MICROFICTION: CRANBERRY STATE

"...Cranberry State, cranberry hate, Cranberry State, cranberry hate..."

Red, oozy bubbles formed around the berries, sugar and water and heat popping them to make the sauce, fresh always for Thanksgiving, always Joanie who made it. She didn't even like cranberries, she thought to herself, frowning slightly as she stirred, the childish rhyme repeating in her head. The air in her mother's kitchen was thick with the smells of holiday dinner, turkey and gravy and sweet potatoes and green beans and rolls begging to be slathered with butter, each of the aunts and sisters and daughters working at their tasks, as always.

Her mother, bent over and rummaging loudly through a cabinet, let out a sudden, forceful sigh of exasperation and slammed the cabinet and stood facing it, her back to all. Everyone stopped working; the only sounds now were the bubbling of the sauce and boiling potatoes and the muffled conversation from fathers, brothers, uncles, and sons in living room, punctuated by a cheer or cry depending on what was going on with their football game.

No one in the kitchen moved.

Joanie stared into the pot, cranberries boiling too furiously now, thickening, like coagulated, angry blood. "I left this place, and learned from it!" she blurted. "Why didn't you?"

Her mother's shoulders lowered. That's the problem, she thought sadly: you leave, you change. It used to be no one left, and nothing changed.

Silently, the women went back to the food and the silverware and the serving dishes, while another triumphant yell from the men filled the empty space.

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365-WORD MICROFICTION: "JUDY"

After ten years of thinking it each time I saw her face, finally, I said it to her. We didn’t really have the kind of relationship that was of this depth, but I said it anyway.

“Judy, I always have the feeling somehow that the world is breaking your heart.”

Her face dropped slightly in surprise, and she took her gaze away from mine to stare at something, or nothing.  An orange-y ray from the afternoon sun pierced through her wine glass, making a pretty light pattern on the table. A minute or two passed.

“Do you know that song, the old jazz one that goes, ‘Is that all there is?’” she quietly asked me, or somebody, or nobody.

“Yes,” I nodded, even though she still wasn’t looking at me. Another pause.

“Nothing is like how I thought it would be. Nothing is right. My life is going by and it will have meant nothing at all. I try to be grateful, and I am, I really am, but I feel like a failure.” Judy turned towards me, her face flat with exhaustion, eyes bright.

I watched a water droplet slide down my glass, and I traced its path with my finger. I sighed. I didn’t at all know what to say, until I knew exactly what to say, and it came tumbling out.

“In-between all the dreams and hopes and wishes and expectations that are put on us or that we make for ourselves…the gap between that and reality, is what being human is. It’s where all of us are all the time! All of us! That open field where possibility still exists, where we don’t know, good or bad, what our lives are going to be or what they will mean, because we can’t know. We balance the dreams and the boundaries, and this makes up our lives. It’s excruciating…and absolutely, crushingly beautiful. That struggle is what we are. It’s OK. It’s OK.”

She stared at me, and tears began to stream down her face. I began to loudly sing “Judy’s Turn To Cry,” and she laughed and I laughed until we were out of breath, not caring who, if anyone, saw us.

Lesley Gore, "Judy's Turn To Cry"

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I MADE YOU A CHILDREN'S BOOK NOT FOR CHILDREN: "IS TED PARANOID?" (NSFW)

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MICRO-FICTION: "AZALEA"

I had spent a miserable hour at the Lincoln Park post office, in a line consisting of nothing but miserable people waiting to be served by even-more-miserable postal workers, and pushed the exit door hard enough to rattle it against its frame, grateful to be done and out of there. At 3:15PM, traffic was once again picking up with early-shift workers and school kids leaving for the day, and I hoped to catch my bus up to Broadway before it became too full to board at all. Walking to the stop, weaving between shoppers and strollers and packs of teens giggling and smoking, I came to an alley where a lot of homeless would stand and ask passersby for money or food. When you live in a big city, you learn to walk fast and not respond to anyone calling to you…you just keep moving and look like you know where you are going. Besides, if I gave money to everyone who asked me every day – often the same people multiple times in one day – I’d be broke, too, right?

As I hustled by, my ears listening for my bus rolling and rumbling behind me, my eye caught something and I stopped to look down the alley, which was littered with fast food bags, bottles, and filthy blankets. A young woman with long strawberry-blond dreadlocks and wearing an Army jacket two sizes too large for her was struggling to hold an infant while bending to scoop up the baby’s bottle that was quickly rolling towards a storm drain. As the baby slipped lower in her grasp and pitched forward, I gasped, and jogged towards them.

“Here! Hey! Can I help you?” I instinctively reached out to grab the baby, and with only a short, surprised glance at my face, the girl handed me the infant and ran to retrieve the bottle. The baby, a girl about five or six months old, regarded me quietly with her large brown eyes, calm and alert. I held her awkwardly, one hand supporting her back and neck and the other under her bottom, feeling a very full diaper. I looked back at the young woman, who had picked up the bottle and stood about fifteen feet away, looking at me. Oh no, I thought, my heart sinking, she can’t be any more than 15 or 16 years old. Shit.

The girl seemed wary, nervous, rolling the bottle back and forth in her hands, shifting her feet, but not coming closer. The crowds passed by on Clark Street in back of me, oblivious, and an ancient passed-out drunk, wadded up in newspapers and blankets near a dumpster, was equally oblivious. The baby reached up for my glasses, and I carefully disengaged her tiny fingers from my frames. I could feel urine from her diaper leaking into my hand and soaking into my coat. Damn, that’s all I need. I walked a few steps towards the girl and tried to make small talk, ready to go.

“What’s your baby’s name?”

“Azalea.”

“Oh! How pretty!” I hesitated, then spoke again. “Um…do you need help? There’s a shelter on Fullerton for women and children. I can give you bus fare…”

She paused, staring at me hard. “No. Thanks.”

“OK, well, then, I guess…” A familiar sound caused me to whip my head around towards the street. Damn! There went my bus! Now I will have to wait at the stop in a baby-piss-covered coat for another one, jamming into some sweaty jerk, I bet. What a crap day.

And when I turned around, the girl was gone, and the baby bottle was on the ground.

“Hey!!! HEY!! WAIT!! NO! WAIT!” Panicked, I ran with the baby clutched to my chest down the alley to the next block, desperately searching for any sign of the girl. “NO! PLEASE! COME BACK!”

Later, in the same alley, disco-lit from swirling red and blue police car lights, a female officer took Azalea from my arms. The baby never cried once, but looked at me curiously when I could not help but do so myself.

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FICTION: "THE PAPER HEART"

I took off work Friday, February 14^th, ticking off a “personal day” of my five allotted per year, driving out of the city towards the emptiness of the plains. Escaping the hearts and flowers, happy couples and miserable couples, optimistic, hungry singles and bitter brokenhearted was my better choice if only for a long weekend.

By lunchtime, I felt hungry and had driven so far already that my choice in dining establishments was but one: George’s Daytime Diner, located just off a flat, long, and nearly-empty stretch of two-lane rural highway. I parked my car alongside a brown ‘80s Ford sedan, the only other car there, and walked in. It was like a hundred other little places I had been to: a nondescript, clean, dated, family-run restaurant with a row of leatherette booths running under the front windows, a few tables on the floor, and a service counter. No one else was dining there. I took a seat in the first booth, and opened the slightly-sticky plastic menu.

From the kitchen, a strawberry-blonde, freckled, and forty-ish waitress appeared, wearing mom jeans and a baggy t-shirt. Her nametag read “HELLO, I’M FOXY.” My face must have registered all the questions I had about that, and she nodded. “Yep, that’s my real name,” she offered. “My mom named me after the Jimi Hendrix song…you know the one, “Foxy Lady?”

“Oh!” I exclaimed, “Yes, of course,” mulling even more questions that I wouldn’t ever ask.

“You here all by your lonesome or are you meeting someone? Want to order now?”

“I’m fine,” I replied, not really wanting to tell anyone if I was alone or not, thank you very much. “I’ll have coffee, cream please, and the Georgeburger with cheddar, no lettuce, and fries.”

“OK, you got it, get it going right now for ya.”

“Thanks.”

I brought my phone out of my jacket pocket to check my work email, but there was no cell service. Frustrated, I stared out the window at the random passing trucks, listening to the pop of my hamburger frying on the grill. With no distractions, my spirit began to sink rapidly, as if I had tied an iron anchor to it. Down, down, down into the newly-murky waters, a physical feeling, a constriction of the chest. If I weren’t so damn hungry, I’d just keep on driving, keeping busy, keeping things away, for as long as I possibly could.

A clatter brought my attention back to the table. In front of me, Foxy had placed a sturdy white mug of steaming black coffee, a tiny silver cream pitcher, and a red construction paper heart, which looked hastily cut, with “HAPPY VALENTINES DAY” written on it in blue ball-point pen. I stared at the heart, as my own heart beat faster and time slowed to a surreal bend, because I could not look the waitress in the face.

“Since you’ll probably be the only customer in here today, I thought I’d give you the royal treatment!” Foxy explained. She stood and waited, as I tried to compose myself. I don't really know how long that was.

My face, I am sure, was flushed when I finally looked up at her. “Foxy, I’d be glad to treat you to lunch today. Please join me.” It took everything I had not to cry. She could not have known.

“Well…my goodness! That would be so nice! I’ll be right back with our lunches!”

The bounce in her step was sweet to see. I poured a little cream into my coffee, took a sip, and smiled down at the small paper kindness that came my way as another passing truck rattled by the diner without stopping, heading east.

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150-WORD MICROFICTION: "CAMPFIRE GIRL"

I still loved him unrepentantly and exactly in the spot where his spirit used to be, something akin to standing in the remains of a old campfire, the soft, cold, smoky-sweet ashes recalling that a crackling heat once leapt and danced there. The last of the pulsing orange embers were thoroughly doused on the day when he licensed one of his songs – written to me in the wildfire days of our relationship-- to a Japanese ad agency. It was used as the music in a “Magic Rainbow Color” cigarette commercial, which featured uniformed smiling teen schoolgirls bouncing happily with giant animated multi-hued cigarettes on glitter-laden trampolines.

“Go buy a purse,” he snapped at me, making no eye contact.

It become harder and harder over the years to wash the ash from my feet, and the stains it left appeared much as bruises would; a clever and cruel reminder, I thought.

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NANOFICTION: DEATH VS. THE GUITARIST

(Nanofiction is a story exactly 55 words in length.)

TWANGGGGGGG!

The musician angrily thrust off his guitar, motioning impatiently for it to be grabbed and fixed by one of those shadowy, scurrying figures in black at the side of the stage.

“I broke a string!” he spat.

“Aaaaannnnd…a stroke I bring,” the Grim Reaper pleasantly replied, as his bony fingers gripped the guitar’s neck.

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100-WORD MICROFICTION: "EGG SALAD"

Althea wrinkled her nose and frowned, as she pulled on a deep-rooted weed in the flower bed. Looking towards Bob, who was considering their ongoing aphid problem, she shouted to him over the roar of the Saturday lawnmowers. "Bob! That egg salad you made is off! It stinks all the way out here! Throw it out!"

Bob, puzzled, yelled back, "I didn't make any eg..."

The natural gas blast leveled their home, blew out windows for blocks, and sent Althea and Bob flying skyward. They landed separately in the yards of their two adjacent neighbors, neither of whom they liked.

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100 WORD MICROFICTION: "THE ANSWER"

Conversation sparkled, at a pretty nighttime party with friends, drinking wine. Alone together in the kitchen, I asked him about his daughter with the bubblegum-pink cheeks and braces on her legs, her time known to be short.

“Fine…you know, fine,” he said with a brief smile, until our eyes met and locked. The room began to lurch and spin, a horrible swirling tunnel forming around us.

“…How? How do you…?” I blurted, heartbroken.

 “I…don’t…know,” he stuttered, terrified, eyes pooling with tears.

Another joined us, laughing in anticipation of sharing a good story, and we straightened up. No one could tell.

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LITTLE STORIES 4

Driving into the late afternoon sun, behind a young woman in a battered red sedan, we wait at a red light. She takes a drag from her cigarette, and when she exhales, evenly and slowly, the white-blue smoke bends at her windshield, spreading to the right and left, top and bottom. The brightness and angle of the sun show the swirls, floating, surrounding her, very beautiful in a ghostly, elegant, horrible way. It takes my breath away, figuratively; hers, eventually.

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My smartphone has a sound generator app, the kind that is used to mask unpleasant noise and help people get to sleep. I cannot decide if it is the sweetest or the saddest thing that the only one that comforts me into rest, as the phone glows brightly against my white pillowcase, is the digitized sound of a cat purring.

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"Buf! Buf...buf!"

My dog makes this sound if she senses any raccoons are lurking around our property, sort of a warning chatter that puffs out her cheeks; not quite bark-worthy, as she is by nature a very quiet and calm creature, but getting close to sounding a full alarm to her human family. It's funny and I smile at her bravado and seriousness of purpose. But surely in the six months that she survived on her own in a campsite before she came into a rescue program and to us, something had happened to make her so vigilant about protecting us from raccoons. I wish we could've found her sooner, I think, then I pet her head and tell her she is a good dog.

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