Diner

I was at an all night diner last Tuesday. Legally, and I say this because of the insisted accuracy of the report, it was actually Wednesday. Barely. Wednesday started, for me, when I woke up around eleven in the morning.

            I was sitting a table away from the door. I always sit there. I come to this diner probably twice a week and I always get the same thing. I sit there and I drink some bad coffee and eat some delicious food, which is worse for me than the coffee tastes. I had a song in my head:

I was at an all night diner

The sign said “Triple X”

But they were talking about root beer

I’m just sitting down

Thinking about nothing

Looking at the thin air

Breathing up the oxygen

And that really was me. Sometimes I hear songs and I feel like I want to personify them. I want to be the guy they’re singing about. I think that to an extent, at least once, everyone has that. I had a girlfriend who wanted to be the personification of every Bright Eyes song she listened to. Things ended badly with us. Bravo.

           

            A waitress walked up and said Hi, how are you tonight? and I said Good, and you? She said Is there anything I can get you to drink tonight? with her pen ready on her little pad. Typical. Not dogging on her, but everyone here is so cordial, yet I’m not sure they actually care. I guess I’d rather have it that way than someone not caring and showing it.

            I’ll have the usual, I say, which is what I always say. I made the mistake of wanting to be a regular to a new waitress. She looked at me and cocked her hand back away from the paper. A short stack, coffee, a side of bacon and that should be it. The usual, I said. She wrote it down and said The usual.

I was eating my pancakes, singing along to songs in my head, sipping on my orange juice and enjoying my night to myself when I heard some guy across the room from me, maybe a few tables back, talking loudly about these oranges he had out on his table. They’re from Arizona, he said. Brought them all the way back with me. I picked them with my own hands, he said. Freshest oranges in the state. Can’t get em’ this fresh at the store, he said, no sir. He was very proud of these oranges. I was wondering if he was going to eat them or not. Show and tell at an all night diner, eh? This world is home to the strangest people. He was going on about the oranges right up until the point where I was almost ready for my check and then he took out this tiny mason jar. It was full of sand. Straight from Sawyer, Michigan, he said. The waitress that was helping him had lost interest in his escapades after about two minutes. He had been going on about his oranges for about ten minutes before he broke out this jar of sand. I felt bad for her.

This sand sings when you walk on it, he said. You can’t get that here, no sir. Excuse me, he said, no ma’am. No offense, I know you’re a lady, ma’am, I just say ‘no sir’ a lot. It’s an expression. This sand… here, touch some, he said and he opened the jar, it’s very fine. That’s why it sings, he said. She touched the sand and said it was real nice and maybe she’d take a vacation there sometime. He said she should and tried sealing up the jar. I was watching him. He started threading it wrong and then dropped the lid on accident. He bent over to get it and then he spilled some sand on the table. S---, he said. The waitress left to get him something to sweep up the sand with. He sealed up the jar and put it down on the table and looked at the little pile of sand that came all the way from Sawyer, Michigan.

I sat back against the booth and that’s when a woman in the rear of the diner started screaming. She screamed loud and everyone jumped. I looked back and there was a man standing over her as she cowered in the booth. He had a gun. It was pointing right at her. He was using it to get a purse from her.

I work at a place that has a cash till. Sometimes, I think about what I would do if someone ever tried to rob me. I know what I’m supposed to do. Hand the money over and call the cops. But I always think that I would stand up for my boss. He works hard for that money in the till. Sometimes I think I would take the till out for the robber and then throw it hard at his face and jump over the counter or something. And then what? I don’t know. Step on his neck and hope the cops come quick. I only think about how I’d disable him, not how I’d keep him until the cops could show up. Either way, I would never just hand it over. I would be brave.

The orange guy, the one who wouldn’t stop talking looked at me and I looked at him. I slid out of my booth and started running towards the door. Lucky I was sitting close to it. I was moving too fast, though and I tripped on my own scrambling feet. I slid to a halt just a foot in front of the door. I rolled over on my back and I saw that orange guy had the same idea. Don’t save the day, just save yourself. He stepped over me and I watched him run away. I propped myself up on my hands and then I got knocked over again- someone else had run right into me. I heard glass breaking and then a gun firing. I blacked out.

When I came to I was propped up in my booth. There in front of me was a fresh pancake, two strips of bacon and some more coffee. Across from me was a cop. I looked at him and he could tell I was scared and confused. I asked him what happened. Don’t worry, he said, we got him. When I propped myself up the thief, the guy with the gun, ran right into me. Apparently he didn’t see me. He fell headlong into the door, shattering the glass and discharging his weapon. The cop asked me some questions and I ate my food even though I felt a little like throwing up. I answered everything that I could and then he stood up and said, thanks for the help, bud, you sure know how to catch a baddie, winked at me and walked over to one of his cop friends. I looked back over to where the orange guy was sitting and I saw his waitress sweeping that little pile of sand into a cup. She looked over at me when she turned around with the cup of sand. Just in case he comes back.

The Last Time

Do you remember the last time you cried? Someone asked me this the other day and I thought about it for a little while but quite honestly came up with a blank. I’m not a tough guy. That’s not it. I just could not remember the last time I cried. That time I dislocated my knee doesn’t count. That singular tear was the equivalent of drooling at the dentist while your flaccid mouth is all anesthetized up. The liquid expulsion is involuntary. Well alright, that and it really hurt. But I’m talking about crying emotionally. I’m not a broken man of stone, either; I have emotions. I just don’t cry. And you know what? I’d like to. I want to cry.

            If she asked me that again I could answer with much more accuracy. I do remember, I do! It was this morning. I was lying in my bed and I didn’t know it at the time, but I was dreaming.

            There was a powder blue envelope and it said From Dad on it. I opened it and I knew it was for my mom. It contained a magazine and it had something to do with a romantic getaway. I thumbed through it and there were some handwritten notes in it and I got really excited to hand this off to my mom. I love my mom. I really do. She’s a single woman right now and I want to see her get married almost more than I want to see myself get married. She loves me so much and she deserves a good man to love her. She just deserves it. You see, my parents aren’t together. That’s fine. I don’t disagree with this. It happened when I was very young and I think my mom was behind most of the decision making there.

            I took the envelope to my mom and waited around for her to read it, so I could see her reaction. She opened it up and started talking to me about the stuff inside. I had this feeling she thought that it was from me. Perhaps she hadn’t seen the handwritten signature on front- From Dad. No, no, she said. We can’t go on vacation together. I wanted to tell her that it was from Dad, that it was him wanting to go on vacation with her! But just like the dreams where you need to run far and fast and you find yourself unable to take a mere step, I simply couldn’t tell her. I was muted, dumbfounded.

            I walked into the front door of our house. My brother was there. He didn’t look very good. He was looking old, weathered. You could tell he was still young but he looked aged. His face seemed to be becoming leathery. It looked like he had a healed and shallow scar on his face. I asked him how he was doing. Honestly, he said, not too good right now. Kaden, our nephew, had been dropped and hit his head. I knew this in the dream. He suffered brain damage from the fall and now, Ryan explained, he was very lethargic yet very happy all the time. Kaden was never like that before. He was loud, and overall a disobedient child of sorts, but we all loved him anyway. He was just a kid. Now he would never be loud again and he would never disobey. Ryan really did look broken up over this.

I started to explain what happened with the letter from Dad and how Mom didn’t get it- that it was from him. He didn’t seem to know what I was talking about as I was telling him about it but I got cut off from finishing everything I was saying when I noticed my mom walking up to the house with my dad. He looked older than the last time I saw him. He was wearing khakis. I’ve only ever seen him in jeans. He had that on and a button up shirt, which is his style, but in lighter colors. His hair was becoming littered with grays and seemed to fray out. It was still long. He had that facial hair still, but more than his usual mustache. It was more of a handlebar mustache with some extra on his chin. I looked at the two of them walking together and suddenly became overjoyed and I started laughing. My brother tried asking what I was laughing at. I couldn’t explain, I could only laugh, and what was so funny was that I was trying to convince my mom that dad had sent her this letter, but once I saw him I remembered that he’s been dead since I was twelve. I was standing there in front of my brother laughing so hard at my folly and it turned right into crying. I was crying because I saw my dad again, finally. I was hugging my brother, caught in-between sobbing and laughing. I just couldn’t pick one.

            It looked just like him, but years older. It’s been over ten years now. When he died, I thought maybe, just maybe someone that dressed just like him and looked similar came into our slightly remote home in Black River Falls and walked into my dad and stepmoms room and shot himself right there on the bed, through the right temple. I thought that maybe it had been a big mistake and I’d see my dad again, someday. I cried back then. I remember that. Seeing him in that dream was that reunion I had been waiting for- laughter and tears. Joy and sadness. Then I woke up right before my alarm was set to go off. My face was dry. I wasn’t crying at all. Not even close.

            They say that if you die in a dream you’ll die in real life. I never believed that. I know there’s a connection between the physical body and the dream state. You can injure yourself in a dream and wake up sore. But I didn’t wake up crying. If I had my say in the matter, though, I would have.

Fort

---For David Benjamin Piery---

“Honey!” Said Mrs. Jones from the top of the stairs. She used to be a jovial sort with jade green eyes and always wore a matching jade green jacket. Her jellying chins jutted out from below her jaw and her jet black hair jogged down and framed her face. The thick mascara on her eyelashes gave them an appearance of jagging something, perhaps the air. Perhaps her eyelashes were javelins. Her joints were getting stiff and she was always jonseing for something- a new life or maybe just a new car to jounce and jaunt through countryside roads on. Joy was leaking out of her face and you could tell if you looked at photographs from the past decade. The jubilation that was fading fast, judging by the jumble of stress wrinkles that had jumped up on and junked her complexion, was almost gone. The jury is still out on this, though, for she juxtaposes herself in moments of jocosity. She was no jackleg, mind you, just ‘losing it’. This journey to ‘losing it’ all started, she said in a jangling voice, when she got married. Her least favorite letter, she told her workout partner Jill whilst jiggling in a jazzercising class, was the letter ‘J’. Because that’s the first letter of my damned last name, she said from her janky jalopy of a body, now that I’m married. This life is a damned jail cell, she said to Jill who appeared to be suffering from jaundice. After class she clambered into her Jeep and drove home to her ‘jerry-built’ house that her husband built to prepare Jenni-o turkey and jello to Janet Jackson songs while her husband Jerry munched on turkey jerky. Jesus, she would say, some people are so annoying! That would be me right now, I jest, I jest. I will jettison this act starting now.

“Honey!” Mrs. Jones said a little louder. Her first name was Sally. She bent over the stairs a little bit for this second attempt.

“What?” Carried up a voice in response.

“What are you boys doing down there?”

“Hangin’ out.”

Hangin’ out, Sally said to herself. She sighed and turned away and headed back to the kitchen. An orange light spilled in through a small rectangular window that was built to stare out of while plodding around the kitchen. It was just the right height- you only had to look ahead. Sally opened a cupboard and took out a mug. The outside said ‘World’s Greatest Lover…’ and the bottom on the inside said ‘…Sometimes”. The white porcelain cup warmed up instantly as she poured some aging coffee onto the punch line resting on the bottom of the cup. She sat down in the dining room at the corner of the table and wrapped her small hands around the small mug. After the tingling sensation went away she picked up the phone.

“Jill?”

After a solid hour of building and crawling, the two were finally worn down enough to stop for a second of rest. Sweating and breathing a slight heavier than normal, they exited the labyrinth that they created and climbed up on the only functional pieces of furniture left in the basement.They sat on the two chairs looking out over a mass assembly of blankets, couches, chairs, pool sticks and whatever usable item imaginable for the completed purpose.

            “Water?”

            “Yes.”

            The two rose and headed up the stairs, making for the kitchen.

            Sally twirled the cup in a circle slowly on the dining room table with a finger on her free hand. A phone was smushed between her hair, ear, cheek and her left hand.

            “They’re downstairs again.” She sighed.

            “No, it’s not a problem, they just always make a mess, you know? And I like to keep a clean house.” Sally said into the phone sandwich.

            “I just don’t like having to keep after them like this, you know? They should know by now.”

            “Boys will be boys.” Said a voice through the phone.

            “And they are boys.”

            “Can you send mine home before it gets too late? He needs to be up in the morning. I can’t have him getting all razzed up and staying up until God knows when after I fall asleep.” Said the voice.

            Two children came tearing into the dining room, yelling indiscriminately.

            “Is that who I think it is?” Asked the voice through the phone, speaking up to catch Sallys ear.

            In the kitchen two fathers and two sons were drinking water. The sons, who made it to the kitchen first, finished their water and bolted out of the kitchen as quickly as they came.

“Brett, getting laid off was the best idea you’ve ever had.” Said Jerry.

“It wasn’t my idea, man, but I agree. Freedom never felt so… so government funded.”

“Lucky man, lucky man.” Said Jerry.

“Well,” Said Brett in a high toned reply. “not really. I got paid more when I was actually working but the, uh, paid time off and what have you is pretty nice.”

“That’s what I meant. You’re lucky for that.” Said Jerry, making for the basement.

            “We’re going to have to put this all back.” Said Brett once they got to the bottom.

            “This is the family room.” Said Jerry, knowing what Brett was getting at. “And she’s never down here. So as far as the rest of us are concerned, it’s not her room. It’s everybody else's. She says it’s like you’re part of the family so it’s part your room too, Brett. You, me, the kids, everyone that comes down here. Not her, though, she just likes to mope around the kitchen these days and talk on the phone with her jazzbo friend Jill.”

            “She just needs something to do. That’s what Jill tells me.”

            “Yeah? She has that class.” Said Jerry.

            “I mean you should take her out sometime for once. I guess Sally complains about how you don’t do that anymore. I don’t know, I’m just going off of what Jill says.”

            “That won’t make her stop overreacting about stuff like the basement being a fort.” Said Jerry.

            “Yeah, Jerry, but you know Sally.” Said Brett.

            “Uh huh. She’s a fistful, alright.”

            “Mmhm.” Said Brett.

            “Well I suppose the kids won’t wanna do it.” Started Jerry after a pause.

            “You couldn’t expect them to put this all back anyway.”

            “Mmhm.”

            “They’ll be happy if we leave it up.” Said Jerry.

            “Mmhm.” Said Brett.

            “Jerry needs to shape up, Jill. You know what I mean. He can’t keep acting like this.” Said Sally.

            “He acts like a child, Jill.” Said Sally as two sets of feet tromped into the room loudly and stopped. Sally looked up.

            “Mom can we go play in the fort?” Said Will, nine years old and two feet in front of his best friend, Marc. Marc was Brett’s son. Brett and Jerry were best friends, too. Like father like son.

            “The fort?” Said Sally, leaning forward.

            “Yeah…Marc and me wanna go play in it. Can we mom?”

            “When did you guys make a fort?” Said Sally, neglecting the phone that was making Charlie Brown noises at her.

            “Dad n’ Brett made it.” Said Will.

            “And we wanna go play in it.” Chipped in Marc.

            “What in the name of Christ Jesus of Nazareth?” Said Sally and she set the phone down on the table. The phone sounded like it was saying ‘wah wah wah waa-waa.’

            Sally stormed down the stairs and looked at everything her and Jills husbands had done to the family room. Brett and Jerry looked over at her. Brett gave a sideways glance to Jerry, a sort of ‘I told you so’ look.

            “What did you do to this room?” Sally barked.

            “I, uh, is this a trick question?” Asked Jerry in return, giving a sideways grin to Brett. Brett hit Jerry in the side.

            “It’s a fort.” Said Jerry.

            “You’re grown men. You’re forty-three. You don’t need to be tearing apart my family room and turning it into a fort.” Said Sally, heatedly.

            “Sally, you’re a grown woman. You can settle down about this.” Said Jerry, coolly.

            “You will be staying with Brett tonight.”

            “Sally.” Said Jerry.

            “I mean it!” Screamed Sally.

            “Let’s talk about this upstairs.” Said Jerry. Sally expressed an ambiguous level of odium when she gave out a loud ‘Ugh’ and headed up the stairs with quick and heavy feet. Jerry followed and so did Brett. Will and Marc waited for them to disappear up the stairs and shot straight into the gigantic fort.

            With Marc fighting off sleep in the backseat, Brett and Jerry drove away from the Joneses residence.

            “I’ll bring you back in the morning. You know I don’t have anything better to do.” Said Brett. “Jill is making me wake up early to go job hunting, so you’ll be my first and probably most important stop of the day.”

            “Can you believe it?” Said Jerry. “Unbelievable. I just can’t believe it.”

            “Give her time to cool down and you guys will be fine.” Said Brett. “Just fine.”

            “Unbelievable.” Said Sally into the phone. “Men. You just can’t change em’, can you, Jill? How do you put up with Brett?” The voice on the other end of the phone said something but Sally wasn’t really listening.

            “Unbelievable.” Said Jerry in the car. “Women. You just can’t change em’, can you, Brett? How do you put up with Jill?” Brett said something from the drivers seat but Jerry wasn’t really listening.

Crooked Lust

---Based on "Crooked Lust" by Bowerbirds---

            I keep reading these short stories where nothing happens. This last one I read- it’s about this couple. They move into town, the woman eventually leaves and the guy keeps waiting outside for his mail. After he gets this letter he leaves too. The end. It’s from the perspective of the postman.

            I do everything I’m supposed to do. I write 1,000 words a day. You’re supposed to do that, right? I do it. But nothing happens in these stories. I read some short stories of another guy from the late 1,800’s and nothing happens in his short stories either. Okay, in a few something happens, but not all of them. There are movies like that too.

            I’m young and I work very hard. I work hard enough. I have known you for the whole time and we’re on a first name basis. I sit there on the last page and sometimes I read the last paragraph a few times but I swear, nothing happened.

            Will you please tell me if I become a hack?

I was born a ghost- an apparition. Filled with holes and contradiction. And I fear I’m the only one. I know what you’re thinking. And you’re wrong. I don’t think he’s a hack- the one who wrote about the postman. He’s not. If I said he was I would quite literally be ex-communicated. I’m not protecting myself- I’m just telling you.

            Half of the time I’m joking. Half of the time everyone’s joking. The other half of the time you’re supposed to think I’m joking. But I’m not and I get away with it, don’t I? I do. And sometimes I feel guilty. So I wake early, watch the leaves quake, and the first light braise the trees. I hide myself in a secret place.

            Five hundred pages. Nothing happens. I mean, the plot line runs for three inches. But it’s not true when I say nothing happens. Everything happens. All three inches of it. Do you know what I’m saying? I’d try to write one of my own but I can’t right now. Everything has been pushing against itself-pressing itself into a big mountain. It doesn’t stop, either, and I don’t know how to sort it out. Or stop it.

            I’m a sycophant. A wheedler. A beguiler by trade- blanching the faces of those I prey upon. But I’m not preying on anyone. I just do it. When I think about it I see myself from the outside. And right now I’m outside. Here I know my heart, I know it’s careless.

            And I need you to be honest. Please tell me if I become a hack.

            I want to climb to the top of the mountain, maybe plant a flag. Just to say I’ve been there. It’s built out of me from bottom to top but I feel like the top is foreign- tranquil. Up there nothing happens. I swear nothing happens.

            I rise and fall every day- I imagine my body looping around and around as the month passes. Supine. Alarm. Rise. Work. Prostrate. Sleep. And you are always there. You stop to talk to me, and I think you know better, but darling, you seem like you’re fearless. And maybe you’re my perfect fix.

I keep coming back to the stories. I find the movies. Not the comedies, not the romance flicks. Those don’t do it. Too much happens. I keep coming back to the stories where nothing happens. I need to keep this mountain together and I don’t even know how I built it. It just rose up. I spot the fissures but they’re only fissures. Not very deep. Everybody’s mountain has them. Some try to patch them up. Some try to ignore them.

            But I am only worried about one thing. Please, please tell me…

It always starts the same, and believe me, it will end the same. That’s just how it goes. I don’t plan it. I write so I don’t have to think about it. Then I realize that I am thinking about it. I’m writing about it. Then I feel it. I hear it. It resonates everywhere. My conscious is an avalanche. Majestic, bewildering. And wholly careless, crooked lust, crooked lust. My conscious is an avalanche…

            It is majestic, too. Crumbling without a way to stop it. Maybe I’m shedding something. Maybe I need this. Maybe I need to fall apart so I can hold myself together. And all the while I am the animal on the side of the mountain, watching the mass speed towards me. It’s made of the tiniest, most harmless bits. And I made it. I don’t know how. It just looms over me. I began mistake the shadow of the mountain for the natural shade of daylight.

I can’t make sense of them if nothing happens. I never read them twice and I never think about them too long but I always want to know. I have a list of things to do every day. Silence imprecations. Avoid paroxysms. Stretch. But the one thing that should be on my list isn’t on my list. And I feel it now. My conscious is an avalanche…

My body loops and loops. I breathe and eat to keep it going. I worry, God I worry. And we all do. Everyone says we need to worry less, tossing it out there like a bone to the poor emaciated dog. I am not that dog. We all are. We all worry. Even if we tell other people to worry less. I know the truth.

            So I am not out of line if I ask you to be honest.

I live with the tides. I live in reverence. But do I live these days? I think about it and know the days are endless, endless. You used sound happy, but darling, you seem like you’re anxious. My conscious is an avalanche. Aware of the deadly flakes. A mountain made of crooked lust. My conscious is an avalanche…

Gus

            His name was Guster Salazar the Third. If there was a roman numeral for "the last" he would also tack that onto the end of his name. Guster Salazar the Third and Last. It had a veracious ring to it.

Here's the thing: through a series of widespread misfortune and dumb luck, Guster became the last man on earth. Before this happened, his friends just called him Gus. Some people thought it was a generic nickname that just stuck with him, but it wasn't.

            Before the problems of overcrowding in Japan, disease and hunger in Africa, constant violent bickering in the Middle East and hate everywhere fixed themselves, Gus worked in the power plant in his small hometown. He lived there all his life. He saw nothing wrong with driving seven minutes to get to his last "class of 2019" reunion. The power plant was hydroelectric: it ran on the water that busily pushed itself through the dam right next to the plant. He enjoyed his job and he knew how to run the place, literally. If someone was sick on his days off he would be glad to come in and work doing something different for a day. When everyone was gone he decided to make the power plant his home. He could keep the power running for himself as long as the water still ran, and the water didn't look like it was going to bail out on him like everyone else did.

            He had a lot of time on his hands. He only had to worry about himself these days, but back when there was a lot of people around he preferred to worry about them. One of his biggest fears was that he was going to be seen as an egotistical person. He decided he would rather be an egoist at twenty-two; he had read The Fountainhead. Now he was faced with a large dilemma: seeing as he was the last man on earth his egoism was now egotism. But it was different now. He could be an egotist and an egoist at the same time and not be a dick. Plus nobody was around to be jealous of his immense self-interest. Sadly, nobody was around to see how good he looked, either. I mean it. He really shaped up after everyone disappeared. And who says black and brown don’t match? His black hair looked good on his brown skin. He didn’t tell himself that he looked good, though. That would be too bigheaded of him. His dying thoughts were spent worrying about whether or not he was really what he was afraid of becoming this whole time. It was a very distressful dying breath that he sighed, still caught in a battle of thoughts. If he wouldn't have died in such a hurry he would have had time to realize that if he was indeed an egotist- it was on accident, and he could not be blamed. But I couldn't tell him this, because I was not there to do that. And neither were you. In fact, neither of us exist right now. Only Gus.

            Well. Sir Caesar "the Flash" existed to Gus. The Flash was Gus' pet cat, sometimes affectionately known as El Gato. The Flash was mainly green and black. Gus loved that combination of colors. The Flash was made out of cardboard, construction paper, felt, googly eyes- the kind that have the black disc inside of them that moved around- strings and other random material he found all stuck together by property of a guy named Elmer. The Flash was very two-dimensional. Gus had a real pet cat years ago. He got the cat in a parking lot.

            "Psst!" said a dark man with a sparse black mustache. "You there!" He half whispered intently. Gus turned his head slightly to the left and glanced at the man talking at him. He was standing between two cars, slightly bent over. The passenger door of the car to the man’s left was open. "Eh! C'mere!" he said. He beckoned with a finger slightly. Gus stood looking at the man, his hands still on his cart with four items in it: peanut butter, milk, bread and some cheap 2-in-1 shampoo and conditioner. "Looook" said the man as he reached into his car stealthily and retrieved a small mewling kitten, too cute to not love instantly, unless, of course, you weren't a "cat person". Gus didn't consider himself to be a "cat person" because he considered himself to be fully human. Nothing about him was very cat-like and he didn't understand why people chose to allow the label of "cat person" fall upon their heads. But Gus really did enjoy cats- a lot. Half zombified he walked straight over to the man he was previously raising an eyebrow at. He took the kitten into his hands. It shook and moved around. "Rrg-g-g-g-roww?” it asked.

            "My name's Gus, little fella." Gus said to the cat, his face maybe five inches away from the little animal, and ten inches from its normal place above his body. "You selling these little guys?" He asked the man standing in front of him with a dark red button up shirt that appeared to be made of thick cheap cotton.

            "Yes." said the man in his fast paced accent. "Ninety dollars for this one". He smiled.

            "Ninety?!" Demanded Gus.

            "Yes. Ninety dollars."

            "Well...why? It's just a cat, man" Said Gus. And then he thought to himself: no, it's not a cat man. That's just silly. I wonder what a cat man would..

            "No. It's not just a cat." interrupted the man. His jet-black hair was thick and sort of a medium short length, combed over to one side. A lock of it fell in front of his face as the man leaned forward to give his explanation. His eyes darted from side to side. "It's a gato!" Whispered the man excitedly.

            There was a pause.

            "What?" asked Gus. His eyebrow found its way back to the place it had been before he walked over. His head tipped to one side, favoring the side of his brain that was trying to figure this man out.

            "A gato! See, this is no ordinary cat you can buy here in America. This one is imported. Born in Mayheeko!" Said the man. Of course, he meant Mexico by that. Gus laughed. He produced some twenties and a ten and handed them to the man.

            "You're lucky I have so much cash with me today. I don't think a cat's worth that much money but how can I not? This thing is adorable. Look at it." said Gus as he extended his arms with the little animal cradled in his hands. He took it back a few seconds later. He was beaming like a child. "Your reason for it being so expensive made my day. That's the other reason I bought it." He put the little cat down in his cart by his bag. The cat pounced at it. Gus started pushing and the cat moved all of its legs out and looked a little scared as it tried to maintain balance. Later, Gus gave it the name Sir Caesar "the Flash" Gato because he thought it was funny and the cat could not object, plus it always made him smile when he told other people what it was. He got to tell them the story of how he got the cat- they'd always demand why it had such a strange name. Now he only had his cardboard arts and crafts day rendition of his cat. He took it with him whenever he went to a different room and propped it up against something. It was much bigger than the real one and didn't move quite as much, plus it was uninterested in jingly toys, much to Gus' perpetual disappointment.

            "Umhnnnm" said Gus' throat. He was talking to his second-generation cat, like he always did. Except what he really said was: "I just don't make coffee like they used to, Flash."

            He said it all in his brain. Saying things in his brain was a lot easier than actually voicing them, plus he didn't have to feel as crazed by loneliness as he actually was. This was how he always communicated now. He brained all sorts of things to all sorts of inanimate objects. His mouth would still stir a little and some sounds would come out when he was braining things.

            The Flash looked at him, his black disc pupils resting at the bottom of this plastic bubble eyes. "Well don't look at me!" it brained back to Gus. Gus heard it, as he always did.

            Gus had a very impressive musical collection. He drove to the closest big towns and raided the music stores. At first he collected all sorts of music he liked. Then he went on to music other people used to enjoy, even if he didn't particularly enjoy it himself. He converted one of the offices into a music room when he ran out of space in his "living room". Next to his music room was his other music room with actual instruments. He found a drum set that was so expensive one could have expected it might have a pot of gold in the bass drum. The drum company knew that would mess with the sound so they decided to make it expensive in other ways. Gus didn't understand what was so great about it, but he liked beating it up with wooden sticks. He had a variety of guitars and a few basses. He also raided the Mac store to get a mini studio set up for himself to record. He threw listening parties with The Flash. At one particular listening party he toasted: "No band in all the history of mankind has ever been so concordantly loved by the earths populous!"

            "And no paralyzed cat has ever been the fastest in the world, either!" Said The Flash with a stoic leer.

            Gus had become very fit due to his solitary confinement. He wasn't too big on health for most of his life but now he decided he should be healthy and fit if he was ever to become a-sexual somehow. Some animals and plants were a-sexual and they were quite healthy. Humanity was depending on him to find a way to let itself continue past his death! Somehow, he thought, being healthy and fit would result in mankind beyond his singularity. He ran, weight trained and sometimes swam but he still used the facilities elevators. He thought his transmogrification stratagem was a stretch but he had to take measures somehow. Being lazy wasn't his idea of progress.

            Panting, he walked into his living room, head down, and hands in fists on his hips. "How was the run?" He looked up and saw The Flash right where he left him.

            "Have you ever...you know...thought that maybe there's someone out there somewhere? I mean I don't understand how I could really be the only one left here."

            No answer from The Flash.

            "Come on. It's just that sometimes I feel like I'm being watched...not by you. And if there is someone out there...I wish they'd just come say 'hi' or something."

           

      “Mom, did Eve go to Hell?”

      “I don’t know, baby.” His Mother was short and losing the figure of her youth. Gus was ten.

      “I wonder who was the first. I wonder when Hell started and how long Satan had to be alone for. And how bad it was to be the only person there. All alone in Hell with just Satan to keep you company.”

      “That boy has a lot of time to think, huh?” Said Gus’ dad from behind his paper on the chair that he literally never seemed to leave, except for work.

       “Hey Guster, wanna see what’s on?” He asked with a gesture of his left hand- lifting it with his eyebrows, presenting the remote.

           

            Somewhere along the line he decided that he didn’t believe in God. Now everyone was gone and he didn’t know what to think. Everyone who made him hate organized religion was gone, and if there was a God, getting rid of them was a pretty nice thing to do. But it was just him now. Alone. He reached for the remote. Static.

            Gus, caught in quizzical thought, exited the room to head off to the river to bathe. Down the hallway, left at the “T” and straight to the elevator. He raised his hand to call the elevator, and right as his hand hovered over the button, a light above the elevator doors lit up and said 'bing!’

            He raised his head to watch the doors mechanically sunder and saw a man standing directly in the middle of the elevator.           

            Gus cocked his head to the side- his face a look of turbid bemusement. The man standing in front of him lifted his arm parallel with the ground. The muscles in the hand attached to his arm simultaneously contracted in a muscular prolix. The trigger of the gun attached to his hand squeezed as intended and his eyelids followed suit, but by reflex.

            Gus lay on the ground gasping for air, his mind and heart racing in tune with each other, and then, as if they had coordinated it in a protest to the pain and their flummoxed state, they stopped.

Spooks

Hello, my name is Steve Winwood. If you Google my name you’re going to think that I’m some semi-famous guy. Well I’m not. I had no idea who the Steve Winwood was until someone said, what, like the Steve Winwood? And I said who?

            This isn’t about how I share a name with someone who I’m ‘in the Wiki know’ about. This is about how my house has spooks. Now, I know what you’re thinking, and that’s not the case, I assure you. I can walk around in the dark anywhere and I’ll be fine. Just not up on the second floor of my house, where the spooks work. Their job is to make me feel uneasy and like I should probably run everywhere I go when I’m upstairs. They do a very good job of this, of course. I feel like every time I reach to flip on the light switch there will be something staring me down when I snap my head around to survey the room I just walked in to.  If I walk by a bed I’m sure that some decrepit skeleton hand will shoot out and grab my ankle.

           

(Never mind that skeletons can’t be strong enough to do any damage to me. One stomp on an infirm skeleton wrist should be enough to cripple it past the point of inflicting physical harm.)

And you may have guessed that the times I am the most spooked by the spooks is at night. This is true. But I maintain: I am not scared of the dark. I’m scared of the spooks. Sometimes the upstairs is still scary in the daytime but it’s not quite as bad. The fact that it’s still scary in the daytime is how I know that it’s spooks and not just the dark.

I used to wonder why ghost hunters hunted with the lights off. If you were to see a ghost, wouldn’t it be easier for you to see them with the lights on? Human eyes were not created with night vision. Then I figured it out. Ghosts use the elements. They’re phantasms, nay, phantoms (!) that have become attuned to the dark because of it’s spooky advantages. What can they do to you physically? Honestly, not much. Not the ghosts that reside upstairs, at least. They could creak a door, maybe, or make me chilly, but that’s not much to have a heart attack over. Nothing to scream myself into acute apoplexy over. So once the haunting community came to terms with this I think they agreed that the proper time to haunt is the night. When things are dark- uncertain- likely harbor a forgotten and discarded artifact to trip you. In the daytime things aren’t nearly as scary. Ever seen a vacuum cleaner look like a short woman with a horridly bent nose? I have. It was at night. Then I saw the vacuum cleaner ten hours later. It was a vacuum.

Ghosts don’t have to be seen; they are felt instead. That’s why the whole upstairs is spooky. I know it’s not one oversized spook that covers the whole upstairs and spills into every nook and cranny of ever room- how preposterous! Those spooks are just everywhere up there. I can feel it. Ghosts are scariest when they wait just outside of your vision- right outside a door or right behind your head when you curl up facing the wall at night.

And, once again, I promise you that I am not afraid of the dark.

The ghost’s spooking jurisdiction ends somewhere near the bottom of the stairs. I feel the tight grip of their spooky hands releasing whatever it is in my chest and throat that makes me feel so uneasy when I’m up there. Let’s just say it’s the human’s spook nerve. When clinched properly it can affect your whole body. It can make you shake; it can make you double over, even. It can make you say the silliest things. Men: it can make you sound like a woman. Woman: it can make your man come running to you in childlike fear. It can make you gulp right after it makes your throat the Mojave Desert. This spook nerve- the one that invokes the powerful emotion of fear- can make you lie and it can make you hurt people when you’re normally as docile as a little Yorkshire Terrier and it can turn you into a scared little rabbit that can’t do anything but run in a helter-skelter pell-mell scramble for the hills or whatever you may be running to for refuge. However you may handle yourself when this nerve is grabbed or pinched and prodded varies with the day, it seems. Sometimes I make my trip down the stairs a quick one, bouncing down each step as fast as I can go without risking a fall and sometimes I walk slowly, defying each and every spook that may be trying to make sure I pee my pants on my way out.

One particular day I was feeling defiant. That day was the day that I actually encountered my first spook. I’m talking visual contact and all.

It was daytime, a perfect time to defy spooks. I started my slow descent down the stairs, not feeling very spooked at all by this trip. Halfway down the stairs I heard something and I stopped. It sounded faintly like someone blubbering on about something through broken sobs- something like this: boo… ablubbadoo-hoo… aboooooo... hoo... hoooo. All with long “o” sounds, of course. Very melodramatic and melancholic.

Galvanized by the inexplicable human notion that everything mysterious needs to be investigated, I turned around. I crept up the stairs as quietly as I could, making sure I would not lose the sound that I was in the process of tracking down. I got to the top of the stairs and craned my head down the hallway to the right- nothing. Nothing in sight, that is. The sound was still there, though, somewhere near the other end of the hall. I walked slowly, stopping sharply at the sound of any creak in the floor. It took me probably five minutes to traverse the length of the hallway. I looked in on the two rooms that I passed on my journey, but seeing as none of them contained The Sound I continued forward, slowly, slowly. Now the hallway presented me with three choices: straight into the walk-in closet attached to one of the guest bedrooms, a right which led to the aforementioned bedroom or a left which led to the bathroom, which was also connected to the first room on the left as you walk the hallway from the stairs. My upstairs is a maze, come to think of it. I know it like the back of my hand, assuming the back of my hand is spooky and implying that I only look at it when I need to. I took a left, following my ears.

It was coming from behind the shower curtain, louder than ever. Someone, or something, was definitely crying in my bathtub. I grabbed the edge of the curtain and yanked it clear to my left and gasped, fell backwards and ripped the curtain off of the railing as I watched a ghostly figure gasp, fall backwards into the wall, sobbing, and make the shower head drip lightly as a spook may do to spook the intended spook-ee. Needless to say, I was spooked. For a few seconds. Then I realized that I still heard this sobbing.

“Gh…ghost?” I said into the air, pulling the detached shower curtain over me like a blanket. A security blanket, to be exact. Don’t tell anyone, but I still have my baby blanket. It’s purple and it is the target of jealousy for many a woman wishing to snuggle with me. I’m loyal to my blankie.

“Go away!” Blubbered the ghost from inside the wall, somewhere just beyond the reaches of my human eyes.

“Is something…is there something I can help you with?” I asked the wall, still feeling a little bewildered at the whole incident.

“Go eat something you’re allergic to! Or, better yet, go find me something to eat that I’m allergic to.” Came the ghost’s curt reply, and then after a dramatic and timely pause he continued in a dragged out bleat: “Oh wait. I’m a ghost.”

“What is going on?!” I asked myself out loud.

“What is going on with you?” Shot back the ghost.

“I wasn’t…”

“How come you’re not scared of me ever?” Whinnied the ghost.

“Um.”

“Every time I’m stuck out here on day shift you’re never scared when you’re up here. Don’t think that I don’t notice. You don’t even pretend to be scared. You could at least give me that! And the others- oh, they notice too!”

And then we were silent for what was probably seven whole seconds. Seven severely interminable seconds. And then I spoke up.

“I, um, you know that I have no idea what’s going on right now, don’t you?”

“I’m haunting you. Wooooo-ooohh” Said the most halfhearted ghost I could have ever imagined.

“Look, ghost,” I said a little uneasily. “I’m scared right now. I tore the shower curtain off.”

“That’s only because you saw me. Showing yourself is a last resort when you’re a ghost trying to scare people, and anyway, I wasn’t trying to scare you. I was on break.”

“On break? From what?”

“From spooking, what else? I’m a ghost. It’s not like I was taking a break from an intense cribbage tournament.”

“I guess.” I said, which, by the way, is something you can say to anything. Seriously. Try it out sometime. (Correct response: Alright…I guess.)

“What do you mean by shifts?” I asked.

“Shifts?” Said the ghost. “Oh. Shifts. Yes. This is the graveyard shift. All the other ghosts are asleep right now.”

“Ghosts sleep?”

“Well, yes, but only because being up all day every day is extremely boring. Especially since you don’t come up here all that often. We just stay awake in shifts. We keep the most ghosts on spooking duty when it’s dark outside.” Explained the wall.

“Ah.”

“Yeah. And they won’t let me work the night shifts with them because they say they already have enough ghosts to cover the shift. Like there can be too many!” Whined the ghost. “The more the scarier, right? That’s how the saying goes!”

“Oh, come on, ghost. You’re scary!” I solaced the poor thing.

“Yeah? Then what was that stunt on the stairs all about? You never slowly walk down the stairs at night!”

“Yeah…well…I twisted my ankle the other day and now I have to be careful on stairs.” I fibbed like a child. It was obvious that I was lying; the ghost resumed its ululations of self-pity.

“I’m the worst ghost ever!” It wailed.

“Ah butter biscuits.” I said under my breath.

“What...did you say?” Asked the sobbing ghost.

“I, uh, said …butter biscuits.” I said feeling embarrassed at my stupid replacement words. I usually just say something random with alliteration that’s likely to make me smile after making a mistake. One time, a few years ago, I said “Aw JonBenét Ramsey!” and my co-worker looked at me kinda funny and I go “Too soon?” even though it was more than ten years after the fact. He didn’t find the same humor I did in it and it probably made the foot-in-mouth situation that I was trying to navigate out of worse so from then on I decided to just say harmless things like “butter biscuits!” and “snake socks!” and “parrot pushups!” and so on.

“B…butter biscuits?” The ghost blubbered back.

“Butter biscuits.” I sighed in reply.

And then the sobbing ghost did something you see children do when they find out that their immunization shot or their first haircut or first rollercoaster isn’t all that scary or doesn’t even hurt. The crying segued right into laughing. Hysterical laughing, choking on breaths and sniffling and I’m sure even a sore ghostly abdomen to boot. Then I started laughing a little bit too.

“Shh…shh!” The ghost said as it calmed down. “You’ll wake the others!” It warned me.

“Maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad idea…” I said as a light bulb in my head flickered on.

“No, that would be a terrible idea!” Said the ghost with a plea somewhere in the tone of its not-so-spooky voice.

“Look,” I said, pulling the shower curtain to the side revealing a growing dark spot on my pants.

“Something smells like piss and asparagus.” Said the ghost from behind the wall.

“I know.” I whispered.

“You just pissed your pants.” Stated the ghost, nonplussed.

“I’m going to get up, run out of here and down the stairs. I’m going to drop my phone in the hallway and run back up to get it about a minute after I get down. Wake your ghost friends up.”

I felt cold burst through me right after I said that and I could already feel the whole upstairs getting spookier as I got up and ran as fast as I could down the hallway and tore down the stairs. I stood in the living room, panting a little bit. I walked into the kitchen, turned the faucet on cold and filled up a glass of water. It’s not often that someone will sacrifice their pride for another, but the feeling I had coursing through my veins for what I was about to do as I drank that water was one more rewarding than any I felt in literally years. I set down the glass, put on my game face and crept towards the stairs. I poked my head in the doorway leading to the stairs, mounted the small landing at the bottom of the stairs, and bolted.