Tag Archives: lonely

I Get Out

Posted on by Bill Chance

“We all live in a house on fire, no fire department to call; no way out, just the upstairs window to look out of while the fire burns the house down with us trapped, locked in it.”
― Tennessee Williams, The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore

Skull Mural – Design District, Dragon Street, Dallas, Texas

I have been trapped inside (except for going to work all the time – which is even worse). I think I’m losing my mind.

I did get out today – actually went to a wedding in the design district. It felt odd. So odd I’m getting worried that I have lost all my abilities as a social animal – which were never strong to begin with.

Short Story Of the Day, Technology by Bill Chance

Posted on by Bill Chance

“There are three intolerable things in life – cold coffee, lukewarm champagne, and overexcited women…” he said, trailing off.

—-Bill Chance, Technology

 

 

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 (#16). What do you think? Any comments, criticism, insults, ideas, prompts, abuse … anything is welcome. Feel free to comment or contact me.

Thanks for reading.

 

Anna Karina

 

 

Technology

Wilfred had tested positive and was in strict quarantine. He wrote low-level code for a living and could easily work from home. His condominium was more than large enough for one person. There were grocery stores and number of restaurants in his area that offered delivery – he wasn’t going to starve.

But he hated eating alone.

His place had plenty of storage space and he was always fighting his hoarding tendencies. Every now and then, though, his habit of keeping stuff served him well. Not very often, but sometimes.

As he dreaded another sandwich alone (he had taken to eating over the counter where he made his food to minimize cleanup) he had a sudden idea. Digging around in a disused walk-in closet he found an ancient dot-matrix printer and a big box of blank continuous pin-feed paper. He even had some extra stashed ribbon cartridges, enough to do a lot of printing.

He dragged it out and set it up on a sturdy side table. He was disappointed when he realized his laptop didn’t have a parallel port – but Amazon had a surprising collection of USB to parallel adapters with prime overnight delivery. While he was on the site he ordered a pack of large foam core board, some rubber cement, and a nice cutter for curved mat boards. Tape and scissors, he already had.

One of his common tasks as a code jockey was to write printer drivers, and it didn’t take him long to cobble together something to output some surprisingly good graphics (black and white, of course) to the ancient dot matrix.

The next job was to pick five people and download some quality images. His dining room table would seat six and he had nice quality place settings for himself and five others. There were so many folks to choose from, but it was his party and he could invite whomever he wanted.

It took a while to get used to the noise of the dot matrix in his condo. He had forgotten how loud and slow the things were. But the image of the paper slowly unfolding from the box and running through the printer was comforting and the noise ultimately became almost soothing.

Then there was the gluing, the cutting and trimming, and putting it all together. The smell of the rubber cement was nasty in the closed in space, and Wilfred decided he should have used double sided tape. But it did work and the odor finally dissipated.

Finally, he was done. He had several days to decide on his first menu and have the food delivered. He decided that it didn’t have to be too fancy and he should make what he liked. Nobody was getting enough exercise so it better be healthy. He settled on baked chicken meatballs with garlic-dill yogurt sauce served over zucchini noodles with mixed vegetables and sweet potatoes on the side.

He filled the six plates and put one at each place. Then he filled glasses with water and a nice white that he had stashed away.

So there he was with five other people – the foam core cutouts firmly taped up on each chair, arranged man-woman, with him at one head.

To his right was the French actress Anna Karina – the photo he printed was of her at her prime as a star of the early sixties New Wave. Her stunning beauty translated well to the black and white dot matrix printing – so many of her movies weren’t in color – Wilfred thought of her that way.

“After all,” she said, “Things are what they are. A message is a message, plates are plates, men are men, and life is life.”

To his left as the author Patricia Highsmith. She was born in Texas but settled in Paris and had a very unconventional life. She was burdened with alcoholism and depression, but sometimes that made for lively dinner conversation. She was plainspoken, dryly funny, and fun at the table, in general.

“I know you have it in you, Wilfred,” Patricia said suddenly at the end of a silence, “the capacity to be terribly happy.”

Beyond her was Oscar Wilde. Wilfred always loved the way he wove witty aphorisms through his writing and imagined he was always good for a quip to keep the conversation going. He was not disappointed.

“I’m a man of simple tastes. I’m always satisfied with the best,” he said, and everyone raised their glasses.

On the other side, next to Anna Karina, was the massive presence of Orson Welles. Mr. Welles was on good behavior and really enjoyed the food. His tales of some of the famous people he had met kept everyone enraptured.

“There are three intolerable things in life – cold coffee, lukewarm champagne, and overexcited women…” he said, trailing off.

Finally, at the other end of the table, was Cleopatra. Her English was surprisingly good for an ancient Egyptian Queen. She looked at life and the world in general in a wildly different way that anybody else and had the others thinking deeply about their own perspectives.

“Marc Antony?” she said, “I never understood how such a big man had such a small brain.” And everybody chuckled.

The meal ended but Wilfred still sat there enjoying the company and the conversation. Finally he collected the plates and glasses and was momentarily bothered by the amount of food that was wasted.

“But that’s the price for good company,” Patricia Highsmith pointed out. And she was right.

Everyone had such a good time. So they made plans for another dinner in a few days.

“I’m sorry,” said Oscar Wilde, “I have to fly to Paris for a meeting with my agent. There’s a play coming out and he is desperate for me to make some changes.”

The others talked about it for a minute and the decision was made to invite Groucho Marx.

“Then Groucho it is,” said Wilfred. He had plenty of paper and foamcore left and had learned to sleep through the sound of printing.

 

Short Story Of the Day, Weeds by Bill Chance

Posted on by Bill Chance

“The new owners kept the lawn up all right, they hired a crew to come in once a week, Mexicans in a pickup, trailer in back, mowers and edgers and in an hour it was done. Other than that, though, things were worse. Way worse.”

—-Bill Chance, Weeds

Wildflowers, Huffhines Park, Richardson, 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 (#11). What do you think? Any comments, criticism, insults, ideas, prompts, abuse … anything is welcome. Feel free to comment or contact me.

Thanks for reading.

 

 

Weeds

Weeds! Weeds!

Jonny pulled and moved forward. Working carefully on his hands and knees he inched along his side yard. This was Tuesday and Thursday work, pulling weeds. He was retired and had the time to do this by hand, to do it the right way. Monday was mowing and edging. Wednesday was for the flowerbeds, Friday the vegetables. The weekend was for fixing and painting.

He glanced up for a minute from the lush green growth to look across the street at the house there. It had been purchased six months earlier by some young man, named Douglas. At first Jonny and the other neighbors were happy, anyone would be better than the crazy slob that lived there before. That nut never kept the place up at all. When his nephews came to visit Jonny had been so embarrassed at the tall grass across the street he sneaked over one day when the nut was gone and mowed it. The nut called the police when he came home but they wouldn’t do an investigation, mowing someone’s lawn might be trespassing, but it wasn’t a thing they had time to pursue.

The new owners kept the lawn up all right, they hired a crew to come in once a week, Mexicans in a pickup, trailer in back, mowers and edgers and in an hour it was done. Other than that, though, things were worse. Way worse.

First were the bars on the windows. Then the big siren up on the roof, hooked up to a burglar alarm. That damn thing went off one night, woke up half the neighborhood. Cars coming and going, all night. Dark cars, tinted windows. Quick, hairy, odd folks. Darting in and out.

Jonny didn’t like it. Not at all. Right across the street.

Not much he could do about it. He cursed a little under his breath, turned his head back to the lawn and started to inch forward again. This time of spring the spurge was bad, round bright green leaves mixed in with the darker St. Augustine blades. It didn’t look right, so Jonny would pull them by hand, before they could get a stranglehold on his lawn. Had to nip these things in the bud, Jonny always said.

He was so intent on his weed pulling he didn’t see the first police van pull up. It was silent, no siren. The second one came faster and squealed its brakes. Jonny snapped his head up in time to see the third, fourth, and fifth speed in from different directions, all slamming up to the curb along the neighbors house. A few police cars came screaming in too, filling the street.

The black-clad helmeted police poured out of the trucks and ran up to the house, one at each window, the rest in groups at the front and back doors. Then the shouting started, and a loud banging, and the sound of wood being torn apart. The two groups of police disappeared into the house and, on cue, a big dark green truck pulled up, one with big back double doors that opened wide.

More shouting. The police came out with a black man wearing only bright red underwear, his hands cuffed behind his back. They threw him roughly into the back of the truck. Then they led out a skinny blond woman, wrapped in a blanket, smoking a cigarette, she went into one of the cars.

A group of police came out the back door, shouting louder than ever. Jonny could hear grunting and cussing, the police were red-faced and heaving at something. Then Jonny recognized Douglas, the young fellow that bought the house, he was wearing a black leather jacket like the police, it was hard to tell who was who.

Suddenly Douglas let out a scream and heaved forward and somehow broke loose. His hands were cuffed behind but he took off running across the street, straight for Jonny’s house. The police pulled guns, but didn’t fire. Two of them, maybe the biggest men Jonny had ever seen caught up with Douglas and knocked him down like he was made of straw. He bounced into the grass not ten feet from Jonny. The police gathered him up, quiet now, and hauled him quickly over to the truck. Even though he was right there – nobody said a word to him. They ignored Jonny completely, like he was invisible.

The trucks all left along with most of the cars. Only one marked car was left behind. One man took photos while another stretched yellow tape across the doors of the house. Soon then they left too. Suddenly quiet. Jonny hadn’t moved an inch. He still was on his knees, a freshly pulled weed between his fingertips. Nobody had said a word to him.

Jonny knelt for a minute, trying to decide what to do. Should he go in the house? His wife wasn’t home; on Tuesdays she spent the day at the Center… was it ceramics day? He thought for awhile but couldn’t come up with any reason not to keep weeding. Jonny looked up and saw something white on the grass, right where the police had thrown Douglas down. A fleck of what looked like a scrap of paper. He started to get up to walk over, see what it was.

“Jeez! That shore was sumpthin’!” a voice startled Jonny. He stood up quickly and looked into the face of Fred, a neighbor from down the block. Fred smelled of fresh clippings, he must have been mowing.

“Uh, yeah,” was the only comment Jonny could come up with.

“I always knew somthin’ fishy was goin’ on over there… but Jeez!” continued Fred. “Come back from Vegas yesterday, lawn growed up somethin’ awful. I’s out mowin’, then this. Jeez!”

“How was Vegas?” Jonny asked, eager to change the subject.

Fred was happy to oblige, “OK, I suppose.” “Wife and I ate at the buffet, at the Brass Nugget, same as always. ‘Cept this time we went to pay and the girl said ‘Thirty-Two dollars.’ ‘Thirty-Two Dollars!’ I says back at her. I couldn’t believe it had gone up that much. ‘It’s whole lobster night,’ she says. That explained it, it was whole lobster night.”

“Did you eat a lobster?”

“Yeah, you had to use a coupon so it wasn’t really all you could eat, you only had one. You picked out your lobster, only they weren’t very good. Too big ‘n tough. I’d never had a whole lobster before, only tails ‘n claws. This one was too tough.”

“Oh, sorry.”

“Well then,” Fred went on, “I went back, to the regular part of the buffet, and got some of the meat. Some beef. And, you know, it was so tough I could barely chew it. Like horsemeat.”

“Oh, the buffet wasn’t so good?”

“It’s OK. Same as always, really. All you can eat. Can’t beat that.” “Well, Jonny, I’d better get back to that mower. Lawn’s all grown up ‘n all.”

“Oh, talk to ya later, then.”

“Talk to ya later.”

And Fred strolled off. Jonny watched him for a minute, thinking about Fred flying all the way out to Las Vegas for a vacation. Thinking about going all that way to wait in line in an all-you-can-eat buffet. Piling up tough meat on a plate.

Jonny turned and looked at the fleck of white. It looked even worse than a weed, so he walked quickly over to get it off his lawn. In a few steps he was on it and could get a good look down into the turf.

He wasn’t so young anymore, he wasn’t up on all the new stuff, but he wasn’t an idiot either. He knew what that was down there. It must have fallen out of Douglas’ pocket when he went down. In all the hubub nobody noticed such a small thing stuck there in the blades of grass.

It was a marijuana cigarette, a joint. Handrolled, ends twisted, a little bent, Douglas must have rolled onto it as he fell. Jonny had never seen one of these before. It looked familiar, though. In the army, he and the other men would buy tins of tobacco, packs of thin, gummed papers, roll their own cigarettes out on maneuvers. He knew this wasn’t tobacco, though.

Jonny didn’t know what to do. The police were all gone. The few neighbors that had come out onto their porches right after it happened had all retreated back inside. He looked down the block and saw Fred pushing his mower around the corner into his side yard.

Jonny bent over, picked it up quickly and walked fast into the door of his workshop.

It used to be a detached garage, but Jonny added space on to the front that would hold their car and converted the rest into storage for his tools and a bench. It was dark and quiet, the one place where Jonny felt always at home. It had been more than five years since another human being had been in this room. He pulled the hand-rolled cigarette out of his pocket and put it down on the bench between his soldering iron and the case of his socket set.

Jonny stood there motionless. He kept thinking of Fred and the buffet. He could see the trays, almost taste the tough meat. He thought of all those retired people on vacation, trading in their little coupons for tasteless old lobsters, picked from a tank and boiled alive. He could hear the sound of mowers through the wall of his shop, not only Fred, but others out pushing the machines. It sounded like bees buzzing through the walls. Jonny thought of the third of his yard he had left unweeded, of the brighter green leaves of the spurge mixed in with his carefully tended turf.

Without even knowing why, Jonny reached out to his pegboard and pulled the long propane lighter he used on his bar-b-que grill.

He sat down on a stool. “I think I’ll let the rest go today,” he said out loud to himself and picked up the marijuana, stuck it in his mouth.

Short Story Of the Day, Gratuitous by Bill Chance

Posted on by Bill Chance

“Sammy wanted to change channels. He wanted to see something silly and funny. He didn’t want to have to think as hard as this was requiring.”

—-Bill Chance, Gratuitous

Playdays, by Harriet Whitney Frishmuth, A Woman’s Garden, 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 (#10). What do you think? Any comments, criticism, insults, ideas, prompts, abuse … anything is welcome. Feel free to comment or contact me.

Thanks for reading.

Gratuitous

With the COVID lockdown Sammy was watching way, way too much television. He became uninterested in what he was watching too. Whatever was on, was on.

He found himself staring at an interview with a famous actress. There were ferns on the set. The interview was odd because it attempted to be highbrow – asking questions related to the events of the day (insane as they are), the price of fame, and the philosophies of the motion picture business.

Sammy wanted to change channels. He wanted to see something silly and funny. He didn’t want to have to think as hard as this was requiring.

He was feeling the buttons on the remote, getting ready to switch, when the interviewer asked a question that made his eyebrows raise.

“What is your position on nudity in the projects your are working on? Or in the world of film in general?”

“Well, I suppose that if it in service of the plot or character of the work, then it is OK,” the actress said.

“So if it isn’t… if it is gratuitous, you are opposed.”

“Oh no, no. If it is gratuitous, so much the better. That’s like a little bit extra. We all like a little bit extra.”

Sammy switched to Netflix, moved the cursor sideways until it was posed over the little magnifying glass. Using the arrow keys he began to clumsily type in the actress’ name.

“Let’s see if she’s got anything on here,” he said to himself.

Short Story Of the Day (flash fiction), Band Apart by Bill Chance

Posted on by Bill Chance

“She attracted attention in a way that didn’t belong in Nebraska. She wore a thin long-sleeved sweater and a pleated tartan skirt with a large safety-pin that, again, looked stylish and from another place.”

—-Bill Chance, Band Apart

Bande à part

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 (#8). What do you think? Any comments, criticism, insults, ideas, prompts, abuse … anything is welcome. Feel free to comment or contact me.

This is adapted from another bit of text I wrote for NanoWriMo a couple of years ago. It’s a sketch based on a very famous scene from a French film (moved to Nebraska).

Thanks for reading.

Band Apart

The first time I saw the three… I always want to refer to them as kids, though they were so much more… kids was in a horrible diner outside Madison, Nebraska.

I was working a job in that remote, tumbleweed choked shithole and hating every minute of it. There were only two places to eat – a greasy spoon hamburger joint on the town square or the diner out on the windswept plains along the highway. I would eat lunch at whichever turned my stomach the least and that day it was the diner.

I was sitting there, washing down a stale Reuben with a cold cup of bitter coffee and watching a young couple, a woman sitting with a man across the aisle. She was stunningly beautiful in a unique way. Tall and rail-thin, with long, black hair tied back behind her head with a green ribbon, large eyes and a tiny-turned up nose. She attracted attention in a way that didn’t belong in Nebraska. She wore a thin long-sleeved sweater and a pleated tartan skirt with a large safety-pin…  that, again, looked stylish and from another place.

The young man with her was more normal looking – a prematurely receding hairline on a round head and ears that stuck out a bit too much above a heavy sweater in diagonal checks. Sitting next to the woman, he looked like he was in black-and-white, washed out by her beauty. They were both chatting to each other and looking down at their hands which were gesticulating between their plates with their fingers hanging down like little legs barely touching the table.

The inane din of the place kept me from hearing what they were saying to each other, but they kept moving their hands and fingers in a certain way and I realized they were working out a movement… maybe a dance, on the table. They came to some sort of agreement, suddenly pushed the table away and stood up. They walked over to an open space on the diner floor next to the jukebox.

There was a slim man already standing at the jukebox picking out a song. He wore a stylish double breasted jacket, thin black tie, and a fedora. A large local, wearing tattered overalls and already a little drunk in the afternoon, stumbled by the three, clapping the first man and the girl on the shoulders, then mumbling something to the man in the Fedora as the first notes of the song began to fight their way out of the jukebox.

The three stared at the big man as he stumbled away and the song began to swell. The man at the jukebox turned and placed his hat on the woman’s head and they both adjusted it until it was just right. Somehow, it looked perfect on her.

And then, as the music caught up to them, they began to dance. It was an old instrumental jazz number, one I don’t think I had heard before, but that still seemed familiar somehow. The drums skittered over a thrumming base line with an organ trembling above. Finally, a horn section punctuated the melody into the sound. It was cyclical and rhythmic and the dancers like it.

They would turn, hop, and clap together in a choreographed line dance. It was obvious that the two were working out the details at the table and the man in the tie somehow already knew it all. As they moved, swayed, and thrust their arms forward, snapping their fingers, the crowded diner continued to move around them, ignoring them, but giving them the space they needed.

The three were serious, like they were thinking hard about how they were, and kept the synchronization up pretty well. They didn’t look like professional dancers, of course, but had their own style and grace and beauty about them.

An electric guitar joined the music from the jukebox and the three began to turn and face each other’s back, then wheel until they were side to side, swaying and clapping.

I was mesmerized. The music was complimented by the chatter of the other diners and the clinking of plates and silverware, but the three seemed to exist in a reality all of their own. They were dancing in the diner but also living outside of it, away from it, beyond it. They did not belong there. They were style, beauty, and grace, and a… cool was the only way to say it.

They were the epitome of cool in the least cool place in the world.

And the diner wasn’t able to understand… to appreciate the miracle that was inside it. Like aliens from a distant planet… no, they weren’t the aliens, they were the real people. The diner was the alien planet and they were the only authentic humans that had ever graced its grimy linoleum floor. And the diner with its oblivious patrons kept on slinging its grease completely oblivious to the miracle moving about the space in front of the jukebox.

Where had they come from? I couldn’t imagine. The music kept playing and they kept dancing. It didn’t look like this was the first time they had danced to this – it was too complex and tricky and they were too good at it. I noticed the way the woman would snap her head a little bit as she shuffled or snapped her fingers or tapped her foot. It was intoxicating.

As they danced they never spoke and rarely even looked at each other. Each was in their own world, but they were all on their own together. The two men began to look tired and a little bored, then stepped aside and walked back to the table. The woman continued the dance on her own.

Only then did she really break out in a smile. As she moved on alone, able to improvise a bit – break the strict choreography of the line dance, did she look like she was having fun. Without the two men, she was free.

My heart sank as the music ended. The few minutes that I sat there, watching the three dance, listening to that mysterious jazz, had been the only ray of light that had pierced the cold gray of my life for months. I felt that the sun had broken through an eternal bank of clouds and now that the music had ended the heavens had closed up again.