Like Glass: Chapter 3

If you’re just barely joining us, catch up with Chapter 1 here and Chapter 2 here.  Remember: there’ll be a random drawing on Sunday, February 1st for a free digital copy of the novel, so make sure to leave a comment!

 

Between thoughts of Janet’s hair dancing in the streetlights (entirely imagined; he’d paid rather little attention to her hair once they’d started walking) and his incessant self-cursing for not even asking for her phone number, it was quite some time before Rob’s mind had let him rest that night. He woke the next morning around noon, and went straight to the TV, flipping through the handful of channels he actually received on the cheap television’s built-in antenna. He turned it off after hour, worked up the nerve to open his political science book, closed it, and turned the TV back on. He repeated this process several times before giving up.

It just wasn’t any use; he had a hard enough time focusing on the books as it was, let alone with his new distraction dancing gracefully in the back of his mind. Not that he had any idea how Janet danced, but he didn’t let that stop his imagination. Knowing that sitting in front of the television with his books in front of him was pointless, he changed into some mostly-clean jeans and a t-shirt, grabbed some of the music Dr. Bishop had assigned him, and headed to the practice rooms on campus.

Regardless of his lack of study habits in other academic areas, he practiced regularly, almost religiously. Although much of the time he hardly considered it “practice”—he just liked to play—his near constant desire to “hit the rooms” had placed him head and shoulders above much of the fellow pianists at the school.

He considered himself fairly lucky, living only a half mile from the college, saving him worries about parking (as well as much of the necessity for a car). He walked under the warm spring sky, mostly overcast but bright and unthreatening, humming softly to himself and letting his mind wander.

It was a walk he took often, so he was able to make the short journey in the mindless motions of habit, his feet tracing the same steps they’d made countless times. Oblivious to the world around him, his mind bounced back and forth between trying to decide what he’d work on in practice, the tests he was supposed to be studying for, and Janet, never staying on one subject or the other for too long.

Without realizing he’d finished the short walk, he opened the door to the large, single story faux-adobe building that housed most of the fine arts departments and traced the familiar path through the maze of offices and lecture rooms to the handful of small, soundproof nooks that housed the pianos. Finding all of them unoccupied—entirely normal for a Saturday, as most of the other students were tending to their own weekend business—he chose one with a fairly well-kept baby grand and shut the door behind him. After an obligatory flourish of scales and arpeggios for a pretense of warming up, he played.

As he played, his mind let go of Janet and studying. With the echoes of the piano strings bouncing off the acoustic tiling and his arms and fingers racing like mad up and down the keys, his head cleared and nothing existed but the music. He paused only long enough in between pieces to decide the next one to play, sometimes from the music he’d brought, sometimes from memory, sometimes entirely improvised.

When he finished, he smiled at the keys and gently pulled the cover shut. He knew he’d probably never make a dime as a pianist—a fact his mother constantly reminded him of—but he didn’t care. Part of him even looked forward to living the starving-artist lifestyle, the romanced version shown in movies where the artist is always penniless but somehow able to buy food and pay rent.

“I thought that was you,” a woman said from behind him, startling him. Caught up in the music, he hadn’t heard Dr. Bishop open the door. He turned to see her smiling in the doorway.

“Hi professor. I didn’t think you’d be here today.”

“Ah, how easily they forget,” she said in mock exasperation. He said nothing, just looked at her curiously. “The concert? Tomorrow night? I figured you’d forgotten, since you weren’t playing your ballade. Either that or you were trying to forget.”

“No, I’d forgotten about it. Had some…other things on my mind.”

“I see. Well, now you can remember. The Rachmaninoff is sounding good, by the way. You’re still running your triplets together a little, but it’s better than it was last month.” He blushed slightly at her praise. “How is the ballade going, anyways? Are you still having problems with the end?”

“A little.”

“Well, I’m not supposed to do this ‘after hours’, but I need a break—I’m getting tired of going over the scholarship applications. Run through it once and let me see how it’s going.”

He played the ballade for her once, his arms already tired from his earlier practice but able to keep it going until the last notes bounced dully off the acoustic paneling. When he finished, she smiled and nodded at him.

“Robert, that was excellent. You’ll do fine.”

“The ending?”

“You hit one bad note; that’s it. It’s one of Chopin’s most challenging pieces—I know concert pianists who wouldn’t have gotten it quite that well. You’re going to do great tomorrow. In fact…no, I better not tell you.” She gave him a sly smile. He looked at her, puzzled.

“What’s going on?”

“Well, I didn’t want to say anything, especially when you were already worried about the piece, but…” She sighed, resigning herself to say what she’d apparently thought better to hold in. “You remember meeting Roger Smolenska, from the symphony?”

Rob nodded cautiously; Smolenska was the music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. Dr. Bishop had introduced the two of them in September, before the orchestra had started its season and was visiting the music department to offer lessons and advice.

“Well, Mr. Smolenska is going to be there tomorrow night, looking for bright young musicians—pianists in this case—for an internship next year. I’d specifically suggested he come tomorrow night, instead of sending Blankenship—their keyboard chair—to watch you.” She laughed as his eyes grew large. “No pressure Robert, you’ll do great.”

“Yeah, no pressure at all.”

After a few moments of trying to be responsible and ignoring whoever might be trying to sell him new phone service or refinance his house, he grabbed the receiver.

“Hello?”

“Hey, you sorry son of a bitch.”

“Hi Bill.” Rob struggled to remember why he’d once thought it a good idea to give his brother his phone number. He knew there must’ve been a good reason at some time, but he was at a loss.

“Hey, sorry about your date last night.”

“Yeah, what happened?”

“She got tied up. You wouldn’t have liked her anyways; she’s terrible in the sack.”

“Well, why’d you bother?”

“I didn’t know until last night. Anyways, where were you? I tried to call you after she left, about nine.”

He started to answer and stopped himself. For some reason, it didn’t seem like a good idea to tell his brother about his new friend.

“Out.”

“Who was she?”

“Am I that transparent?”

“Like glass. The only reason you won’t tell me what’s up is if it involves a girl. So what happened? You bang her?”

“No, I didn’t. Just a girl I met at the coffee shop while I was being stood up by what’s her name.”

“Christy. Why didn’t you bang her?” That was Bill, the hopeless romantic.

“Man, I just met her last night.”

“So? Is she a dyke or something?”

“No, just…”

“Relax, I’m just busting your sack man. Anyways, what do you got going on tonight?” Rob looked around at his room, his eyes catching the poorly stacked pile of textbooks on his desk.

“I need to study; I’ve got four tests this week. Big ones.”

“Whatever bitch. C’mon, let’s go out. Get drunk, get some chicks, pass out. Maybe even in that order this time.”

“Sorry Bill, I can’t.”

“Whatever man. I’ll be over there in an hour.”

“Not tonight, I really can’t. We’ll hang out some other time. I really need to study tonight.”

“Alright, whatever. I’ll call you later.” Bill hung up before he had a chance to mention the concert.

He did need to study, but, as earlier, was having a hard time concentrating. His mind kept drifting past the books and the impending concert to a certain girl behind the coffee shop counter. He eyed his text books.

This is the stupidest excuse in the world. You know that, right? And he did know that. He kept that thought planted firmly in his mind as he dressed, grabbed his books, and started out the door.

By the time he arrived at the coffee shop it was still early enough in the evening for a fair amount of daylight, though the spring air was starting to chill. Before much longer, he knew this time of day would be miserably hot, but for now it was pleasant as he sat on the patio outside.

He’d ordered his coffee, passing behind Janet as she helped a customer at one of the tables. The man at the counter—probably a nice and interesting guy but nowhere near as pretty as Janet—gave him his coffee and took his money before Rob walked back out to sit down and enjoy a cigarette in the light April breeze. Because that’s all he was there for: just a smoke and some coffee while he studied. Like any other customer. Of course.

He gazed intently at his political science book, going back and forth from one meaningless column of text to another as he sat, sipping his coffee and smoking. After half an hour of carrying on this charade, a familiar laugh came from behind him like an old friend.

“This is quite interesting. Fancy seeing you around these parts again, stranger. Refill?” Janet stood over him suddenly, a knowing smile on her face and a pot of coffee in her hand.

“Sure, I think I’d like that. On the coffee too, if you don’t mind.” As soon as he spoke, he thought there was little else he could’ve said that would have been quite so stupid, but she laughed coyly at him.

“Well, we’ll work on the coffee for now. Find your way home okay last night?”

“Yeah, I managed.”

“I’ll bet.” She filled his coffee cup again and he thanked her.

“Listen, uh, Janet, I was wondering…” She stopped and looked at him expectantly, still smiling. “Um, do you have any plans tonight?”

“Well, I don’t know…I guess it depends on why you’re asking.”

“I…uh…I wanted to see if you wanted to do something, maybe catch a movie or something like that.”

“Hmmmm… I don’t know. I have that dinner with the governor, and I am about to go on tour to promote my new CD and fashion line, but I think I can fit you in somewhere.” He laughed softly.

“When could I pick you up?”

“I get off in fifteen minutes—Raoul’s closing up tonight. I think City of Angels is playing down the street, if you want to see it.”

“Sounds great.” She could’ve suggested they spend the evening slowly removing layers of his skin and rinsing him in battery acid; it still would’ve sounded great at the moment.

“Are we walking? It’s not a problem if we are,” she added quickly, placing a reassuring hand on his arm as a brief flush came over his face. “I just want to know so I know whether to put on heels or flats.”

“Yeah, I think we’ll probably be walking tonight.”

“Great. So, give me about an hour, maybe? So I can change. Just meet me at my house.”

“Sounds great. I’ll see you then.” She smiled at him, a warm, deep smile that seemed to come straight from the heart.

“Great. I need to get back to work.” As if to enforce this point, Raoul (or at least who Rob assumed was Raoul) started yelling at her from inside. She rolled her eyes, gave him another quick flash of that deep smile, and rushed back inside.

Rob left his half-finished coffee steaming on the table and hurried home. He showered quickly, changed back into his slacks from the night before, and found a different slightly-wrinkled shirt.

He searched wildly for enough cash to make the night at least somewhat decent, and finally found a total of twenty-three dollars and seventy-two cents. They wouldn’t be making a big night of it—probably have to get the cheap limo and only two bottles of Dom Perignon. But they’d at least get into the show and have enough cash for some snacks and a soda. With just enough time to make it to her house as she finished getting ready, he started out the door.

The movie had been decent, what little of it Rob remembered. He’d spent most of the night in an embarrassing school-boy daze, wondering if he should grab her hand or put his arm around her. In the end, he had merely spent the movie sitting there thinking.

Walking home with her was more comfortable by far than sitting next to her in the theater. He was quite thankful he’d paid some attention to the movie, as Janet had thought it quite worth talking about. While he wasn’t giving a review worthy of Siskel and Ebert, he managed to hold up his end as they walked under the few stars and the streetlights of the city. Before long though, the moment he’d dreaded had come, and they found themselves in front of her house again.

“Seems shorter from the movies.”

She smiled; he was starting to love that smile. “Yeah, well, I figured I couldn’t pull that one on you two nights in a row.”

“You should have. It was nice.”

She looked up at him, the gravity in her eyes contrasting with the friendly smile below. “Yes, it was.” They stared at each other for a moment, neither wishing to speak, both wanting to say something.

Finally, Rob broke the silence with the only thing that came to mind. “It’s getting late, I should be going.”

“Well, wait. Would you like to come in? Maybe for some coffee or something?”

“I think I’ve had a bit too much coffee for a couple of days now.” She laughed. He was starting to love that laugh too.

“Well, maybe not coffee, but just come in, hang out?”

“Yeah, I think I’d like that.”

“Me too.” She took his hand and led him inside.

The inside of chez Edwards was far from spotless, but it still made his humble abode seem like the work of an abstract sculptor working in laundry and used pizza boxes. Rob found it to be quite comfortable; a few plates left on the coffee table, some pots piled up in the kitchen sink, a few jackets scattered on the floor. For some reason he’d been sure the place would be fresh from a Home and Garden photo shoot, and a bit of clutter relaxed him.

At least, as relaxed as he could have been after an attractive young woman invited him into her home after their first date. If she saw through him now, saw that his mind was racing with many potential (and very adolescent) scenarios of what would happen next, he’d be explaining the red, hand-shaped mark on his face for months to come.

If she saw through him, though, she gave no sign. Neither did she seem very nervous about having a strange young man in her house and apparently alone with her. She also didn’t jump on him and start ripping off his clothes either, which was somewhat unfortunate—his adolescent fantasies would have to wait a little longer.

“Are you sure you don’t want anything to drink? I can make some coffee; I think we have tea, or soda.” She stood just outside the kitchen, the overhead light behind her turning her into a graceful silhouette. He didn’t realize he was speechless until he heard her speak again, the smile evident in her voice, with a slight touch of concern coloring it.

“Rob? You okay?”

“Yeah, uh, tea will be fine.”

“Okay. Go ahead and have a seat.” Her silhouetted hand motioned behind him, and he turned and sat down on the couch. Moments later she returned with two glasses of iced tea, turned on the lamp, and sat at the opposite end of the couch, her knees up to her chest and her feet towards him. “Could you hand me the remote?” She pointed towards the coffee table, near where he was sitting. After a moment’s searching, he found it right in front of him and handed it to her. She turned on the television.

“Never anything good on,” she said after flipping through the channels for a few moments. Rob sipped nervously at his tea—it was good, not the best he’d ever had, but still good. Not that he’d complain anyways.

His mind struggled for something to say and drew a blank. Finally she found a halfway decent comedy and set the remote down. He soon found himself laughing with her, feeling more at home in less than a half hour at her house than he had in the months since he’d moved into his own place.

After a few moments, he noticed something wrong, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Then it dawned on him: Janet wasn’t laughing anymore. He glanced over at her, meeting a somewhat shocked stare.

As he realized he’d been rubbing her feet and stopped, he also realized that her surprised expression wasn’t one of disgust, but that of one who just found a letter in the mail from a nearly forgotten but well loved friend.

“No, no, don’t stop! My feet were killing me.” He blushed slightly, but smiled and resumed his work.

“My mom used to be a waitress for a while,” he said in a feeble attempt at playing it off. “I know it’s a little tough on the feet.”

“Well, you do a great job. If you can do windows, you’re hired. If you can do the dishes and you look good in a Speedo while you’re doing them, we might even let you have some table scraps every once in a while.” He squeezed her foot harder and she let out a squealing laugh he found almost as beautiful as her normal laughter. “Okay, table scraps every night.” He squeezed again, and she squealed louder. “No Speedo, either! Okay? No Speedo!”

“Deal,” he agreed, both of them laughing now. Once they calmed down, he asked one of the questions that had been burning in the back of his mind since she invited him inside.

“So, where’s…?” He couldn’t think of the name, but Janet finished for him.

“Lisa? She’s at a party. So to answer the question I know you’ll ask next and the one I know you won’t: yes, we’re alone, and no, you’re not getting any.” He blushed fiercely at this, although he hadn’t thought he had planned to ask either of those. She laughed again; from anyone else he would have found that laugh at that time to be mocking, but from her it was still beautiful. “Relax tiger; I know you’re a guy and the thought has probably crossed your mind quite a bit since we came in.”

Rob said nothing, but smiled a thin, sheepish smile.

“I wanted to say something earlier and get it out of the way, but there wasn’t a chance without sounding like a bitch. So, now that’s out in the open, do you think we can relax a little?”

He found that they could.

 

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Vanishing Point: The Ravine

Chapter 1

John’s Tale

Part I: The Ravine

I made John’s acquaintance, of all times, during a hiking trip with my wife.  Oh, by the way, John isn’t his real name; at least, I doubt it is, based on the way he smiled when he said it.  It was a kind smile, but also the smile of someone who just thought of a good joke.

Anyways, my wife and I were hiking along one of the usual trails in the Franklin Mountains, when she slipped and fell down a ravine.  I don’t know whether she or I were more scared when she finally hit the bottom, about twenty feet down, but it was probably about even.  I raced down as quickly as I could while maintaining some kind of semblance of balance, listening to her moaning at the bottom.  When I got down there, past all the scree and brush, she lay at the bottom of the ravine, one leg twisted awkwardly behind her and a large gash crossed her other leg.  Blood was gushing out of it fiercely, in bright, angry red streams.  She must’ve sliced it on a rock on the way down, and she sliced it good – the way it was pulsing out of her it was obvious she’d ripped open her femoral artery.

In a moment, I had my belt off and was wrapping it around her bleeding leg as a tourniquet, while she screamed in pain every time I jostled her.  I tried to calm her as best as I could, but it had little effect.  Besides, I was pretty damned nervous about the situation, so my attempts were half-hearted.  How was I going to get her out of the ravine by myself?  I couldn’t keep the tourniquet on her for too long, or she’d lose her leg, but if I took it off, she’d bleed out.  I had to get medical help out here, people who knew what they were doing.  I checked my cell phone, knowing exactly what I’d find: there never was any reception when you actually needed it, and sure enough, a big ugly “No Service” was flashing across my screen.

I heard a rustling above us, and saw some gravel falling from the side of the ravine.  I looked up and saw an older man – or, at least, he looked older, but it was difficult to tell with any kind of certainty.  All I could see was that he had long gray hair, with a gray beard to match.  He was dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved shirt, almost like a cowboy, and the way he carried himself made him seem much closer to twenty than eighty.  Within a second, or at least much quicker than it took me, he was standing on the bottom of the ravine next to us.

“How bad’s she hurt?” he asked, his voice quiet but strong.

“Bad.  Sliced one leg and broke the other.  And that’s all I can see – I don’t know if there’s anything else wrong with her.”

“Ma’am?” he called to my wife.  “Ma’am, does it feel like anything’s broken inside?”  She started to shake her head, then moaned. 

“No,” she panted.  “Just my leg.  I think.”

“We need to get her out of here,” the man said.  I bit back a sarcastic remark; he was trying to help, and it would’ve been pointless to be mean, regardless of how bad the situation was frying my nerves.

“Can we carry her?” I asked, feeling like he probably had a better sense of what to do than I did.

“Your little phone working?”  I shook my head.  “Then we don’t have much of a choice.”

“Well, one of us could go to the road; it’s only a couple of miles away.”

He glared at me, then shook his head.

“You’re not supposed to be here.  Didn’t you see the signs the military has posted all around?”

“The unexploded munitions?  Of course.  Didn’t think anything of them.”

“Yeah, no one does.  We need to get both of you out of here.  ‘Specially with her bleeding like that.  They’ll be all over us in about ten minutes here.”

“Who?” I asked.  He didn’t answer, just leaned down and spoke to my wife.

“Okay ma’am, We’re going to try and pick you up real nice and easy like.  You help as much as you can, but don’t force it, okay?”

“Okay,” my wife whispered.  The man signaled me to come over with his head, and reached for my wife’s arm.  I took the other arm and we picked her up, as gently as we could.

“We’re going this way,” the man said, nodding down the ravine in the direction of the road.  “We won’t be able to get her back up to the top, and this will get us on asphalt a lot quicker.”  I didn’t see any point in arguing with him, so I just started walking, as gently but as quickly as possible, keeping up with the man so as not to move my wife around too much. 

“Who might be after us?” I asked after a couple of minutes of fighting rocky terrain and mesquite bushes.  He looked at me and shook his head.

“No one, no one.”  I could tell he was lying, but I didn’t see the point in pushing the subject.  We needed all our breath to walk as fast as possible; we didn’t need to waste it arguing.

Shortly after that, I heard a sharp cry in the distant – a hawk, by the sound of it.  Our new friend didn’t think so though; he looked around briefly, then started walking even faster.

“Hurry,” he said, hardly panting.  “They found where she fell.  We need to hurry.”

“Who found it?” I demanded, but he still kept quiet on the subject.  I thought about stopping and forcing him to answer some questions, but even if no one was following us, the fact remained that my wife needed medical attention, so we needed to hurry.  And if something was following us, why give it any extra chance to catch up?

We made it to the road, and our companion visibly relaxed.  “Much better now,” he said.  “Sorry I didn’t explain back there, but we needed to get out of there.  Which direction’s your car?”

“That way,” I said, pointing up the road.  I could see it from where we were; it was only about half a mile away.  Thank God for small favors.  “So,” I pushed on, “what exactly was following us?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” he said.

“Try me.”

He laughed.  “Let’s just say it wasn’t anything good, that’s for sure.  They smelled your wife’s blood, and they came running.  I’d seen them earlier in the day, sleeping under a bunch of boulders.  That’s how I knew it’d take them about ten minutes – there’s only one thing that’ll wake them up during the day, and that’s fresh blood.  Night time’s a whole different story…”  His voice trailed off, and I could tell he was remembering something he would’ve rather forgotten.

“Why are we safe here?  I’m sure whatever it is can walk on asphalt, right?”

“Oh yeah, they could.  But the military’s better at keeping them in than keeping you out.” 

We were at the car now, and I could tell my wife was starting to drift in and out.  I fished my keys out of my pocket and handed them to him.

“Can you drive?  I want to stay in the back seat and keep an eye on her.”

“Sure,” he said.  Thinking about it now, the cell phone probably had signal by that time, but I wasn’t thinking quite straight – my wife was injured, strange things had been chasing us, and we’d just met someone who seemed to know something that I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.  He helped me get my wife stretched out across the back seat, and I crawled in to sit with her head on my lap.  The man climbed in the front seat.

“By the way,” I said.  “What’s your name?”  He leaned back and smiled, that strange, good humored but slightly “off” smile.

“John,” he said.  For the first time, I got a good look at his eyes, too.  They were a strange, silver-gray color, almost metallic.  I wanted to shudder, but there was something oddly calming about him, something soothing.  Not grandfatherly, not at all, but looking in his eyes I felt comforted somehow.  He turned back, and I looked out the window as he drove off.

Perhaps it was just my imagination, riled up by nerves and what John had alluded to – strange creatures (or people, maybe?) drawn to blood that slept all day – but I swear I saw a large, almost reptilian tail slither into the bushes as we pulled onto the road.

Like Glass: Chapter 1

It’s generally inappropriate to call a woman in tears a bastard or a son of a bitch, and ordering them to die and rot is fairly tasteless most of the time as well. At least before you know what she’s crying about. Rob Jackson might be forgiven for having those words on his tongue when he answered the phone, as it was his brother he expected on the other end and not the quavering, feminine sobs he heard as he put the receiver to his ear.

Five years had passed since he’d last seen Bill’s number on the caller id. He’d waited by the phone patiently until it quit ringing then. Five years still wasn’t long enough. He still wished his brother were dead.

Of the eight years since Rob had called it quits with his brother, it had taken three for Bill to get it through his head that Rob wanted nothing more to do with him. Now it appeared he was calling again.

He almost ignored this call like the last one, but didn’t. It’d been a bad Wednesday already—he’d lost the Grey’s Industrial Services account, a new website that would’ve been great for the company’s portfolio as well as its books. The LAPD finally decided that parking in front of the fire hydrant outside the office door was worthy of a two-hundred-fifty dollar fine. To top it all off, Cindy finally admitted to her affair with her trainer. That wasn’t that big of a deal; he’d harbored stronger attachments to lawn furniture than any woman in a long time. It just served as icing on top of an already shitty cake of a day. Seeing Bill’s number on the caller id had proved that the day really and truly could get worse.

Any other day he would’ve ignored it without a second thought. Not tonight though. Tonight he wanted a catharsis. It’d been a long time since he’d cussed out Bill for what he’d done to him, and it put him in a bit of a better mood at least. A phrase somewhere along the lines of “You bastard sonofabitch, die and rot in hell,” had been what sprang to mind, and he marked it as either a good opening line or perfect for the moment before he hung up the receiver on his brother’s pleading voice. Either would work, he’d just wait and see how it played out.

When he picked up the phone, he hesitated—an act he was later at least somewhat thankful for, although he could never figure out why he didn’t just lay into Bill right off the bat. A rather feminine sniffle greeted his silence, soft, almost pleading. At the very least it wasn’t Bill, and he quickly changed his game plan. His pause apparently confused the tearful woman on the other end as well.

“Hello?” Definitely a woman, speaking in that pathetic, shaky voice of someone who’s trying to be strong and failing miserably at it.

“Hi, this is Rob.” Confused, he reverted to the office, speaking in the same tones he’d take with a customer before he even realized he was doing it.

“Hi, Rob. It’s Janet.”

“Hi Janet. Long time.”

“Yeah. Um, I’m sorry to call you Rob. I know things were never that great with us and everything, but…” That’s a lie, he thought, but didn’t say. It didn’t seem appropriate to antagonize her at the moment. Maybe in a few minutes, but at least he’d let her have her say.

“What’s up?”

“It’s Bill…he’s, um, Bill’s dead Rob. There was an accident at the factory today and…” Her voice trailed off; she was still trying to be strong, but the façade was crumbling fast.

“You’re kidding me. Is he—” He stopped himself; of course Bill wasn’t okay, but that was the first thing that came to mind. “Are you guys okay?” In hindsight, this was almost as stupid of a question, but he couldn’t think of anything else.

“I don’t know. Lisa’s handling the um, the arrangements I think. She’s watching Jake and Caitlain right now.” She was almost at a full sob again. “I just wanted to let you know. I know you guys weren’t very close, but…” She couldn’t continue, her words drowned out by the deep crying only newborn widows are capable of.

“Janet, it’s okay. Look, I’ll be out there tomorrow and help out as best as I can, okay?” Something that resembled an “okay, thank you” found its way through her sobs. He told her to take care and that he’d see her soon.

Hanging up the receiver, he sat in anticipation for the sick joy he knew should be coming along. Any minute now, he’d burst into a wide grin, perhaps run to the store and get a bottle of champagne (or some cheap wine from the gas station if the grocery store had already closed). It didn’t come though, and he sat in his office, going over various bills and invoices as a light rain blurred the city through the window before him.

After an hour he gave up trying to make sense of work and went online to order a plane ticket to Portland for the next day. He called the office and left a voice mail, telling whoever would get to it first in the morning that he’d be gone for a while and to have Jim run the shop while he was gone.

He walked to the gas station at the corner, and instead of looking for the cheap wine he grabbed a cheap six pack and returned home. Per his custom when he could hear the sleepy grumbling of the past waking up to rear its brutish head, he set one bottle aside and studied it as he drank the remaining five. Still waiting for the malicious ecstasy he’d been expecting to join him at this long awaited news, he turned his computer off and went to bed.

The next morning he woke early and packed for roughly a week away. If it were longer, he could always buy more shirts and slacks; if it were less, then he lost nothing but about fifteen minutes. He smoked a cigarette on the sidewalk in front of his apartment, waiting for his cab to arrive, doing his part to contribute to the late spring smog.

He hated flying, and was not particularly looking forward to the short voyage up the coast. A “good” flight bores you to tears; an exciting flight is what keeps the airlines in bed with the liquor companies. Turbulence is God’s way of gently reminding you (and sometimes not so gently) that you’re His whenever He wants you. He hoped the Almighty wasn’t in a reminding kind of mood today as the cab pulled up. By the time he arrived at LAX, he relaxed slightly, knowing the flight would be fine; whatever Gods there may be had tried pretty damned hard to remind him of his mortality with the cab ride. If they felt he still needed an extra push they obviously weren’t as all-knowing as they claimed to be.

After checking in, he found himself an area near the main entrance where he could enjoy a few cigarettes in peace while he waited the two hours before boarding. Of course, it seemed these days “in peace” meant only two or three non-smokers an hour harassed him, and only five others gave him dirty looks. He didn’t really care one way or another about someone preaching at him right now though; he was still waiting for the glee he had been positive would follow the news of his brother’s untimely death. He was slightly disheartened that it hadn’t made its appearance yet and confused that neither grief nor remorse had taken the absent joy’s place.

Almost as much as flying, he hated kids. They could be cute, he supposed, but mostly they were annoying. Too loud, too messy, too much of a nuisance. Cindy didn’t want kids; that had been one point in her favor, but she was some other poor sap’s problem now anyways. He was sure that the kid who smiled at him as he smoked outside the terminal was no exception to the loud, messy stereotypical child, and he doubted Cindy would’ve been terribly impressed with her.

She looked like she might be cute at times. Probably most of the time, if one were inclined to think runny noses and poor speech were endearing charms. She was maybe eight, holding onto her mother’s hand as the woman dragged her along. She waved at him and he tried hard to look annoyed at the interruption in the thoughts he wasn’t having. Nevertheless, he found himself smiling back at her diplomatically as she walked past, her blond hair bouncing playfully along behind her as her mother tugged at one of her arms, a purple stuffed dinosaur in the other.

He finished his last cigarette with about fifteen minutes to spare before his flight boarded and hurried across the terminal. After a quick bathroom stop, he found his gate and was just in time to stand in line as the attendants boarded the plane. Luckily for him, Blondy was in line right ahead of him. She noticed him, and turned and smiled again.

“We’re going to see my gramma.” She stated this with such an air of importance that for an instant he thought she was referring to a foreign dignitary. He smiled again at her.

“Really? Well, that’s good.” The girl’s mother turned at him, with stern embarrassment.

“Krissy, how many times do I have to tell you: don’t talk to strangers. Sorry about that,” she added to Rob. “She’s a bit too friendly sometimes.”

“It’s alright.” The lady turned back towards the front of the line, while Krissy kept staring at him and smiling a smile that he could now see was shy a few teeth.

“Gramma’s old. Older than dirt, daddy says.” The lady gave a sharp tug on her child’s arm as Rob tried to hold back a chuckle in spite of himself.

“Krissy, be quiet!”

“’Kay.”

The child finally listened to her mother as the line started to move. Within minutes, they were boarding the plane, and Rob was relived to find himself seated alone in the aisle (and noticeably many rows away from Krissy and her mother, which he assumed was the mother’s way of showing appreciation for a lack of assigned seats on this flight).

The flight attendants came along briefly to help people stow away their carry-on bags, and as people took their seats another attendant walked down the aisle taking drink orders. He satisfied himself with ordering a Crown Royal on the rocks in spite of the relatively early hour, and within minutes they were in the air. Not long after take off, when the plane had reached a stable altitude, a different attendant returned with his drink and he sat alone with an $8.00 double shot and his thoughts of the past.

He tried to think of Bill, to try and feel something one way or another as he drank the whiskey, but it was hard—how could you remember anything about someone you hadn’t known for eight years? There was before of course, all the great times they’d had growing up together, the parties and the ribbing and the long, late night talks about nothing and everything.

And there was then. The “then” that he’d used to alienate his brother, when his brother finally grabbed the proverbial straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back.

He could barely remember the before, and it was only in thinking of then—the eight-years-ago then—that he started to feel anything. Nothing new there; he’d thought of it plenty of times since it happened, and it always gave enough fuel to the fire that kept him from picking up the phone himself. Part of him didn’t want to think of then, it wanted to try and grieve over his brother, because that’s what you do when family dies, right? He wanted to try and force himself to respect the dead, but he couldn’t. As an airy ding signaled the captain turning off the remain-in-your-seats notice, he gave up his battle with himself and let his mind wander to then. To the eight-years-ago then.

Like what you see?  Get the full novel at https://www.createspace.com/3332699

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Shattered: Chapter 2

“You did what?” Lisa’s voice was near the same volume it had been on the phone as she and Rob spoke outside. He’d wanted to talk about it outside so Caitlain wouldn’t hear; that plan was backfiring though.

“I didn’t do anything. They fired me.” He was trying to keep his voice from sounding indignant, but it was a little difficult under the circumstances.

“Rob, they wouldn’t fire you for no reason. What did you do?”

“I just messed up a couple of projects.”

She eyed him for a moment. “Bullshit.”

“What?”

“Bullshit. You didn’t just mess up a couple of projects, Rob. What happened?” Her voice was somewhat calmer now, at least. He sighed.

“I missed some deadlines.”

“How many?”

He mumbled quietly.

“What?”

“All of them.”

She shook her head. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“Well, I kept telling them they weren’t giving me enough time.”

Lisa sat down on the porch steps. “Rob, you can’t lose your job. What about Caitlain? Jack and I can’t take care of her, we’ve got Mikey to worry about.” Jack was her fiance, and Mikey’s father.

Rob sat down beside her. “Well, there isn’t anything I can do now, just look for another job.”

“Doing what? There’s nothing around here, especially for someone with a tech background.”

“I’ll figure it out.”

“We moved down here from Everett so we could help out a little. Like watch her every once in a while and so we could just be closer to you guys and mom and dad. We can’t take care of another kid Rob.”

“You’re blowing this way out of proportion Lisa. I’ll find another job, no biggie. You won’t have to take care of anyone.”

Lisa sighed and shook her head. “Just do what you can, Rob. I need to get back in there. Shouldn’t leave a six-year-old in charge of an infant, even if the baby is sleeping.” She glared at Rob briefly; he could tell that she was close to changing the statement to match him and Caitlain as well. “Are you guys going to stay for dinner? Jack’s working late, so it’s just me and the kid tonight.”

“Yeah, sure.”

Dinner consisted of macaroni and cheese and hotdogs, something that Rob knew he could’ve made himself on a normal night. He was definitely thankful for the offer though, knowing that he would’ve been quite miserable staring at the cupboards and trying to think of how they were going to pay for dinner in a month or two if he couldn’t find a job. In spite of what he told Lisa, he wasn’t very confident that he could find something; she was right, this wasn’t a good area for tech jobs, regardless of how things may be further north around Seattle or down south around Portland.

That was something he’d worry about tomorrow though. For tonight, he was trying to have a good time with Lisa and Caitlain (Mikey was already in bed, having made a thorough mess of himself with strained peas and carrots; the way it was patterned on the kid’s face was, however, almost artistic). And he was mostly succeeding. After dinner they played some board games, which Caitlain won, and then they watched a Disney movie. Caitlain fell asleep and Rob felt his own eyelids starting to get heavy, so he picked her up and carried her to the car. Lisa followed.

“Look, Rob,” she said after Caitlain was stowed in the passenger seat. “I’m sorry I got so upset earlier. It’s not any of my business, I know.”

“Don’t worry about it. She’s your niece too.”

“Still, I shouldn’t have gotten that mad. You’ll take care of her. I know you will.”

“I’ll try my best,” he said with a mock salute and a smile. She smiled lightly back at him.

“Let me know if you need any help with anything,” she said.

“I will.” Mikey started crying inside, so they said their goodbyes.

 

After putting Caitlain to bed he mixed up his routine slightly – he didn’t even wait to get outside to polish off his first scotch. It went down a little rough, but he knew they’d get smoother over the course of the night. And what did he have to worry about now? It’s not like he had to wake up early tomorrow and get ready for work. Wake up at seven to get Caitlain ready for school, come back home and go back to bed.

As he started outside, his eyes caught on the picture on the fridge, the one he normally worked so hard to avoid. And he was reminded of why he tried to avoid it: he missed them both still, terribly. Janet, the woman he’d loved and Bill, her husband and the brother he hadn’t loved. Both dead well before their time, and the brother he’d known and hated had grown into a man he would’ve loved and respected.

They still looked unbelievably happy, as they always had, but he no longer hated seeing Bill in that picture instead of himself. All he felt was a kind of sadness at not knowing his brother better, and at harboring so much hatred and jealousy over the eight years of lives he’d missed out on.

He took a deep breath to steady himself, grabbed the bottle of scotch from the top of the refrigerator, and walked out the door to enjoy intoxicated bliss again.

Rob took Caitlain to school the next morning and, instead of going to bed when he got home, turned on the computer. After wandering around aimlessly on the internet for a short time, he stumbled across a link to a blog about a pianist with an upcoming concert in Seattle.  She was stunningly gorgeous, and out of curiosity he clicked the link next to her image.

At first he almost went back to one of the previous pages he’d been reading, an article on Wikipedia about Japan’s South Pacific campaign during World War II.  After giving the page a quick scroll just to say he’d read the whole thing, he came across a comment by a user with a familiar name.  It seemed that the pianist was a fellow student of Dr. Elaine Bishop, and reading the comment told Rob that the good doctor was going to be in Seattle for the student’s concert.  At this point, he decided it was worth trying to find out if the student was someone he knew, and after scrolling back up, he came across her name: Carolyn Reed.  Not familiar, but he hadn’t expected it to be anyways — surely Dr. Bishop had taught more than a couple concert pianists in her time.  He went back to the comment to get Dr. Bishop’s email address (laughing mildly at the lack of privacy the site offered it’s readers), and went to his email program.

He wrote a brief letter to Dr. Bishop of the "Hey, long time no speak" variety.  He included his cell phone number in the email, and was surprised when she called before he had time to get back deep in his web surfing.

"Rob, it’s good to hear from you again!  How’s everything been going?"

"Fine.  A little bumpy last year, but things are looking up again," he lied.

"That’s good, Rob.  How’s the piano coming?"

"Good, good,” which was at least partly true – his playing was going well, it was just making it feel like music that wasn’t doing so hot.  “Listen," he said, hoping to move the subject to something a little less uncomfortable, "I see you’re coming up here for a concert?"

"Yes, the concert’s Friday, as a matter of fact.  Actually, I was just walking out the door to go home and finish packing when I got your email.  You should hear Carolyn play Rob; she’s probably the second best student I’ve had in thirty years."  Something about the tone of her voice told him exactly who she thought was the best student, but he didn’t ask.

"Well give me a call when your flight lands, maybe we can do something."

"I doubt that; I arrive at six in the morning."

"Yeah, probably a little early.  But we can still get together."

"That’d be great.  And then you can tell me the truth as to why you haven’t been practicing."  He smiled a little at that, then they said their goodbyes and hung up.

After picking Caitlain up without incidence (though not without a couple of stern looks from whom he assumed to be either the principal or her teacher), they drove back over to Lisa’s, who had invited them over for dinner once again. This time, Lisa had made spaghetti, having a bit more warning that there would be company. Again, though, Jack was working late.

“So, does he do that often?” Rob asked, referring to Lisa’s missing fiancé as they cleaned up after the meal. Caitlain was already glued to the television set.

“Yeah. At least, recently he has. They’ve put him on a new project and he’s actually spending most of his days up in Seattle. Sometimes he’ll even stay there for about a week or so, and the company pays the hotel.”

“Oh, that’s neat. Where does he work again?”

“Gregson’s Meat Packing. He’s the main account rep for Washington and Idaho.” She said this with less pride than Rob expected, but it was still noticeable in her voice.

“They wouldn’t be hiring, would they?”

“Sorry Rob, already asked. They’re actually cutting hours in most of their plants.”

“No problem.” His breath caught in his throat as he looked at her. For just a brief second, perhaps because of the lighting, the family resemblance between Lisa and her deceased sister was more than striking. They could’ve passed for twins even. He stared at her as long as he felt he could get away with it, then shuddered slightly.

“We’d better get going,” he said, turning away from her.

“Is everything okay? You look a little pale.”

“Yeah, yeah. Everything’s fine, just got a little woozy there for a second. I’ll be fine, we just need to get home. It’s getting late.”

“Well, okay. Thanks for helping me clean up.”

“Thanks for having us. Caitlain?” he called into the other room. “Come on, we need to go.” A mildly resentful sigh could be heard over the television set, but he could also hear her getting up.

That night, Janet was closer than ever, much as he’d expected her to be after seeing her reflected in Lisa’s features so distinctly. It was almost scary, not even like having seen a ghost, but like having seen someone whom you’d personally seen buried walking around like nothing had ever happened.

The scotch was there though. The scotch was killing Janet again, though it was a welcome death this time. He was already on his third glass, and, like the night before, he’d brought the bottle with him to make the night move along a little quicker. He noticed he was almost out, and made a mental note to get some more tomorrow during his time off.

That was something the scotch wasn’t so effective against. What the hell was he going to do? How was he going to pay the bills once their savings were gone? He sighed and took a drag off his cigarette. It would have to wait until tomorrow at least. There wasn’t anything he could do about it tonight. Not that the thought stopped him from worrying about it of course, it just let him put it in the back of his mind instead of nagging so forcefully at the front.

The Professor

Hector pulled the gun on the professor, and you could tell by the look in his eyes he finally believed we were serious.  He held his hands up fast and his face went pale.  It was obvious that this was a rare occurrence at the UTEP campus.

“I really don’t know anything at all about the project,” he said, his voice shaky.

“Bullshit,” Hector said.  He nodded at me, and I pulled my gun out and pointed it at the doctor.  Hector set his backpack on the ground and rummaged in it for a moment.

“Dr. Vargas, right?” Hector asked.  “Dr. Emmanual Vargas, Ph. D from Stanford in molecular biology.  Right?”

“I … I … I … yes.  Yes, I am, but …”  Hector threw a stack of papers at the man’s feet.

“These have your name all over them.   We found them in your little ‘lab’ in the mountains.  About five kilometers north-north-west of Transmountain Rd., about seven and a half kilometers due west of U.S. Route 54.”  Dr. Vargas’ expression slowly went from fear to anger.

“That is military land.  I don’t know who you are, but you had no business there.”

Hector chuckled.

“I’m standing here pointing a gun at you, and you think I’m going to worry about some Army brat MP telling me I’m trespassing?”  Dr. Vargas said nothing, but his expression was still quite indignant.

“Leo, take this,” Hector said, handing me a couple of papers from the backpack.  I didn’t pay any attention to what he tossed me; I was just a hired gun here, and the less I remembered, the better it’d be for me after everything was done.  I glanced over — Hector’s backpack was empty now, the papers either in my hand or at the doctor’s feet.

Hector glanced at me briefly; I was only allowed as much information as needed to get the job done, and apparently what he was about to say wasn’t part of that.  Anything I might learn during the course of the mission, the company was fine with.  Hector just wasn’t allowed to go out of his way to break the silence.  We were each fitted with mics and video equipment, so the debriefing team would know all about any slip ups.  That’s the problem with being understaffed.  Damned economy…

“Dr. Vargas,” Hector said, “we believe your presence at that installation is in violation of certain … treaties.  Or ‘contracts’ if you prefer.  I’m sure you know exactly what I’m talking about.”  Dr. Vargas nodded slightly, showing that he did.  “Good,” Hector continued.  “Then you understand our presence here.”

“You don’t understand,” the doctor interuppted.  “We’re on the edge of something phenomenal.  Something that will bring humanity leaps and bounds ahead of where we’re at now.  My research has only just barely scratched the surface.”

Hector looked at the doctor for a moment, considering him.

“You think so?” he asked, his voice sounding honestly curious.

“Yes!  Yes!”  The doctor’s enthusiasm was only barely contained, and I sat and watched with a curiosity of my own.  “Just the other day,” the doctor continued, his voice sounding on the brink of ecstasy, “one of our experiments neared criticality, and our containment field was holding!”  Okay, I admit it, I was lost, but Hector looked intrigued.

“You don’t say, huh?” he said, egging the doctor on.

“It’s true!  And just this morning, we were able to send a test subject both ways.”  The gleam in his eyes meant this was something impressive; even Hector seemed a little shocked by it.

“Really?” he asked, his eyes looking interested for the first time.

“Yes!  Really.  They returned safely, with only minor genetic variations.”

“Hmmmm….”  Hector rubbed his chin.  I stifled a yawn; the moment’s excitement was gone, and I just wanted the mission to be over.  The doctor started to lower his hands.

“Please, let me continue my research; we are so close!”

Hector glanced at me, then nodded at the doctor.

“Okay, I’ll see what we can work out.”

The doctor relaxed visibly, almost collapsing in on himself.  “Oh, thank you, please, you won’t regret this.”

“Oh, by the way,” Hector said.  The doctor looked up at him with a bit of hopeful curiosity.  Without further warning, Hector shot the doctor twice, once in the chest and again in the forehead.  The shots were fired so rapidly and accurately that I couldn’t believe it was from a single person shooting essentially from the hip.

The doctor slumped to the floor, blood and bits of gore splattered against the back wall.  Hector walked over to the doctor and picked up the pieces of paper he’d thrown at the man’s feet earlier.  I barely heard him whisper, “I can’t stand liars,” to the corpse, before he stood up and smiled at me.

“Okay, that’s done,” he said, his voice cheerful.  “I’ll clean up this mess,” he said, indicating the room with his arms.  “You take these papers back to headquarters.  Along with these.”  He pulled open a drawer and started putting stacks of files into the backpack.  I didn’t ask questions of course, though I wondered what was in the papers.  Of course, I wondered a lot on this mission, not the least of which was whether I’d live to get my paycheck or not.  “I’ll catch up with you later,” he said, and that was the last I ever saw Hector.

The next day, after debriefing, I read in the paper about the blaze that destroyed half of one of the buildings at UTEP — I forget what they called it, but I knew it wasn’t the one we’d been in.  That would’ve been too obvious.  Nobody was injured, no remains were found.  Which meant Hector probably took the body out into the acres of desert, and the fire was used to destroy paperwork the company didn’t want anyone to know about.

I got my check though, signed, sealed, and delivered.  Didn’t recognize the name on it, nor the name of the company — certainly wasn’t the one I contracted to — but it didn’t bounce, and, at the end of the day, that’s all that matters.  Right?

The Baby

My wife screamed, though in pain or fright I couldn’t tell.  It didn’t matter a whole lot anyways — I was trying to get her to the hospital as quickly as I could, and I’d just cut across three lanes of traffic to make the exit.  Horns blared behind me, and I knew it was stupid, but I had to hurry.  Her contractions were really close together now, to the point where she almost couldn’t talk to me.  That was the main reason I’d even taken the chance of crossing traffic like that, because I knew she couldn’t really say anything about it.  She tried though.

“You stupid son of a — oooohhhh!”  Another contraction ripped through her, and I patted her leg.

“We’re almost there, sweetheart, don’t worry.  Almost there.”

“Shut it,” she said, gritting her teeth.  She sounded like she was going to say something else, but I interrupted her with the horn, trying to warn off some of the upcoming traffic.  It didn’t work, so I pulled around them and cut across two lanes again to make my turn.  More horns blared, but we were only a couple of blocks from the hospital.  Even if we got into an accident now, at least medical attention was just seconds away.

I screeched into the emergency drop off, scattering some pigeons, turned off the ignition, and jumped out of the car before the engine had completely died.  I could hear my wife cursing loudly through the windshield, and was thankful it’d be over soon — she was normally such a sweetheart that it was almost embarrasing to hear her swear like a sailor.  A nurse came out as I was opening the door for her.

“She’s in labor.  We need a wheel chair,” I said, trying to sound calm.  The nurse nodded and ran back inside as I helped my wife out of the car.  She grabbed on to my shoulder with superhuman strength, and hissed in my ear.

“I am going to kill you for doing this to me,” she said.  I wanted to laugh, and probably would have if my eyes weren’t tearing up from her steel grip on my shoulder.  I silently thanked God she’d recently taken up chewing her nails, or else I’d probably be getting stitches while we were here.

The nurse came back and we helped my wife into the wheelchair, comforting her as much as two men possibly could.  Once inside, two more nurses helped her up again, then onto a gurney.  A doctor came over and examined her briefly, then motioned one of the nurses to take her back deeper into the hospital.  I started to follow, and the doctor held me off.

“We need to make sure she’s stable, first, then we’ll come out and get you,” he said.  I nodded, then started pacing.

I don’t know how long it was before they came and got me, but it felt like forever.  By that time, I was a nervous wreck, countless scenarios playing through my mind.  None of them were close to what was going to happen though, and in some ways, even the worst I’d imagined would’ve been a little better.

After cleaning up and putting on some blue cover-alls, they led me back to where my wife was delivering our child.  I could hear her cursing and yelling long before I got there, and when I entered, her volume rivaled an operatic singer.

I took her hand, and she crushed my knuckles as she pushed.  I tried telling her to breath (because I couldn’t think of anything else to say), but no words would come out.  In fact, I was finding it difficult to remember to breath myself.

“The baby’s coming!” the doctor said, waving at me to come over.  I walked to him, thankful that my wife let go of my hand; it would take some time before I had enough feeling in it to see if she’d broken anything, but it certainly felt like a possibility.  “Push!  Just a couple more pushes and it’ll be out,” the doctor egged my wife on.

“I am pushing you assss—aaahhhh!”  I heard the moan in her voice take on a different tone, one of relief, and I knew the baby was out.  I hurried the short distance to the doctor to see my new child — we didn’t even know if it was going to be a girl or a boy, because the ultrasounds never seemed to come out just right.  I looked back at my wife, and she was laying there with her eyes closed, trying to catch her breath.

The room was suddenly quiet, much more quiet than I’d expected it to be.  I looked at the doctor, and over his mask, I could see his eyes looking at me in confusion.  He shook his head softly, and I could tell it wasn’t good news.

“Let me see, please,” I asked him, my voice muffled by my own mask and by the fear that was welling up inside.  It couldn’t be…  We’d been waiting for this for years, for her to finally get pregnant, and we’d been so ecstatic when we finally found out.  Now…

I could tell he wasn’t very willing to hand the baby over, but I held my ground and reached my arms out.  I took the limp infant in  my hands and pulled it close to my body, rocking it gently.  It was most definitely dead, I could tell that just by the weight and feel of it.  I choked back a sob; I couldn’t let my wife hear me cry.

It’s head rolled back in my arms, and I almost dropped it for fright.  It’s eyes opened as it’s head moved, and I saw two dimly glowing, red orbs glowing back at me, with elongated pupils like cat’s eyes.  The eyes closed again, and before my curiousity got the better of me and I opened them again myself, the baby moved.

It cried like every baby I’d seen born in a movie, wailing fiercely and struggling in my arms.  It looked at me again, and this time, there was no glow, and it’s eyes seemed perfectly normal, blue like it’s mother’s.  It’s, I thought to myself, and did a quick check; his eyes.  It was a boy.  And, in the relief of hearing my son cry, I forgot about the glowing eyes and I smiled.  The eyes were probably just my own imagination, from emotions run ragged with my wife’s labor and thinking that he’d been stillborn.

I carried him over to his mother, who was waiting with outstretched arms.  She smiled as she took him, such a beautiful smile that I completely forgot any remaining fears I had.  I knew in that moment what happiness really was, seeing the mother of my child, holding him closely to her chest and smiling down at him as he fell silent and started to sleep.

The Thing in the Backyard

After I got home that night, I hear the scratching at the back door that meant Chip wanted to come in.  He wasn’t really an outside or an inside dog, kind of a mix.  I kept him outside while I worked, and (most of the time, at least) let him back in at night when I got home.

He was a good dog, a mutt a little smaller than a golden retriever, and probably deserved to be let in more often.  Most of the time it was nice enough outside to where it wasn’t that big of a deal though.

Anyways, I let him in and went about my business — dishes needed to be washed, I think I even put a load of laundry in.  It wasn’t long before Chip needed to go back outside to do his own business, so I let him out.  It was awfully warm for December, probably about fifty degrees even at night — not terribly unusual for early in an El Paso winter.  I thought about just leaving him out for the night, and figured I’d decide later.

After I let Chip back out, I sat down and turned on Jay Leno.  It was about halfway through his monologue when I started it, and it was during the commercial break before he went to his desk that I heard a dull thud  from the back of the house.

Of course, like an idiot, I had to investigate.  I’d never understood why people in movies always had to go see what that strange sound they’d heard was, the sound that normally meant a killer was in the house with a machete or something.  Well, that night, those movies were the farthest thing from my mind, or else I probably wouldn’t have gone.  No, that’s a lie.  I’d have gone anyways, I just probably would’ve taken a knife or something with me.

I opened the back door, and at first I didn’t see anything at all.  Then some movement caught my eye — only briefly, before whatever it was moved deeper into the shadows.  I stepped outside — again, displaying a higher level of stupidty than I’d like to admit — and that’s when I saw poor Chip’s head laying on the back porch.  I stood there in shock for a moment; that’s what I figured made the sound I’d heard, given the splatter of blood on the wall.

I looked back to where I’d seen … well, whatever it was, and saw two gleaming eyes in the darkness.  I couldn’t make anything else out though, just the eyes.  They were lit like a cat’s eyes in headlights, but I couldn’t see any light that would be reflecting off of them.  They stared at me for a moment, then started to move towards me, into the light.

Whatever it was, it wasn’t anything I’d seen before.  It looked mostly human, or perhaps like some kind of ape or something.  It’s skin was a dull gray, and it’s face was smeared with blood.  It looked like it was chewing something, and I could only guess what it was (as much as I hated to).  It moved hunched over, which probably was what gave me the impression it was an ape of some kind.  It seemed bald, and had teeth that protruded over it’s bottom lip, like fangs almost, sharp and glistening red.

It takes a lot of time to explain this, but the thing was only there for a moment.  It moved as fast as lightning, and jumped over the fence into the neighbor’s yard before I could even try and get back inside.

Once it left, I stood there, still in shock, looking at Chip’s head.  His tongue lolled out on the porch, and he had what almost looked like a grin on his face.  I knelt down and rubbed the top of his head, getting some of his blood on my hand in the process, but I didn’t care.

I didn’t know what to do.  What if that thing came back?  Should I call the cops?  They wouldn’t believe me.  I thought about doing it anyways — maybe they’d at least keep an eye out in spite of how crazy it would sound — and decided not to.  No one else in this town would’ve cared enough to call them, why should I make myself look crazy?  They’d probably think I was the one who killed Chip, and just lock me up.

I thought about burying Chip right then, but decided it’d be best to wait until morning, so I could see what I was doing a little better.  I kissed Chip’s head one last time, and went to bed, though I did have the sense to lock the door and take a knife with me, just in case.

The next day, I called in sick to work.  I wanted to bury Chip, and I didn’t think I’d be able to focus on the job anyways.  When I went out to the backyard though, Chip’s body and head was no where to be found.  The blood was still on the wall — obviously I didn’t dream about it.  But, apparently, whatever had killed him decided to come back and finish the job.

Furious, I punched the wall, sending a sharp pain up my arm.  Why couldn’t that thing have just left it’s kill alone?  It just had to come back, and finish dinner.  I walked back inside to get some paper towels — at least I could clean the wall off — and noticed an envelope sitting on my kitchen table.  Curious, and more than a little angry (not to mention scared) that someone had been in my house, I opened it.

Inside was a note, and a large wad of cash.  I set the cash off to the side, staring at it — it looked like large bills, and lots of them.  The note was short, and either typed or printed on a computer: “We apologize for your loss; a subject of ours got out of control.  Please accept this as a token of our regret.  Tell no one of the dog or of this gift.”

I counted out the money; there was about twice as much as I made in a month.  It wasn’t going to bring Chip back, but it took the edge off of it a little.  Not much, as I could still hear a phantom scratching at the back door, the ghost of Chip wanting to be let in.

The Cop

It had been a weird night even before we stopped that guy.  Damn, I wish we wouldn’t have; Diego would still be alive and I wouldn’t have had to face his wife.  I could almost hear her heart break when I told her Diego wouldn’t be coming home anymore.  I know I could’ve gotten away with pawning it off on someone else, but that didn’t seem right.  Besides, I’m the one who saw what the guy did to him, so if she had any questions…

No, that’s crap.  I wouldn’t have been able to explain it better than anyone else, even though I was there.  It still doesn’t make sense to me; the guy wasn’t armed or anything.  Don’t know how he … did what ever it was that he did.  I still can’t explain it.  And I still don’t even really know exactly what happened, just … wow.

We responded to the first call of our shift, some heroin junkie wigging out because he found a dead body.  We didn’t think anything of it; we knew who the caller was, even though it was anonymous; there’s only one needle freak downtown who thinks he’s on our good side and would call us for anything.

Apparently some homeless guy met up with a bad night.  That’s the story that came out over the radio, at least.  Diego and I just looked at each other when we heard it break through the static, and he just shook his head.  Didn’t say a word, just shook his head.  I knew what he was thinking; some new poor sap bit it, and we’d have to track down (if we could) whatever family he had and break the news if we could find them.

Luckily, we weren’t the first ones on the scene.  In fact, they had everything pretty well sown up by the time we got there.  Even had the guy in a body bag, and they were loading him up.  I saw one officer coming back from the alley, looking white as a ghost.  I started to flag him down, but he shook his head and ran back to the alley.  I recognized him in that brief second though; he was a rookie, only on the force for a couple of weeks.  I smiled.  I’d been the same way the first few times I saw a body.

Diego was talking with one of the other officers on the scene, so I figured I’d go over and talk to the paramedic who was loading up the body in an ambulance for a ride to the morgue.  He didn’t look like he was doing so hot either, but I’d seen him on more than a few accident scenes.  He definitely wasn’t a rookie.

“That bad?” I asked, a little surprised by how sick he looked.  He nodded at me.

“Worst I think I’ve ever seen.  You want to take a look?  Maybe it’ll make some kind of sense to you.”

“Sure, couldn’t hurt,” I said.  Kinda regret it now.

But, I said it, and he unzipped the bag.  It took me a minute to realize what I was looking at, but when it did I felt my own dinner start to rise up in my throat.  There was a gaping hole where the poor schmuck’s face should’ve been, and it continued on all the way down to the guy’s chest.  Maybe further, but that’s all I could see.

And I do mean a hole.  Nothing there.  No brain, throat, lungs, heart.  Nothing.  If I wanted to, I could’ve reached to the guy’s backbone without getting my hands dirty.

It was clean, too.  The edges weren’t ragged, like they’d be if someone had used a regular knife (not that I can think of a knife that would do that).  The edges were smooth, the bone almost polished.  There wasn’t much blood, either; it looked like something done in an operating room, where they cauterize any bleeders they find.  Only difference, was doctors don’t do as clean a job as this – there’s still some raw edges and a hell of a lot more blood.

Besides, doctors don’t normally remove everything like that either.  Even in the morgue, they’d at least put them back.

I had to look away after a few minutes or else I’d be joining the rookie in the alley.  I waved at the paramedic to zip it up, and I heard him oblige as I walked back over to Diego.  We started walking back to our car.

“What happened?” I asked him when we got in.

“Pretty much what they said on the radio.  Our junkie found him on the bench, swore he didn’t know nothing about it.  They’re taking him down to the station for questions anyways.  What’d you see?”

“You don’t want to know,” I said, but I told him anyways.  He looked at me in disbelief for a moment, then shook his head.  He knew I wouldn’t bullshit him.  Not about that, at least.

“Wow,” he said.  What else could you say?  “Wow” summed it up pretty good.

We made our way back to I-10, and before we even got up to the speed limit, we saw this car, a late nineties BMW, flying down the freeway.  He was definitely over the limit; we didn’t need a radar gun to tell us that.  I turned on the lights, and sped up to catch up with him.  We were doing over eighty before we caught up to him, and he didn’t look like he was slowing down at all.  Suddenly, though, he pulled over to the side, stopped, and put on his hazards.  I shook my head at Diego.  Stupid kid, I thought.  Getting in trouble with his daddy’s car, more likely than not.  See a lot of that around here, so that’s what we were expecting.

Diego stepped out of the car, and I stayed inside, ready to come out if he needed a hand.  It looked normal at first; I could read his lips to know he was asking the usual questions:  Do you know how fast you were going?  Have you had anything to drink?  Run of the mill stuff.  He came back to the car with the man’s license and registration, and I took a look at it before he ran it.

That’s when a flag went off.  I’d heard earlier about a waitress that had gone missing, last seen with a guy who kinda matched the picture on the license.  It was a long shot, I knew that, but I figured we’d at least harass the guy for a bit and see what happened.  So, I told Diego what I was thinking, then stepped out.  Diego and I walked back to the guy’s car; I stood on the driver’s side, Diego across on the passenger’s side in case the guy did anything stupid.

“Sir, could you please step outside of the vehicle,” I said; it wasn’t a question.  He smiled at me – definitely a lady-killer smile if I’d ever seen one, and stepped out.

“What seems to be the problem officer?” he asked.  Before I could respond though, everything hit the fan.

It happened a lot quicker than you’d be able to believe by reading it, I know.  It was a blur, but it was the last I saw a living Diego standing around me, so it stuck with me pretty good.

The guy moved his hand; thinking about it now, I think he was just trying to straighten his tie or something like that, but I saw Diego flinch.  In a heartbeat, the guy spun, and stuck his hand out.  This is where it gets weird, and I hope you’ll take me at my word.  Lord knows I wouldn’t believe it if I didn’t see it myself.

The guy’s hand started … glowing.  Or flashing.  Like it was a light bulb, or it was electrified or something like that.  Then there was a real bright flash, then something shot from his hand and hit Diego.  Diego’s head … it … it just exploded.  I think.  I don’t know; his head wasn’t there anymore.  I didn’t see little … ugh.  I didn’t see little bits flying, so I don’t know if it really did explode, but they never found it.

Of course, I drew my weapon and started firing at the guy.  Point blank, I shot at least five rounds right into him.

He turned at me and smiled, that lady-killer smile, and put his hands up.

“Officer,” he said, his voice as smooth and calming as silk.  “You can put that down.  I’ll come freely.”  He put his hands behind his back, and just on instinct I cuffed him.  I know – now, I know – they wouldn’t have done a damned bit of good if he wasn’t willing, but that’s the only thing that seemed logical at the moment.

I called into my radio that there was an officer down, suspect in custody, and the words sounded dead to my ears.  I still couldn’t believe that Diego was dead.  I looked up at the guy.

“What did you do?” I asked him, and I didn’t like the way my voice sounded but I couldn’t do anything about it.  He just laughed.

“Your friend wasn’t a very nice guy,” he said.  “He was going to try and attack me, unprovoked.  I merely defended myself.”

I wanted to defend Diego, but I couldn’t bring any more words to my throat.  I wouldn’t have gotten a chance anyways, as he continued speaking.

“I know you think I took that woman,” he said.  “I didn’t, though.  She came with me, willingly.”

“Where is she?” I asked.  Where was the damned ambulance?  Where was the backup?  I didn’t want to be with this guy alone anymore, in case he decided to give an encore performance.

“She’s … safe.  She’s out of your … jurisdiction now.  She’s safe,” he repeated.  I could hear sirens in the distance now though, and wished they’d hurry up.

Thankfully, he said nothing for the rest of the time I saw him.  The ambulance came, and I kinda lost it.  I don’t really remember too much, just arriving at the station, sitting in the car in the seat that was still warm from Diego sitting there all night, some officer I didn’t recognize (or didn’t take the time to recognize) driving me.

Of course, the night couldn’t just end there.  No, that would’ve been too easy.  Instead, of course the damned military wanted in on the action.  I heard the MP’s come in, talking to one of the officers out front, demanding to see the suspect we’d brought in.  I was back in the locker room, trying to block everything out, but it wasn’t working.

Eventually, for whatever reason, the MP’s got their way, and I heard them walking back to the holding cell.  That’s when everything hit the fan for the second time that night.

In between the time they brought him in and the time the MP’s came to see him, our suspect disappeared.   And I mean he disappeared.  I saw the footage from the cameras we have watching the holding area.

He’d been pacing for a few minutes, then looked at his watch.  He gave another of his lady-killer smiles – right at the camera, too.  Then he picked up his hands, still cuffed together, waved once at the camera, and disappeared.  Instantly, just gone.  No noise – we have a mic in the room, and it didn’t pick anything up.  No flash, or smoke or anything.  Even played it frame-by-frame.  One frame he’s there, the next, the handcuffs are floating in mid-air, and they’re on the ground in the next couple of frames.

I don’t know what bugs me the most, the fact that this guy killed Diego and got away with it, or the fact that he knew something about that waitress that disappeared, and got away before we could get anything else out of him.  I mean, it’s bad enough to tell Diego’s wife that her husband isn’t coming home, but what about that woman’s family?  They’re going to be wondering what’s going on until that guy gets tired of whatever game he’s playing.  And it looked like he quite enjoyed that game, too – I don’t think she’ll be coming home any time soon.

The Naming Ceremony

The Naming Ceremony

The arrival of a new puppy brings many rituals that the new pet owner must perform, but these are always done with love and a near-holy reverence.  There’s the ritual of the New Toy, where the owner purchases various plastic bones or stuffed animals that the puppy will chew on briefly and then ignore.  There’s the ritual of the New Bed, where the owner will purchase adorable bedding that the puppy will sniff occasionally before deciding the owner’s favorite chair to be the most comfortable spot in the house.  There’s the ritual of the New Food, the purchase of multitudes of bags of kibble in hopes that it will like one (and rarely does it choose any but the most expensive brand).

One ritual undertaken with each new pet – the most important one of all – is the Naming Ceremony.  This ceremony is the beginning of the bond between pet and owner, a bond cherished for the lifetime of both, and it must never be taken lightly.  With luck, the owner will instantly know the perfect name for the animal, a name found through instinct or divine intervention, a name that fits both of them like a well tailored glove.

If the Fates don’t directly hand the perfect name, it may come through intense planning and several hours spent scouring books and web sites of names.  The owner will sit at a desk or table with lists several pages long, crossing out names as they compare them to the new animal.  They’ll speak the names softly, with differing inflections and tones, trying each name until they find one that rolls off the tongue perfectly, the name created specifically for their animal.  With solemn adoration they ordain their new puppy, and life continues.

There is the Personal Naming Ceremony, and as any pet owner will tell you, it is a good thing.  The owner and the pet begin their bond together, and are destined for a happy life of drool and backyard landmines.

More often, however, the unfortunate owner becomes party to the Public Naming Ceremony.  This is an unplanned and dreadful event, forced upon the unwitting owner by friends and relatives who don’t have pets, and therefore fail to understand the importance of the animal’s name.

It starts innocently enough, a phone call, or perhaps a chance meeting in the supermarket.  “Hey, we just got a new puppy,” the owner states, beaming with pride, hope, and lack of sleep.  (This is part of another ritual, known as the Display, where the proud owner wishes to share their joy with all who are willing or unable to get away quickly enough.)

The invitee is excited, as baby animals are enthralling to those uninvolved in the animals training, the purchase of its necessities, and the disposal of its waste.

“Oh really? When can I come over and see it?” they ask with a vicious excitement.

This is where the horror of the Public Naming Ceremony begins.  The owner cheerfully tells the invitee that anytime would be great, bring the kids, we’ll have drinks, I’ll set out some finger sandwiches, and make a day of it.  Occasionally, the original invitee will invite others as well: mutual friends or coworkers, community religious figures, political appointees.  With a voraciousness that only arises with new found wealth or a new puppy, friends and family come out of the woodwork to join in the new owner’s delight.

At the time of the Display, the Ceremony will lurk in the shadows for an indefinite duration.  People will coo over the new puppy as it staggers around the rooms playfully.  They’ll force upon it toys that it’s already tired of.  They’ll try to get it to sit or roll over (because, as any pet owner will attest, all puppies are born with those commands genetically ingrained; it is obviously through a lack of pressure in these vital first days that it loses these abilities and must be re-taught).

Then it begins.

The Ceremony starts innocently enough, and always with variations of the exact same question: “So, what have you decided to name it?” The wise pet owner will smile graciously at their guests and proceed to end the Ceremony at this point, before it has truly begun.  It is possible to end the Ceremony politely, but social graces are immaterial when someone asks this question.  In extreme cases, murder is not entirely unwarranted; most judges with a full understanding of the situation will show some lenience.  However, most new pet owners, still in the daze of adoration and affection, make the mistake of responding to the question: “We haven’t come up with anything yet.”

From that point forward, the room is filled with a barrage of names, most offensively cute, some exceedingly pointless, and many quite cliché.  Names such as “Rover,” “Buttons,” “Baby Girl,” “Flower Patch,” and similarly disastrous choices are thrown carelessly in every direction.

The pet owner who already has one or two other pets, especially animals of the same species and breed, fares much worse.  It becomes a matching game, where the new animal’s name must coincide with or play off of the existing animal’s name; to do otherwise would be sacrilege.

Animals that are closely associated with a certain stereotype – an ethnicity, for example – often face the toughest hardships during the Ceremony: Chihuahuas are inevitably bombarded with poor attempts at Spanish; Pugs have vaguely oriental words and syllables thrown dangerously close to them.

The owner will watch in horror as the group finds the name the unknowing animal feels it wants.  This is a very noticeable event: the puppy, previously occupied with a shoe or other delicious article of clothing, jerks its head up at the sound of its new name and runs over to the vile fiend who had spouted the words.  This is irreversible; once the puppy finds the name it wants, it will never answer to anything else.  The owner is stuck calling it “Hotdog,” “Whippy,” “Mrs.  Flugelhorn,” or whatever foolish words were chosen.

It was not long ago that I found myself caught in this ritual, though I had sworn to avoid it at all costs.  I had promised – even before my wife and I decided our house needed a new puppy – that I would give any pet I would own the respect it deserved by avoiding the embarrassment and brutality of the Public Naming Ceremony.  After seeing the ritual performed on many others (and, I am afraid I must admit, taking part in it as well), I pledged to take it upon myself to find the perfect name for a new pet before it could know such horrors.

Soon after John, our son, moved away for college, my wife and I found the house quite empty.  Only months before, the noises of a teenager filled it at all hours – loud music, obnoxious but well meaning boys laughing, the sounds of his mother and me chiding him for keeping his room only marginally cleaner than the set of a disaster movie.  After he left, we found ourselves staring at each other in expectation, waiting for the sound of cars to pull up, brakes squealing and engines revving.

It did not take long for us to see that we needed something extra to fill the void, and we decided a new puppy would be a delightful addition.  We knew better than to merely go to any breeder at random, or to just walk into a pet store and take the first one we saw.  A dog is a special addition to the family, and we knew we needed to find one that would suit us perfectly.

We scoured the internet for many minutes looking for the right breed.  We needed something that was neither too big nor too small, eliminating many breeds immediately – the Great Dane, the Chihuahua, the Pug, the St.  Bernard.  All beautiful animals in their own rights, but we wanted neither an animal capable of towing small cars, nor one we might accidentally vacuum when we cleaned the house.

Soon we found the animal that suited us perfectly: the Beagle.  The web sites we visited assured us that the Beagle was an excellent hunter, quite playful, and a loyal pet to a good master.  The animal’s temperament was irrelevant though; my wife’s heart audibly broke when the first images of Beagle puppies came on the screen.  There was no need to search further: the Beagle was the breed for us.

A week later, an ad in the paper directed us to a local breeder with new puppies.  A small, whining box greeted us as we arrived.  We held each adorable pup in turn, my wife inspecting them carefully to determine how their coloring would match the carpeting and furniture.  My wife picked up the last one in the box, a mostly black and tan female with a strip of white down her nose, who stared at us with her big, pleading hound-dog eyes.  The mother Beagle came and went, and each of the puppies cried out for her except the one, who kept staring at us, wagging her tail when she noticed we were looking at her.  My wife saw this, and knew that we had been chosen (luckily by one who would complement our living room perfectly).  Moments later, we had written the owner a check and were driving home with our new puppy.

As I said, I had sworn to avoid the Public Naming Ceremony at all costs.  I reiterated this pledge to myself as we drove from the breeders, trying diligently to find a suitable name as soon as I could.  My wife, however, had made no such pledge, for (bless her heart!) she had never understood the embarrassment the Ceremony holds for both animal and owner.  To a mild degree, I hold myself accountable for not informing her.  I can, however, only take so much of the blame; she must be held responsible for some of her actions.  We had traveled less than a mile from the breeders before I heard her talking to her sister on her cell phone.

“It’s just the most adorable thing, Tracy! You and George just have to come see it! Today? Yes, that would be perfect.  No, I’m sure Jack wouldn’t mind, would you honey?” She glanced at me, but continued before I could say anything.  “No, Jack doesn’t mind.  Yes, of course! I’m sure the kids would love it.  No, if you think Pastor Williams would like to come, bring him along too.  Maybe I’ll put out snacks, you know, finger sandwiches or something.  We’ll just make a day out of it.  Okay, we’ll see you then Trace.  Buh-bye.”

My own, dear wife had betrayed me.  I knew there was relatively little time, nowhere near the days I’d expected to have to name the puppy at my leisure, and my mind raced.  It was no use though.  As we pulled into the driveway, I still had yet to find a suitable name for the beautiful little pup that sat peacefully in the lap of my traitorous wife.

To further aggravate my mood, my neighbor was standing in his yard, waving at us cheerfully.  By most other accounts, Richard Jameson was probably a great guy.  Probably a loving father, devoted husband.  Maybe even the kind of friend you could count on to change your tire at three in the morning.  I give him the benefit of the doubt in those instances.

Personally, I despise him.

For the past fifteen years he succeeded in antagonizing me at every possible opportunity.  I’d plant a new tree; he’d plant two.  I built a small deck in my back yard; he built a bigger one, with a roof and mosquito netting.  Every year, my family and I would have a small fireworks show on the Fourth of July.  His were always bigger, more dramatic.

One year, he hired a live band to drown out the large stereo system we had set up during our barbecue.  Half of the friends and coworkers I had invited had eaten their ribs, hamburgers, and hot dogs, and walked over casually, “out of curiosity” they claimed.  By night fall they had yet to return, and the fireworks display I had purchased – one of the bigger sets of rockets, fountains, and roman candles we’d ever bought from the nearby Indian reservation – was ooo’ed and ahh’ed over by only my wife and my son.  Of course, until Jameson started setting his off.  Then, even my dear family turned their attention away from the best fireworks display our house would have ever seen.

If you have never had such a neighbor, I’m sure you find my distaste for him petty and childish.  At one point, I would have agreed with you.  But fifteen years of succumbing to incessant one-upmanship puts even the slightest detail into a different perspective.

I smiled and waved back it him, however, because for once I was actually ahead of him.  Not the puppy – a pet is too dear an item to use in such childish games.  No, I had something that I knew he would never attain, something he could never best.

A close friend of mine happened to own a small nursery not far outside of town.  Days before the arrival of the puppy, I was visiting the nursery and I happened upon a beautiful, elegant rose bush.  Its petals were such a delicate pink-red, with slight veins of lavender and violet, so soft and fragile that it nearly broke my heart to touch it.  I asked my friend about it, as I had never seen such a wonderful work of nature’s art before.

“Ah yes,” he responded, setting down three large pots he’d been moving.  “That’s a very rare rose from Africa.  Only grows natively on one side of a mountain in Kenya.  I was very lucky to get that one bush – they aren’t exported much nowadays.”

I had to have it.  It was beautiful, yes, but it was also something that Jameson couldn’t have.  He would just die of jealousy! I purchased it, and my friend offered to have it delivered due to its fragility and rarity.  I declined, not wanting to waste his staff’s time for a single rose bush.  I drove it carefully to my house, and planted it proudly in the center of my yard that very day.

So I waved back at Jameson as my wife and I exited the car with our new puppy, then hurried inside to avoid any of his attempts at neighborly small talk.  I had much more important matters at hand: I had a puppy I needed to name, and time was growing short.

Quite short indeed, as it turned out.  No sooner had I set my keys on the kitchen counter when a knock came at the door.  I grimaced.  This was too soon! The poor darling had barely gotten her feet on the kitchen floor, and my family was going to pelt her with obscene attempts at a name.  There was nothing I could do about it however, only brace myself and hope for the best.

“Watch her while I get the door honey,” my wife said.  The little puppy looked up at me, wagging its tail as though knowing of the coming travesty and hoping I could prevent it.  It stumbled towards me, stepping on its long, Beagle ears and tripping itself.  I pledged right then I would not allow anyone else to name it but myself.  Perhaps my wife, as it was hers as well, but most certainly it would not fall prey to the Ceremony at hand.

No sooner had I made my promise than the sound of children filled the house.

“Puppy? Puppy!” High-pitched voices rang through the living room.  The puppy cringed, but still wagged its tail, frightened but trying hard to be brave.  The children found us and fell to the ground in playful admiration.  Their parents and my wife joined us shortly.  Unfortunately, the Pastor had been unable to attend; his presence would have been useful as a reminder that avenging any name chosen for the darling animal would have eternal consequences.

After my wife had served drinks and forced me to ensure our grill was in working order, the Display began with its usual questions: When did you get her (though my wife had told them over the phone)? How old is she? What breed is she? Is she full blood or mix? They circled close around the question I knew was coming, but like vultures they bided their time.  We talked weather and work, sports and celebrities, politics and other crimes, waiting for the question to arise.  The children played with the puppy, tugging its ears and its tail, laughing as it tried to chase them and stumbled or walked on its ears.  They told it to sit, roll over, and lie down, disappointed to see the puppy wag its tail and stare at them, the commands already faded from instinct.

Nearly an hour of distracting them had passed, and I was starting to gain hope that the dreaded question would die before it was born.  Then one of the children spoke.

“So, what are you gonna call it?”

Never before has the murder of a child seemed like such a pleasant idea.  I grimaced, but no one seemed to notice; the Ceremony had begun, and all of them, my dear wife included, were beginning their parts.

“Call him Fluffy!” one of the other children cried out, much in character with the Ceremony: as anyone who has suffered through it will affirm, the first few names suggested are clichés like “Fluffy”, “Rover”, “Rex”, etc., and most often the gender is wrong, as the puppy has yet to establish itself as male or female in the common eye.

“She isn’t very fluffy though,” I corrected, trying to sound patient and calm, knowing I failed miserably at it.

“How about Princess?” one of the other children said.  The child looked at the dog and bellowed: “Princess! Are you ‘Princess’?” The dog did not reply, other than sniffing at the ground and wagging her tail.

Thus it began.  Someone suggested “Cookie,” which started a barrage of food names – “Cream,” “Milk,” “Candy,” “Cookie” again for some reason.  My wife’s sister saw a CD of classical music lying on the table and that started a short battery of composers names, with the prefix “Ms.” thrown in front when they remembered it was a female puppy: “Ms.  Beethoven,” “Ms.  Mozart,” “Ms.  Bach.” Similarly they approached the names of past political leaders, with the same prefix thrown in where appropriate: “Victoria,” “Ms.  Churchill,” “Cleopatra,” “Elizabeth,” “Ms.  Lincoln.” There was no true logic behind the name choices, as there never is during the Ceremony.  Someone would find a subject that might suggest several words to name a puppy, and the group would exhaust the list as it came to mind.

I had nearly given in to homicidal urges when there came a knock on the door.  I hurried to answer it, hoping that the Ceremony would dwindle before I would find myself in need of legal counsel.  They continued as I walked, now harassing the animal with floral names: “Rose,” “Violet,” “Blossom.” I opened the door with hope that it would be someone able to engage me in a more pleasant situation, perhaps an IRS agent or door-to-door salesman.

A young man stood at the door, wearing a light green uniform and a name tag indicating his name as “Chip”.

“Can I help you?” I asked.

“I’m Chip, from the nursery.  I have…” He looked at a pad of paper in his hand.  “Eight rose bushes for a Mr.  Richard Jameson.”

My heart stopped.

No, I thought.  He couldn’t have.  He wouldn’t have.

I knew better though; he likely could have, and he most certainly would have.  I took a deep breath to steady myself.

“I’m sorry, Chip.  He lives next door.” The boy stepped back, looked at the number on the side of the door, and then smiled apologetically.

“I’m really sorry about that,” he said.  “They gave me the wrong address.”

“Not a problem,” I said, then watched him walk down the side walk.  I stepped outside the door, hearing the ceremony continue from inside – “Jewel,” “Ruby,” “Emerald.” Even shutting the door behind me I could hear them bludgeoning the dog with names.

Perhaps he bought regular roses, I told myself, hoping against all hope that it was true.  Chip climbed in his truck, drove it forward the short distance to Jameson’s house, and stopped it as Jameson walked out to greet him.  I watched impatiently as they discussed something I couldn’t hear, and my impatience turned to horror as Chip pulled out a rather large rose bush from the back of his truck.  The delicate pink-red of the blooms and the lines of lavender and violet that I could only barely see from my porch told me what I already expected.

Jameson waved at me as Chip unloaded more of the “one-of-a-kind” rose bushes.  I forced a smile and a slight wave, then walked back into the house.  The sounds of the Ceremony greeted me like the buzzing of a mosquito that will not die.

“That bastard Jameson! He’s done it again!” I shouted, forgetting the presence of children in my anger.  I started back to where I had left the poor puppy with our family, and took only a couple of steps before I realized that the Ceremony had stopped.  I looked up, and my eyes fell on the puppy.

It was running to me.  Its tail was wagging, and though it was still tripping on its ears as it came, it was showing more excitement than it had since we’d gotten it.  My family looked at me, stunned, and I shook my head in disbelief.

No, it can’t be, I thought to myself.  It must be a mistake.  The puppy looked up at me, wagging its tail with fierce happiness.  Someone had finally stumbled across the collection of syllables the puppy had decided was its name.  I looked at my wife, she looked at me, and I looked back down at the puppy.  The room was utterly silent, save for the swishing of the puppy’s tail on the carpet.  I tried random words from my previous sentences again, hoping that the puppy would not react to any of them in particular.

“He’s? Done?” The puppy sniffed my shoe.  “Again? It?” Nothing.  I started to sigh in relief, and my wife stopped me.

“No, dear, you said something that caught her attention.  Say it all again.”

“That-bastard-Jameson-he’s-?” The puppy’s head jerked.  I looked at my wife and shook my head again, as though I could negate what that simple motion declared.  “You try it honey,” I said, hoping it was my voice and not my words that she responded to.

“That Bastard Jameson? Come here That Bastard Jameson.” The puppy turned and ran to my wife.  My wife’s sister tried with the same result.  Her husband tried, and the puppy ran straight to him.  One of the children started to try, but a stern look from his mother reminded him that the name was hardly polite.

I could not believe it.  Had the puppy been a boy, the name could be considered humorous.  I would still despise such light heartedness in the naming of the animal, but I would have felt somewhat more at ease.  For a female puppy, however, it was far from ladylike.

It was decided though.  A name that is forced upon an animal can be changed at an owner’s whim, but when a new puppy decides for itself what word or collection of words it will answer to, that is what it will ever be named.

The Naming Ceremony thus complete, my family left my wife and me with our new puppy.  Life continued on much as we expected (save the name, of course) with all the trimmings of life with a new puppy: midnight bathroom walks, shoes and valuables discovered half-chewed, bags of food discarded after a single bowl served and left sitting for hours.  My wife, That Bastard Jameson, and I are well on our way to a happy, pet-filled life.

If you are of a curious heart, you may be wondering what happened to the rare, “one-of-a-kind” rose bush I planted with such pride in the center of my yard.  It died.  In spite of daily watering, trimming the dead blooms and branches as necessary, even giving it top-of-the-line rose food, it has become little more than a collection of thorny sticks decorating the grass.

That bastard Jameson – the human one – has had no such luck.  His are blooming beautifully, all eight of them.  I can see them perfectly out my window, every day, and if the breeze is right I can even smell them as I take my That Bastard Jameson out for her morning routine.

The Waitress

Yeah, I was the last one who saw Yvette that night.  We’d just finished our shifts, and she left with … well, this guy.  Never seen him before, but he was nice.  Didn’t think anything of it.  God, I hope she’s alright, and she just decided to quit her job or whatever.  But I don’t think the police would’ve come by if they didn’t think something was up.

It’d been a long shift, one of those ones that just drags on and on.  Both of our stations were slow as hell, but the boss wanted there to be two of us on the floor until after the holidays.  We weren’t complaining; we both needed the extra money.  Yvette more than I did, because her slob of a husband just quit his job.  Can you believe that?  Only a couple of weeks until Christmas, and he decides he’s better than the company he works for, and just leaves it.

So anyways, she needed the money, I always needed the money, so we were working.  About half an hour before we started closing up and doing our sidework, this guy walks in.  Looked like a real nice guy, too: suit, tie, short black hair and the sweetest smile you can imagine.  He sat at the counter, which was Yvette’s station, and ordered a cup of coffee.  Even called her “ma’am”.  You don’t get that much these days.  You’re lucky to get a tip most of the time, and forget about a “please” or “thank you.”

I went on about my business, and I could hear them talking, Yvette laughing and this guy, his voice was just as smooth as silk.  And not like used-car-salesman smooth, either.  He seemed genuine, at least.  I could see the way she was standing by him too, she looked like a school girl talking to the head quarterback of the football team.

Yvette’s not stupid, let me say that right now.  I mean, except for staying with her deadbeat husband for so long, but I can kinda understand why she’d do that; he’d started out good, but things just went downhill.  She probably expected him to go back to how he used to be, and that would’ve been great.

But, other than that, she wasn’t stupid.  She wasn’t the kinda girl who would just jump all over someone who showed her a little bit of affection.  So when I saw her smile touch her eyes that night – the first time I’d seen that since she’d gotten married, actually – I knew something was up.  I knew there was something about that guy, and she’d be stupid to let her chump of a husband get in the way.

So, when she came up to me later, when I was counting out what little I’d made in tips that day, I knew what was on her mind.

“What do you think?” she asked me.

“About what?” I said, playing stupid.

“About him.  He wants me to go out and have drinks with him after work.  Do you think I … no, I couldn’t.”

I smiled at her.  She’d told me all about the problems she was having with her husband, and it wasn’t just the money either.  The guy didn’t beat her – not with his hands, at least – but he was hardly nice to her.  And forget about time in the sack; he’d stay up all night watching TV, and she’d be long in dreamland by the time he came to bed.  Never let her do anything with her friends – well, me; he didn’t let her have any friends to speak of.  Always got mad at her for working late and not having the house all spic-and-span, or not having dinner ready for him.  I knew exactly what she should do.

“Girl,” I told her, “you only live once, and I don’t call what you have going on with that jerk you call a husband ‘living’.  I say go for it.”

She looked at me and smiled, but I could tell she was torn.

“Listen,” I said, setting down the ten dollars I’d made that day.  “You know what feels right and what doesn’t.  Do you think you’d regret going out with him – it’s just for drinks, remember? – more than going home to get yelled at for working late?”

She nodded as I talked, and I could tell she’d made up her mind.

“You know what?  You’re right.  I’ve been thinking of filing for divorce from that son of a bitch anyways.  I think I’ll do it.”

I hugged her.  “I knew you’d come along some day,” I said to her, probably a little too proud that she’d finally started making a bit of a difference in her own life.  She took off her apron and went back out to the counter and sat down next to her new friend.  I poured them each a cup of coffee, and tried not to eavesdrop.  I succeeded, for the most part; all I heard was that he was a recruiter for some company, sounded middle eastern and definitely not a company I’d heard of before.  Other than that, I stayed away from them as much as I could.

Finally, they left and I locked the door behind them.  That was the last time I saw Yvette or that guy – didn’t even catch his name.  The cops came by a couple of days later, saying that her husband reported her missing and they were just following up.  She never called to quit or anything.  I’m worried about her, but, at the same time, maybe she finally just had enough and left that asshole for something better for her.  And I say more power to her.

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