – would be the high point of his day.

“Y’all locked out?” Dr. Worthy looked up from going through his pockets again to see two skateboarders standing beside the group. They both wore torn denim cutoffs, t-shirts, and had long scraggly hair. One was darker than the other, but otherwise they might be twins.

“I can pick the lock for you,” said one of the skateboarders.

“Oh no you can’t, I paid for an extra security package,” said Dr. Worthy. “Beside, I’d have to start it.”

“I can hot wire it for you,” said the skateboarder.

“I doubt it… but if you could, how much do I have to pay you?”

The two kids laughed. One said, “Naw, we don’t want any money. We’re not poor. We look like this because we want to.”

The other one spoke up, “Tell you what… there is something.”

“What?”

“Let me kiss your wife.”

Dr. Worthy felt his blood starting to boil, “You asshole! Where do you….”

Samantha spoke up, “It’s OK. It’s getting really hot. The baby is getting flushed.”

“Well,” Dr Worthy said, “You’re not going to be able to do it anyway.”

Without a word the skateboarder started looking around on the ground.

“Ah,” he said, lifting up a stray piece of rusty wire, “This will work fine.”

He went to the keyhole in the door and started fishing around.

Dr. Worthy said, “Be careful! If you damage…”

And there was a soft “pop” and the door swung open.

With a wry smile the skateboarder leaned over and started yanking at wires under the steering column.

“Hey, mister come here, I’ll show you,” he said over his shoulder after a few minutes of fiddling.

“These two wires, yellow and green, put them together,” the engine roared into life. “To start the car. Then these two, white and black, pull them apart to kill it.” He tugged them away from each other and the engine died. “Yellow and green together to start, black and white apart to kill. Easy peasy! Got it?”

“Yes, I do,” said Dr. Worthy. He didn’t sound grateful. “Upgraded security my ass! That damn dealer sold me a grand and a half of crap. OK, everyone pile in except Samantha. I don’t want anyone else to see this.”

“HaHa, don’t worry,” said the skateboarder. “I’m not going to smooch your wife. I was just yanking your chain.” The two were still laughing as they dropped their boards and scooted off down the sidewalk.

“Well, at least we can go home now,” said What’s-his-name once they were all settled in the SUV. Dr. Worthy bent over, and pressed the wires together and the car started right up.

“Yeah, we can go home now,” he said. He looked over at his wife in the seat next to him. “What’s your problem,” he said to her.

She looked disappointed.

Short Story Of the Day Bluetooth (flash fiction) by Bill Chance

Posted on by Bill Chance

“It gave me no hope to see him doing these simple things with the sluggishness of a somnambulist. It proved nothing more than that he could go like this forever, our silent accomplice, little more than a resuscitated corpse.”
― Anne Rice, The Vampire Lestat

Mojo Coffee, Magazine Street, New Orleans, Louisiana
(click to enlarge)

I have been feeling in a deep hopeless rut lately, and I’m sure a lot of you have too. After writing another Sunday Snippet I decided to set an ambitious goal for myself. I’ll write a short piece of fiction every day and put it up here. Obviously, quality will vary – you get what you get. Length too – I’ll have to write something short on busy days. They will be raw first drafts and full of errors.

I’m not sure how long I can keep it up… I do write quickly, but coming up with an idea every day will be a difficult challenge. So far so good. Maybe a hundred in a row might be a good, achievable, and tough goal.

Here’s another one for today (#50) Half way there! What do you think? Any comments, criticism, insults, ideas, prompts, abuse … anything is welcome. Feel free to comment or contact me.

Thanks for reading.

Bluetooth

“Rufus!” Sandy was so loud in his Bluetooth headset that Rufus had to pull it out of his ear and hold it or he would be deafened. Sandy’s voice sounded tinny and distant like that, which suited Rufus just fine.

“Damn it Rufus! You need to get your ass down here and take care of that Sylvester dude. He’s in my apartment and he won’t leave.”

“And this is my problem? Why?”

“It’s your problem because you set the whole thing up. Now you get down here right now and help me throw the guy out or I’m gonna start making some calls. And you won’t like who I call or what I am going to say.”

“Ok, Ok, calm down. Now, you said that the Radio guy is in your apartment? Where exactly is he? What’s he doing?”

“He’s on my couch. Asleep. Has been since this afternoon. I can’t get him to budge.”

“Ok, Ok, Sandy. Don’t get your panties in a wad. I’ll be right down. Won’t be any big deal.”

Rufus stood up and walked out of the Starbucks. As the front door closed, he thought he could hear a smattering of applause filtering out through the narrowing crack of the glass door. “You all can go to Hell!” Rufus yelled back at the coffee shop as he walked quickly to his primer-colored Ford Taurus.

He headed directly for the car door. Rufus didn’t like to look at the long, winding rusty dent that buckled along the entire driver’s side. He knew there was a shorter, but deeper puncture wound on the passenger’s. The trunk was held down with a piece of wire, and there was even a dent on the bottom of the car where he had driven up over a parking barricade in a drunken stupor.

Reaching the door, he didn’t need a key, the lock had been drilled out months ago. The ignition cylinder spun freely without a key and with a turn and a few seconds of sputtering and coughing, the engine came to life, idling roughly.

The yellow “low gas” light stared him in the face, mirroring the “Check Engine” symbol on the other side of the dash. He did some mental calculations and decided he could make it to Sandy’s house, though he’d be on fumes once he arrived there.

Sandy needed his help and as he started out down the road, began to plan his angle. He needed a place to stay and he thought he remembered Sandy’s place as having a good, working, air conditioner. That Sylvester Radio guy was a skinny little runt and he’d have no problem rousting him out the door. If he did it in an assertive, manly way, then Sandy was sure to show some appreciation.

Maybe he could get a little more out of the deal than just a place to crash. Rufus started to imagine Sandy’s face full of gratitude, her eyelashes batting. The fantasy became more and more involved, more and more pleasant until he sprinted up the two flights of stairs to Sandy’s apartment and rapped confidently on the door.

Rufus’s fantasy left immediately when Sandy opened the front door. She stood there, her dirty blonde hair sticking out in all directions, her face smeared with mascara. She was wearing old torn cutoff blue jean shorts, a dirty T-shirt, and mismatched Crocs on her feet.

“It’s about time you got here,” Sandy said “he’s not moving at all.”

“Well, don’t worry. I’ll just pitch him out and then we’ll talk.”

Rufus strode to the couch where he saw Sylvester’s head sticking out from under a ratty quilt. He bent over and gave the quilt a yank. It came up quickly – flying into the air.

“Okay Radio! It is time to.. Oh geez! Damn it Sandy! The guy is naked.”

Rufus had to reach in the air to grab the quilt and push it down back over Sylvester Radio as quickly as he could. The image would not leave his mind even after he shook his head violently.

“You didn’t you tell me he was naked!”

“Sorry, I forgot.”

“You forgot? I don’t even want to think…”

Rufus leaned over and grabbed Sylvester’s shoulder and started shaking as hard as he could. Rufus wanted to get him out as soon as possible.

“Oh Christ Sandy, he’s stiff as a board.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I think the guy is dead!” Rufus jumped back away from the couch in disgust. He stood in the middle of the living room shaking and staring at the quilt with the tuft of hair sticking out of one end.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes I’m sure. He’s rigid… rigor mortis… as dead as a doorknob. What did you do to him?”

Sandy said nothing. She simply stared at Rufus and he was horrified when he thought he saw a small grin flash across her face for a second.

“Where’s your phone? We need to call the cops.”

“Oh no,” Sandy said. “No cops. No cops! I’m on probation you know. This will send me back to the big house for sure. And I’m telling you I’m not going back there because you sent me some scrawny pervert with a weak heart.”

“Well then what are we going to do?”

The first step, Sandy told him, was to wedge the dead guy off the couch onto the floor while keeping him wrapped up in the blanket.

Rufus looked around for something to use, he did not want to touch the body. All he could find was a toilet plunger leaning against the end of the couch. He grabbed the wooden handle and used it to wrench the corpse off the couch. He took two corners and Sandy took two and after checking the front stairs they dragged the body out the door and down the two flights as quickly as they could. Luckily no curious bystanders showed up.

“Okay, where’s your car,” Sandy said.

“My car? I’m on fumes. We’ll have to use yours.”

Sandy shook her head in disgust and clumped around the corner. Rufus heard the whine of a small engine and a tiny Smart car appeared.

“What is that? Is that a toy? How are we going to fit in there with him?”

“You should have thought about that before you came here with no gas.”

“I know. I have an idea. I’ll wait here and you can drive with him in the passenger seat.”

“No way. I am not going to do this alone. You sit in the passenger seat and hold him on your lap.”

And that was how they drove. Radio’s head was covered with the blanket and stuck out the passenger window at an angle. They drove to a spot Sarah knew about where a rough gravel road crossed an old railroad spur and dipped down into a thick grove of scrubby trees.

“I don’t even want to know how you knew about this spot,” Rufus said.

“It is lucky that I do.”

They opened the door and slid the body on the quilt down to a steep thick weedy patch and pulled the blanket off while the body rolled away into the darkness.

“I don’t know,” Rufus said “it doesn’t seem right to leave him like that. Should we cover him?”

“That’s my quilt. I’m not going to leave it here for the police to find. Don’t worry. They’ll think he’s just some dead junkie. He’ll never be messed.”

As they were driving away Sarah asked Rufus to open the glove box. Inside was a wallet and keys. Rufus instinctively checked the wallet.

“There is no cash, no credit cards. I’ve already pulled them,” Sarah said. “I want you to check his driver’s license and give me the address.”

“What for?”

“We are going to his place. Those are his keys. I want to see what’s there, I want…”

“Come on Sarah, we are not burglars”

“You can’t burgle a dead man.”

The address was a small brick duplex not far from the University. They parked a block away and walked. As they approached the door with Sarah holding the keys a voice called out from the darkness of the next door entryway.

“Are you two friends of Sylvester’s?”

“Uhhh,” the same confused sound came out of both their throats as they started to slink away from the unexpected interruption.

A spindly old woman suddenly moved from the darkness into the blue light from an overhead street lamp.

“It’s good to see that Sylvester has some friends, some young friends.”

“Yes,” Sarah said, thinking quickly, “we are his friends, we’re here to check on him.”

“Good,” the old woman said, “Sylvesster needs someone to check on him, especially with his, well, you know, his condition and all.”

“Condition?” Both Sarah and Rufus spoke at the same time.

“Yes, don’t you know? That’s why I stayed up waiting for him. He has this nervous disorder. When he gets too excited. His whole nervous system – his brain and spine – his muscles – they freeze up stiff as a board. Catatonic. You would swear he was dead. Sometimes he won’t wake up for hours. Scares me to think that something bad might happen to him. You don’t think… Has something bad?”

Rufus and Sarah stared at each other.

“No, no,” Sarah said, “nothing bad, but, you know, we had better be going.”

“Yes yes,” Rufus replied, “we had better be going right now.”

Short Story Of the Day Radio Radio (flash fiction) by Bill Chance

Posted on by Bill Chance

“Man has gone out to explore other worlds and other civilizations without having explored his own labyrinth of dark passages and secret chambers, and without finding what lies behind doorways that he himself has sealed.”
― Stanisław Lem, Solaris

Flock in Space, Ruben Ochoa
Trinity River Audubon Center, Dallas, Texas
(click to enlarge)

I have been feeling in a deep hopeless rut lately, and I’m sure a lot of you have too. After writing another Sunday Snippet I decided to set an ambitious goal for myself. I’ll write a short piece of fiction every day and put it up here. Obviously, quality will vary – you get what you get. Length too – I’ll have to write something short on busy days. They will be raw first drafts and full of errors.

I’m not sure how long I can keep it up… I do write quickly, but coming up with an idea every day will be a difficult challenge. So far so good. Maybe a hundred in a row might be a good, achievable, and tough goal.

Here’s another one for today (#49). What do you think? Any comments, criticism, insults, ideas, prompts, abuse … anything is welcome. Feel free to comment or contact me.

Thanks for reading.

 

Radio Radio

Winston Devine was always something of a hoarder… not too bad, but he liked his stuff. The quarantine lockdown kept him from going to his favorite thrift store and it was hard on him. When things began to free up and Thrift World opened for two hours a day (with social distancing and a mask requirement) Winston was excited.

There is a certain smell of a big thrift store – mostly a slight musty odor from those vast racks of used clothes – and Winston was happy that Thrift World still had it. It brought back such good memories of bargains found and purchased. He had a route through the store where he wound looking for what he was interested in. He always found things he liked – he was looking for different things than the usual poverty-stricken denizen was.

It the back corner was a giant plastic bin full of obsolete, useless electronics. Single and scuffed speakers, old phones, DVD players, audio cassette recorders, phone answering machines, overhead projectors, VCRs, broken printers, fax machines… all the detritus of fast-changing technology. A hand lettered sign was taped to the wall, “Old Electric.” The items were tagged with color-coded stickers indicating the price.

Winston couldn’t help a quick dig. At the least it sent a surge of nostalgia through him. From near the bottom he lifted out what looked like an old radio. It reminded of a portable tube set that his father had when he was a little kid.

Clad in reddish leather it was a rectangular box about the size of a loaf of bread. It even had a leather strap handle on the top like the one his father had owned. It sported a purple dot which Winston knew represented a buck. For a dollar he’d buy it – even if it didn’t work.

At home he sat down at his kitchen table with the bargain, excited to figure out if he could it to do something. His father’s old radio had opened up with two snaps on the back and contained a huge plastic tube that required nine “D” batteries – electronics from that age weren’t very efficient.

But on this unit the back was featureless leather. Turning it over, there was no opening on the sides or bottom, either. The top only contained the carrying strap.

“How the hell does this thing get power?” he muttered to himself.

On the front there were two large silver knobs on either side – one labeled “Vol” the other “Tun.” Between them was a linear tuning dial with three lines and a red slider that moved across it. Below the dial was a simple sliding switch.

“Well, that looks right,” he said to nobody.

But that was all there was. It was too simple, there should have been more stuff on it. He was confused because there was no logo or brand name… no “Zenith” or “GE” emblazoned proudly. Maybe it had fallen off.

Winston gave the volume knob a twist and after a click the tuning dial lit up with a strong blue glow. The thing worked! He was elated.

The slide switch had three positions. AM, FM, and the third had a symbol that looked like a stylized swirl. He set it to AM, turned the volume up and began to scan.

Each time he turned the tuning knob, even a fraction, sound began to come out of the radio. It was crisp and distinct. Winston smiled as he thought about how well stuff was made back then.

The odd thing was, the stations weren’t all in English. Few were, as a matter of fact. As he tuned he realized the radio was picking up stations from all over the world. Picking them up strong and clear like they were right next door. It was receiving hundreds of stations.

When he reached the end of the dial, he switched the radio to FM and moved back down. Again, every tiny movement tuned in another station from somewhere in the world, strong and distortion free. There was no static. There was music from all genres and talk in every imaginable language.

Winston was confused. He had no idea how this thing was working like that. Then he noticed something else. The radio had no speaker grill. He turned it around in his hands and could not figure out where the music was coming from. It seemed to be radiating out of the whole radio in all directions. And he noticed that the radio was pristine. The leather was completely unmarked… no scratches or stains. The dials were perfect. How was that possible on an old radio that ended up in a thrift store?

He was beginning to freak out. There was no way this was possible. On the other hand, it was an amazing bargain. He had only paid a buck for it. It had AM and FM bands – but what was that third switch position. Maybe it was short wave.

He looked more closely at the dial. On the FM and AM lines were numbers, frequencies, like he expected. On the third line, however there was a series of small circles. Each circle was labeled in tiny lettering that read:

Arcturus

Betelgeuse

Canopus

Capella A

Capella B

Deneb

Fomalhaut

Mimosa

Pollux

Procyon

Rigel

Sirius

Spica

Vega

These were names of stars, he recognized that. Looking at the sliding switch he realized that the symbol on the third position was a stylized galaxy. It was crazy.

Taking a deep breath, he tuned the radio to Arcturus and switched the band to the galaxy. Immediately an odd series of clicks and tones started pouring out of the radio. He had never heard anything remotely like those sounds. They were completely alien. Alien. The word stuck in his mind.

He began to turn the dial, working through the names. Each one had a completely different sound – Betelgeuse was an odd wailing, while Canopus sounded almost like whale song with an oboe playing in the background. Capella A and B sounded similar, though A was at a higher pitch. Nothing, though was familiar at all… it was all… alien.

Until he reached Sirius. When the red line crossed that little circle Winston was shocked to hear “I Get Around” by the Beach Boys in perfect clarity. When it ended, the old doo-wop classic “Earth Angel” played. The next song was an ancient instrumental by The Ventures, “Telstar.” Winston had always liked that song.

After the guitar faded away Winston was jolted when a voice came over the radio. It was an odd voice – he couldn’t decide if it was male of female, young or old. It had no discernible accent and Winston decided it was an absolute perfect generic voice.

“Welcome all you listeners from across the known galaxy to our afternoon show, Sounds of Earth. Our agents are working hard recording the music and culture of that little planet for the archives. Their time and their job is almost over. Once the invasion is accomplished, the population enslaved, and the planet stripped we want to preserve as much as we can in the unlikely case they produced anything of lasting value. In the meantime we select what we think you might enjoy and let you hear it before it’s gone.”

“Next up, Space Oddity by a human singer named David Bowie.”

Winston turned the radio off. He was shaking and sweat was pouring down his face. He walked into his living room and turned on the television. He was relieved when the normal pair of newscasters appeared on the screen sitting behind their usual desk. There was no panic and no mention of an alien invasion.

The male announcer said to his partner, “Well, Wendy, twenty twenty has been quite a year. The pandemic, political insanity, then the demonstrations and the riots. We can hope that soon, things will start to improve. Twenty one will have to be a better year.”

“That’s right Chad,” his partner replied. “What could possibly happen next? I can’t imagine things getting worse than this.”

Winston couldn’t help but let out a chuckle as he said to the screen, “Worse? Oh, I’m afraid you have no idea how much worse it is going to get.”