Three Word Wednesday, "The Key"

The words over at Three Word Wednesday are figure, juicy and stress. Short piece this week, as I’m working on a longer piece, and sending out two others to literary magazines.


The Key
A cheery jangle of silver precedes my mother’s entry into the kitchen.

She pushes my hair back from the scalp and tiny charms tickle my flesh as she plants a sloppy mom kiss on my forehead. She angles for the coffeemaker, her wrist a clicky soundtrack of happiness.

Most of my friend’s moms, they wear a string of pearls or maybe a big, fat diamond necklace.

My mother wouldn’t be caught dead without that charm bracelet, a chunky band of silver with all sorts of little silver charms hooked to it. A dog, to represent our golden, Murray; a house, which actually looks like the place we live in; a little silver boy. You know, stuff important to her life.

But what confuses me is a single tiny key near the clasp. It’s not silver, but brass and looks like one of those old-fashioned skeleton keys you need to get into our attic, just a lot smaller.

The brass is shiny, but looks totally out of place, especially next to all that silver. She polishes the whole thing weekly, always taking special care with the key. You can tell it’s really old, and she fingers it lovingly between her thumb and index finger when she’s all stressed out.

The only thing I can figure is that it has something to do with the polished mahogany box that’s sorta hidden in the drawer where she keeps her bras and underwear and stuff. I asked my dad about it once, but he just gave me this weird smile and asked if I’d finished my homework.

Curiosity finally gets the best of me. I wait until mom takes the bracelet off to shower and rush to the drawer and try the key on the box.

The lid pops open with a slight turn.

Inside is a juicy, beating human heart. Its beat cadence rises to a electric thump as I hear my mother’s footsteps on the bathroom tile, heading this way.

“It’s your father’s,” she says quietly from the door frame, so as not to startle me. “He gave it to me on the night we met. He’s sentimental like that.”

Video Friday, Unknown Hinson

According to his bio, Unknown Hinson is the Kind of Country Western Troubadours. He may also be dead, or a zombie. Not sure on that last part.

Anyway, fantastic guitarist. Weird dude, though. Check him out, Unknown Hinson, your Video Friday:

"We're Tight," New 3WW Flash Fiction

The words over at Three Word Wednesday are blink, kind and occasion.

We’re Tight
“Is it bad that the only thing holding me here is the fucking dog?”

“You hate that dog.”

“I’m not fond of it, sure, but I still feel responsible for the goddamn thing somehow. I mean, who’s going to feed it and walk it? I mean, he takes pills, for chrissakes.”

His finality was going to take forever, at this pace. They’d been talking a long time, although she never put a stopwatch to these things. All she knew is that it had already gone on for two coats of polish on her toes too long. She was applying a last coat of lacquer to her fingernails now, the mobile pinned precariously between her shoulder and her ear. She kept her answers short, drawing him out more, helping to siphon all the ugly thoughts to the surface.

“I’m certain that he’d be well taken care of in the pound. I mean, the paramedics aren’t just going to leave him there, right? That would be just stupid.”

“What if nobody shows up and he starts to eat me? Good God, that could happen, right?”

She smiled at the thought, put her manicured nails to her lips, blew as she ran each by puckered lips. She blinked, in rapid succession, to shake the thought from her mind.

“You’re not going to be left there long enough to become a snack. Just be sure to contain it to one room, make sure the dog’s in another.”

“Oh, OK. That makes total sense.”

Usually, the conversations started on the train, or on a street corner where the light was red and traffic heavy. A compliment mostly, on a hat or a piece of jewelry or a scarf. Rarely did she have to revert to making small-talk about the weather, which was a killer. Sure, they’d listen to her for a second, being polite and all, but it wasn’t like talking candidly about the silver thumb ring bought on holiday in some warm locale to open them up to all sorts of questions and queries.

That led to touching - two hands on the forearm worked wonders, flirty but not so obtrusive to scare anyone away. Then, just as likely, she’d ask for a card or a number, promising to really get-together for coffee, or maybe a light lunch at a cozy place on the Upper West Side by the university. More kind words followed as they sauntered off, the slow realization burning that even in the city, there’s friendships to be had. People who’d just as soon listen to what you had to say, even if it was dark and depressing.

The first call came shortly after the initial meeting, maybe a bit late for most people, but she’d apologize profusely and tell them she’d had the most horrific day and leak a few of the details to gain their confidence.

Then, she’d flip the conversation inward, giving into their desire to spill the horrific thoughts that packed the dark recesses of their heads and hearts.

“So, have you decided on how?” she said switching the mobile to her other ear and shoulder so as to blow gently on the lacquered nails on her opposite hand.

A sigh. Heavily nasal in its quality and length.

“I just don’t want it to hurt. And I don’t want to leave a huge mess. I mean, God, can you imagine?”

“Well, sure, it’s only natural. You’re just being considerate, well, considering the occasion.”

“Yeah. I’ve decided on pills – thank God for a totally lenient physician and a huge bottle of Valium - and a really cold bottle of Stoli. I’ll just check out, not wake up.”

Following coffee, she’d usually get invited back to a dimly lit apartment, much too small and cramped with sagging crap, where she’d find more common ground through books or furniture styles. Seeing the general malaise of their places – the depressed were all the same, she thought – she’d offer to help pick up, or offer her organizational services, free of charge of course, to help get them out of a funk, get them back to a happy place. All the while stoking the darkness with stories of her own abuse at the hands of a myriad of misguided lovers and friends who turned out to be just users. Her lightness became dank and it sucked them in. It always did.

She’d figure largely into their lives for weeks, baking then a favorite cake from childhood, which they’d eat straight from the tin with forks, sitting Indian-style on the floor with tumblers of booze between them, some utterly depressing music coming from the stereo – shit she really detested, like The Smiths, Snow Patrol – or God-forbid, The Cure – while she gained more confidence, more traction.

“You’ll promise you’ll get here before anyone else shows up, right? I mean it. Promise?”

“I told you I would,” she said, her breath a hurt little whisper. “I told you that.”

“Sorry, it’s just, you know my parents still don’t know the truth about me, and I guess I’d rather not ruin their fantasy.”

Everyone has secrets, nobody lives their life in the brightness of sunny day. She’d hang up, wait five or six hours and take a cab to the same dark, dingy apartment where weeks earlier they’d eaten cake and gotten drunk and the seeds of suicide were sown. She’d bring heavy black trash bags, the kind that cost a fortune, but are advertised not to tear or leak, and remove the traces of a life led gloomily. The dildos, vibrators, the beads, all into the bag, as well as the half-used bottle of Astro Glide in the nightstand drawer. She’d remove the bookmarks for porn sites from the computer, put all the usable drugs into ZipLoc bags, weed in one, mushrooms in another, the pills going in a third. Everything into the bag, all the bleak evidence – the pipes, glass bongs, the smallest detail never overlooked, even the business cards collected from Asian massage parlors, the provider’s name written in pencil with a smiley face drawn in a childlike scrawl.

Then she’d remove anything of value, cash and coins mostly. Other treasure that might not be missed initially, maybe a watch or a silver tray that was a family heirloom.

In the end, she always took the one item that brought them together, even if it meant slipping that silver thumb ring off a somewhat bloated corpse in the bathtub, the water cold and tinged red from lateral razor cuts on wrists.

What she left, and always in a place of high prominence, was the journal or notebook – there always was one - that would further implicate the recently deceased, the sinister nature of their blackened hearts, bitter thoughts. Writings that would bring waves of agony and angst to those left behind to grieve.

“Goodbye, Robert,” she said. “I wish I could be as strong as you. Strong enough to go through with this.”

“And the dog?”

“I love your dog, please don’t worry about it.”

“Bye, Julia,” he said, his voice tight from a swig of vodka. “You’ve been a good friend. Really, the only one who truly understands me. I’m going to go now. Bye.”

She tossed the mobile onto the coffee table and lit a cigarette. Through the smoke, she admired her nails. And smiled.

Wednesday's Three Word Wednesday

The words over at Three Word Wednesday are dare, essence and practical.

Massive Nights
Whatever you may have seen on television or in the movies, when some dude gets stabbed and practically falls to the ground dead, that’s just an untruth.

But, fuck man, do stab wounds bleed, like really profusely.

A single stab wound won’t kill a guy in all of eight seconds. Like I said, that’s a lie. Miss any important arteries, don’t nick the intestines (loose shit in your innards, that’s bad, man and it’s called sepsis), and you’ve got four hours, tops.

Unless, of course, you’re full of well vodka, the kind they sell to drunks in plastic bottles, well, then all bets are off. A hospital emergency room is definitely part of your immediate future, stat.

It was Timmons’ idea to go “slumming.” We’d dress down, toss on thrift-store clothing and drink with the common man in dark places that smelled of stale smoke, old piss, sour beer and the essence of despair.

We take a taxi to an area near the docks, a dreary place where bare bulbs splay harsh shadows across the filth piled everywhere. Perfect. Inconspicuous.

We’d also agreed, no crisp ATM $20s, just enough crumpled cash, $1s and $5s and maybe a $10 or two, to fit in. Besides, these were places where wrecks went to drink, forget. We went looking for atmosphere.

Collins, man, he gets lit on tequila, and starts talking in this really bad British accent, just pissin’ off the locals. Bartender tried to cut him off, but he drops eight brand-spanking-new $20s on the worn wood of the bar, I’m talking these things were virgin, man, and says, “Fuck it, gents, drinks are on the house.”

Then this little dude in black, two tears tattooed in the corner of his right eye, busts through the crowd that’s gathered flips open a butterfly knife and pins the cash to the bar.

“Fight or get the fuck out,” he says, mumbling in some indiscernible accent.

I’ve just enough vodka flowing in my bloodstream to take that dare.

The E.R. doc, who looks like he’s 12 by the way, tells the guys that everything was going to be fine. Once they got the bleeding under control.

“Massive quantities of alcohol have a way of hindering coagulation,” he says.

Ends up, Doogie Houser closes me up with 72 stitches.

Seventy-two very large, very messy black silk stitches. One ugly looking zipper.

Of course, they’d judged me by the clothing they cut off, figuring I had no medical, just another ward of the state. They’d save any reimbursement money by making the stitches huge.

“Hey, chicks dig scars,” the resident says, while I pay the bill with a platinum Amex card.

Wednesday's Three Word Wednesday

The words over at Three Word Wednesday are abrasive, handful and loss.

Our Modern Crusoe
He wakes in a haze, cheeks turning pink in the sun, lips chapped.

He’s at a complete loss and the confusion is like an odor about him, strong and musky. He touches a small cut on his forehead, feels the crust of dried blood, ever so slight.

He takes stock, running his hands across his body, trying to remember.

He’s tamped the grass down where he’s fallen. He’s nattily dressed in a suit, tie, cordovan wingtips.

“Accident?” he thinks.

“Marooned?”

“Lost?”

“Christ.”

Chaotic thoughts cross his focus. He pulls himself into a sitting position, shakes twigs and dried grass from his hair, takes his pulse (figuring it’s for the best). Fifty-eight beats per minute, according to the vintage Rolex Oyster watch.

He loosens the knot of his double-Windsor-tied tie, unbuttons the top button to his Brooks Brothers’ tailored shirt in classic cotton. He takes his jacket off, carefully folding it into a square to lay his head upon.

Forward motion, he thinks. A time of reflection. Remembering his Boy Scout training,  the acronym STOP floods forward in his thoughts – stop, think, observe, plan.

Rolling hills, forested in hardwoods, the shore of a small lake. A grassy split between the trees.

He empties his pockets. A handful of change, mostly quarters; a ring of keys; lambskin wallet; and his trusty Congress knife, with the four forged steel blades and stag handle.

“Shelter,” he whispers to the breeze.

He finds a square of cardboard and props it across a low-hanging branch, a simple lean-to. He sits, Indian-style, and idly flips open each blade of the penknife.

Twinges of hunger ripple in his belly. He pulls a handful of tall grass up with his fists, nibbles on the white roots, yet the morsel only stokes the considerable pangs.

“Famished,” he whispers, licking moist spittle across his tortured, abrasive lips.

He stands, stretches, finds a fallen branch, sturdy maple with a slight bow. Taking the laces from the wingtips, he ties the penknife to the branch. He’s split the end first and the finished product is both sturdy and deadly.

Walking to the pond’s grassy edge, he watches turtles slip silent underwater, startled by his presence. He slips off gray silk socks, rolls the wool of his trousers past his knees and wades in. Near a sunken log, slick with turtle crap, he spears a small sunfish. It wriggles on the end of the shaft, pierced through-and-through by the steel blade.

“Mmmmm,” he says approvingly, drool building in his mouth.

Gutting the fish with a small blade, he flips the sides open like a butterfly, bites into the fresh, white flesh. He breathes deeply, working the flesh, slick and slightly buttery, between his teeth.
Behind him he hears a commotion, footsteps and cursing through a grove of small saplings.

“Bateman, you batshit-crazy son-of-a-bitch,” Myerson shouts. “Playtime’s over there Dan’l Boone. Presentation to the partners in 40 minutes.

“Jesus Christ, is that a fish?”