Boy, Den

When I was a boy, I used to sit outside my father's den and listen to him type. When that door was closed, I wouldn't even dream of knocking, let along opening the door. Dad would be immersed in his characters, dreaming of far away places, heroes who saved the girl, and the vile and sinister exploits of their evil nemeses. Sometimes, I would bring my own pad of paper and scribble down stories of my own.

If only I had saved those stories. I bet they would either inspire me, or make me fall off my chair laughing.

But I don't have much from my early days. The fire took it all, my stuffed animals, pictures of me as a baby, and almost every shred of proof that my mother ever existed. All that my father kept of her was the ring he still wore, despite having lost her during my birth. He often told me that he intended to wear the ring forever, even if he found another woman to share his life. She wouldn't mind, so long as the ring was designated "theirs" as well as "hers."

Dad's not much of a dater. As a matter of fact, he rarely leaves the house now. My house, where I've set him up a nice little apartment in the back, to keep on writing, and keep on living, even on the days when breathing is more of a chore than a requirement.

We continue to be inseparable. Perhaps that's why I haven't found a wife of my own, or discovered what it feels like to be a father. Though some would argue that I am my father's father now, or at the very least, his keeper.

Sucks to be old. Sucks to be an only child. Sucks to dream of living instead of actually doing it.

Bowl

The edges of the bowl were caked with dried soup, remnants from the stirring pre-microwave. Shelly had intended to savour the food while it was still hot, but once again, she found herself distracted. By the laundry, the dishes, the phone, her Facebook games, anything and everything to keep her from taking time for herself.

Her therapist called it "self care," but she tended to think of it more as self indulgence. After all, the less eaten, the higher probability that she might fit into her favourite pair of jeans once more. But that's not how life actually worked out, because once she realized how hungry she had become, she would eat way too much for dinner and then regret it, promising herself that tomorrow she would eat the soup, tomorrow she would take that walk along the river, tomorrow she would begin to live the life she wanted to, rather than the one that pushed itself upon her.

Right. Self care. Perhaps it was more than a catch phrase, perhaps it would actually improve the quality of her overall day.

She glanced at the bowl of soup. Now, the top had grown a bit of a skin, but with a stir, it all swirled back together. (Or at least buried itself below the surface in clumps too small to be detected by the casual observer.) A hint of steam escaped, not much, but evidence none the less that what remained in the bowl was not only edible, it might actually border palatable.

Gripping the spoon with a newfound determination, she filled her mouth with the creamy-earthy taste of mushroom soup.

"That'll do." She said to her laptop, then took another mouthful.

Chill

The wind tore through my hat and gloves, deepening the chill I had endured all morning. Days like this, when the sun was high and the clouds nonexistent, the cold seemed to fall down from heaven, as though humans must all be punished for their wrongs.

And we certainly deserved the scolding. After all, we pretty much cornered the market on sin, between the popular ones like murder and lust, and the coveting of our neighbours and of course, the old cussing the big guy's name, we had them all covered. Add a few extras to the mix like polluting our only habitable planet or annihilating a few species so we can eat more bland and unhealthy hamburgers, well, we deserved the freezing out.

The Nordic countries had it right -- that hell isn't hot at all, it's actually cold. Because when you've been cold, for an extended period of time, you know what it means to feel a mixture of pain, fear, and frustration. No matter how fast you move, you can't get warm. If you break into a sweat, the moisture only makes it worse. You need heat, fire, shelter, anything to get away from it, to chase down the demon cold and blast it back where it came from.

Epic Hermit

Thanks to Amy for the phrase.
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Raena was an epic hermit, the kind of woman who only left the house when absolutely necessary. She ordered what she needed from the internet, had her friends drop by with things she couldn't get on her own, and generally speaking, enjoyed the peace and solace of her environment.

Friends, you ask? How could the woman have made friends? Well, she had her on-line friends, and the people who had been a part of her life before. Back when she felt connected to her family, especially her children. In the time when she could hop out of bed eager to face the day, or find a smile as easily as a pencil.

Raena's mother had always spoken of the essential components of contentment: giving more than receiving, nurturing empathy, and following the rules of etiquette. Raena had made choices based on these simple rules, thinking each time about the best possible outcomes, the maximum benefit to all, the road worth taking.

Epic failure.

The part her mother hadn't foreseen was the inevitable randomization that outside inputs could bring to the equation of life. Car accidents. Hormones. Bad luck. These were the jokers in Raena's deck, the extra cards her mother had forgotten to remove before she handed the cards to her daughter. And so, life turned more cloistered than congenial.

The Brainstormed Topic List

Last night, for my 100 words, I brainstormed a list of topics I "know something about" as background for my next novel. In many, I'm sure as heck no expert, but at least I've "been there, done that" in a roundabout manner. Here's the list, in no particular order, with some important ones no doubt left out since I was very tired at the time:

Toronto
Kitchener
University of Waterloo
Math
Teaching
Pampered Chef
Singing
Rock Bands
Writing
Reading
Ballet
Hockey
Motherhood
Daycare
Boys
Beavers, Cubs, Brownies, Girl Guides
Cooking
Baking
Cleaning
Single moms
Swimming
Pools
Gardening
BBQing
Air travel
Boats
Fishing
Canoeing
Hiking
SF conventions
Movies
Typing
Answering phones
Help Desks
Home renovations
Painting
Knitting
Running
Aerobics
Bowling
Skating
Divorce
Financial planning
Lawyers
Husbands
Passive agressiveness
Romantic Love
Lovemaking
Dating
Kissing
Barbies
Skipping
Jumpsies
Ball games
Riding a bike
The Elderly
Dimensia
Nursing homes
Blind people
Picnics
Hostess etiquette
Puppies
Cats
Rats
Hamsters
Fish keeping
Mice
Woodstoves
Campfires
Day camps
Overnight camps
Outdoor concerts
Fountain pens
Notebooks
Computers
Blackberries (the devices, not the fruit)
Dresses
Orthotics
Physiotherapy

Spike

Someone had planted a spike in the driveway, though on closer inspection, it was more of a tack than a spike. Either way, it jabbed through Gertie's girlie tire like a hot knife through Jello.

It had been named such by her previous lover, Abdu, who had insisted that he had never, ever, scraped the side of the tire along a sidewalk while parallel parking, and that the giant bulge must have been caused by a manufacturing defect in her pathetically thin, sporty tires which were obviously too delicate for any kind of serious driving.

Hence the term, girlie-tire.

If Abdu hadn't been out of the picture for months, he would have immediately come to mind as the first suspect in the tack-spike sabotage. However, since he had moved back to Armenia, his innocence was above reproach.

Gus, the pool guy, had been skulking around the driveway on the previous day, angry over being accused of once again using the cabana towels for his own benefit. He was such a heavy perspirer, always wanting to dab at his brow, and other less-appealing places, and the thought of wiping himself and then folding the towel up and returning it to the clean pile was enough to turn Gertie into a mad woman.

Sure of herself, Gertie slammed the car door in disgust, pulled out her cell phone, and dialed the number for the pool cleaning service, convinced that Gus should not only be fired, but humiliated in some fashion.

Bear

A bear is a nasty creature, hunting through garbage, chasing your pet dog, but mostly cavorting through the woods ready to slice your throat soon as look at you. Granted, not all bear varieties are quite that nasty, especially black bears that are essentially big deer with sharp teeth. Grizzlies, however, are as mean as they come, and polar bears, despite their cute and cuddly reputation via the Coca Cola advertising campaigns, will eat your child on the way to school if provided the opportunity.

Glen studied the grizzlies for his PhD, following a trio of males who had all been darted, tagged, and released. Each had a GPS tracker embedded in the skin under his ear so that several students and rangers could follow their patterns. Glen's favourite of the three was specimen 23A8LBT, affectionately referred to as Labert, or Bert for short.

Bert had no Ernie, for grizzlies are solitary creatures. His primary den was situated below two overhangs, and in between two spruce, making it relatively dry, sheltered from the wind, and easy to defend. Glen had never visited the site in person, for that was a risk no human would make. Instead, he studied it via a variety of satellite images, not only less adventurous, but also woefully inadequate. If Glen didn't have a partner, Johnny, waiting back home every night, he would have taken the risk and visited Bert's place during one of the helicopter treks.

Ah to be young and have nothing to lose.

Farm

Silvia spent her afternoons dreaming of owning a farm. Not the kind with acre upon acre of one crop. No, hers was the random sort, with a different crop in every row, a barn zoo-full of variety, and a big, drafty house built of hand-piled stones and with less than a dozen electrical outlets.

She relished the notion of leaving the computer-centric world, reading a dog-eared paperback novel by the light of a fire rather than wasting her time online, making pretend food and chatting with moved-away friends.

Instead, the four flat-screen monitors displayed her many tasks-in-progress. The first, always filled with lines of code, poetry mixed with crudeness, the fodder of corporate existence. The second monitor for emails, as memos flew through the office like dragonflies, faster and more efficient than face to face communication. The art of conversation had such covens to blame for its annihilation. The third, a debugging screen, the mistress for screen number one. And lastly, her favourite, a web browser, her gateway to escape, her connection beyond the cubicle walls, her lover, her compadre, her salvation.

The post-lunch sleepiness always hit her the hardest during her monthly week of misery. Chocolate scraped the edge of it away, but could never fully contain the wrath of hormone-induced depression. These were her least productive days, during which the notion of a simpler life flooded her beyond the hundred-year-line. On such afternoons, her misfortunes could not only be counted, they could be placed in a ledger and profited upon.

Tomorrow

I attended a Ceili last night, including an hour and a half drive each way. So the first word today is technically for yesterday. Another post for today follows. Thanks to Michael for the word.

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Why do concepts like, "tomorrow" exist? After all, we can never get there. Because as soon as we think we've found tomorrow, it turns out to be merely today.

I used to dream about tomorrow, imagining who I would be, what kind of accolades I had earned in my ambitious pursuits, what manners of love would envelope my heart from my myriad of friends and relatives. Which sort of lifestyle I embraced.

But now, my dreams are night visions, endless traps where I cannot find the room where the final exam will be written, or my apartment has no lock and the neighbours continue to ransack my meagre possessions. In them, I call out the name of my beloved and he does not come. Instead, I succumb to another humiliation at the hands of my enemies.

I wake exhausted, wondering whether the day will bring any comfort. Routine becomes my security: the granola with the almonds, the left side of the bus, second seat from the window, the PVR with its endless supply of manufactured conflict in digital form.

Life awaits me, but only tomorrow. For today, I will simply exist.

Bob & Tree

Sally leaned against her favourite tree, a willow she affectionately referred to as Bob, and imagined the life she would never have.

A man held her hand, his fingers gently brushing against her pale skin. His lips touched at the nape of her neck, whispered his undying love, an emotion fuelled by her extraordinary beauty. If only such a man existed. If only Sally could stare at her reflection and not want to avert her eyes.

Bob's upper branches swayed ever so slightly in the thick afternoon, more as a defence against the hot sun than from the non-existent breeze. The humidity gave his leaves a heady scent that Sally found more uncomfortable than soothing.

"Bob," she said, "you need a shower. Preferably a solid downpour to rinse this afternoon away. I've had enough of the heat, thank you very much."

"We all have," came a voice behind her.

Sally turned and saw a boy. No, a man, actually, of such a short stature that on first glance she had mistaken him for a child. He wasn't small in the manner where his hands and feet were disproportionate to the rest of the body: a dwarf or midget, she could never remember the proper label.

"Bob, introduce us, please," she said.

"I'm sorry, did I miss something? Is Bob your invisible boyfriend? Or is he an extremely small dog?"

Sally laughed. "The tree. Bob is my tree."

"Ha!" he countered. "Her name isn't Bob, it's Bonnie."

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Thanks to Michael and Stephanie for the words.

Twister

The clouds looked ominous, the kind that held a twister deep inside them, just itching to thrust down and devour hope like a starving dog eating the flesh of its undiscovered, deceased owner.

Mags shifted down, nudging her decrepit Ford to pick up enough speed to get her home before the worst of it. The tachometer needle bounced up and down, trying to relay the ancient truck's discomfort at being pushed beyond reason.

"Better to hurt you a little, than lose you completely, old gurl," she said.

Somehow, anthropomorphizing her vehicle had coaxed a few extra years out of her. That and Blaz, the handsome mechanic who loved the Ford as much as he loved Mags.

"Blaz will have a Thermos of coffee waiting for us in the shop. You get us home and I'll make sure you're safe under the pit roof."

The tachometer settled in, hovering between 3500 and 4000 rpm, enough to rev the engine loudly, but not enough to burn anything beyond functionality.

Mags glanced in the rear view mirror, and caught sight of a funnel cloud. It hadn't touched down yet, was still debating the pros and cons of silos versus big box stores, town versus country, when first the front, then the back wheels hit something big and hard. Shaken, Mags yanked at the wheel, trying to regain control, but failing. And with an ugly skid, she splayed herself right into the ditch.

"Damn." She slammed the steering wheel hard, too hard, as the column snapped and the wheel dropped into her lap.

Behind, the twister had landed and begun to suck back debris like a cold beer.

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Thanks to Amy for the word.

Hummingbird

Killing Eddie exceeded my expectations, like only a hummingbird can exceed the speed at which we process movement. I thought I would've felt at least a hint of guilt, maybe even shame, but no. Definitely not.

All these years, I knew the backhoe would eventually come in handier than a Robertson screwdriver on a long-haul space flight. I dug a hole so deep into the Martian surface that I could've covered up another xenocide, had the first one not wiped out the complete galaxial contingent of Peranzians. Then with an unceremonious thump, I dumped the Edster all the way to the bottom, along with a few of his prized possessions. Except for his penis. Its afterward would involve some creative manipulation of dead tissue.

Using the backhoe to refill the hole turned out to be trickier. All the fine Martian dust kept blowing more than filling, until I ran out of a pile of dirt and my hole was still clearly noticeable. I mapped out the area with surveyor's tape to stop some kid from falling in, ATV and all. Caution tape would've been more suitable, but I had to go with what I had. And the pinky-orange hue seemed appropriate for a guy so hung up on the masculine color palette.

Asleep

Lisa would fall asleep only when she was too exhausted to go on. She planned her nights this way, for experience had been a fine teacher. Twelve cracks in the ceiling, six flies trapped in the light fixture, seventy-two joints in the wood floor. Counting helped to pass the time when her mind flooded with countless embarrassments.

She had a knack for remembering the worst moments in her life. There had been so many during her forty-two years. Awkward silences at the lunch table when her story shocked the others, groceries spilled in the parking lot from poorly packed bags, lovemaking that ended with dissatisfaction and hard feelings. She would have sold her soul for a cup of grace, if only she knew how.

But even the devil left her alone, too busy with the more important people of the world -- the beauties, the rich, the loved.

"Lisa?"

The man from the second floor, the tall one with the beard and big feet. He always smelled of coffee in the elevator, like he'd showered in grounds rather than water.

"How do you know my name?"

He pointed at her chest, at the sticky Hello-my-name-is tag, a remnant from the client appreciation breakfast.

"I'm Al," he said, offering his hand.

She reached out to grip it, missed, tried again, and connected. His smile was awkward, or maybe it was genuine. She'd lost the ability to discriminate between the two.

Broken

Ange's heart was broken on the day that the world collapsed. While the survivors around her struggled to find food, clothing, and shelter, she lay oblivious to it all in bed and cried; for the man she loved, for the agony of rejection, and for the cruelty of fate.

Leonard had been so handsome, with delicate lines that creased at the edges of his eyes when a thought amused him. His touch had been so tender, as though any more force might tear through the world which, it turns out, had been made of the thinnest of parchment. Ange believed that he had loved her, for the words often drifted from his lips in the midst of their lovemaking. No man had ever enveloped her, wrapped her body in the luxury of his loins until she had lost herself in his woodsy musk.

Someone pounded on the door. "Angela! Are you in there?"

"Go away, Mother."

"Thank God. Oh sweetie I've been so worried. Let me in."

"Let yourself in."

"I don't have your key."

Ange sat up, curious how her mother could possibly be without a key. After all, the woman kept it next to her own car key on the ring, Ange had seen it a hundred times.

More banging. "Angela?"

"Damn." She threw the covers off and her body tensed from the cold of the room. The heat must have failed for she could see her breath in the air. She wrapped her arms tightly against her chest trying to stop the shivers and opened the door.

What stood in the hallway could not possibly have been her mother. The woman never wore anything but a power suit, complete with high heels and matching jewellery. And yet there she stood, in worn jeans and heavy winter boots, a flannel plaid collar poking above the Gortex jacket. And her hair, for the first time in her life the strands hung limp and lifeless, oily even, as though she'd lost her mind overnight and the hair drying along with it.

Tears

Tears in real life don't slowly drip down one side of a woman's face like they do in the movies. Sometimes they pour out in clumps, as if an old creek bed was suddenly flooded and raged along makeshift valleys. Minellia's tears were no exception.

For the last week, she cried each night until her body could no longer produce a sound or even shudder. Somehow the darkness was the hardest -- lying alone in the bed she had once shared with Rebbo. His death had shocked the community, and though her friends and neighbours comforted her, brought her warm meals that she couldn't keep down, and kept her hearth ablaze, they were unable to reduce the monstrous chasm ripping through her insides.

A second, not even two, of bad luck. A rock falling at just the wrong moment, a shoe lace undone. How could Rebbo's life be reduced by such involuntary timing?

A soft knock at the door.

Minellia rolled onto her back, wiped her face with sheets, and attempted to call out. But her throat would not cooperate.

She forced herself out of bed and staggered for the door.

"Yes?"

"Minellia? It's Hapu. May come in?"

"It's late, Hapu."

"Please?"

She opened the door enough to peer out at the young man. His clothes were dusty, as though he'd been riding all day.

Plan

Every time I plan something good, it falls flat. Okay, not every single time, but enough times for the whole concept to royally piss me off. But does it stop me from making plans anyway. Big, elaborate plans?

Not a chance.

This weekend was no different. I'd chose the food, the tasks, even the background music. The invitations went out to the usual suspects. I cleaned the toilet and put away the laundry. I was ready for the par-tay.

Nobody showed.

Well okay, that girl from work, the one I sometimes knit with at lunch, she showed. Brought her knitting bag, too. So we gossiped and looped yarn over needles like a couple of old maids. At least that's not a term that most people use these days. I believe the correct term is flop.

No. LOSER.

That's me. I do my best to get my ducks in a row, but sooner or later I have to face the fact that they're the rubber-duck variety, like kids use in the bathtub, and they've sprung leaks, and bathwater has been sitting inside them for too long so if you squeeze them a blackish crud-pool of bacterial disgust will ooze out of them.

But they're in a row.

Except for that last one.

But we won't talk about him.

Wait

She hated to wait, more than brussel sprouts, squeaking Styrofoam, or spit. The worst was enduring a ticking clock on a day when she forgot to wear a watch.

She stood at the curb, doing her best to not appear as though she waited for someone to pick her up. Yet that was exactly her intention. Except for the part where she knew the man who would eventually arrive for her.

He didn't own a watch. He "gave them up" in a fit of retro-hippie popularity-inducing absurdity. He claimed that people had natural internal clocks and that anything important would naturally work out.

As if.

She crossed her arms over her chest, hiding her bare arm and mentally forcing herself to NOT grind her teeth. He'll be here soon. He wants to see you. He's only stuck in traffic. The mantra did little to reassure her fears that he simply wouldn't remember their date.

What did that say about her? Was she unmemorable? Had he tired of her? Should she return to the office and bury herself in work? Was he worth it?

Yes. Her only sure thought was that he was most definitely worth it. More than anyone she'd ever had the misfortune of dating. More than the sweet taste of honey on Melba Toast. More than sunshine after a long rain.

One

It is possible to enjoy a meal at a table for one. I shouldn't need to have a book or a companion for the food to taste good. The cuisine should stand up on its own merit. Sushi can. Believe me. I've counted on it before.

The Japanese have mastered food presentation -- the small plates, ergonomic cups and bowls -- its art more than sustenance. The tapered chopsticks are akin to sexy legs as they stretch on forever into kissable points.

I close my eyes and allow the tuna to melt on the tip of my tongue. I squeeze the wooden tips together and grip a slice of ginger so thin it must have been carved with a razor blade. With a gentle stir, the settling miso realigns into a soup once more and I drink it like a soothing cup of cocoa.

It's heaven.

Cold

The tea was cold, having sat untouched for hours while I typed. One word after another. One sentence followed the previous. Until I'd delete it all and start again.

I sipped the tea, then spit it back into my cup. I'd steep another pot, maybe after I hit a thousand words. Maybe eight hundred. Five would barely be work. God damn, they just wouldn't come.

I saved my unchanged file for the seventeenth time -- gotta love prime numbers -- and paced around the house. The curtains weren't closed properly so I straightened them. The washing machine had finished so I transferred the clothes to the dryer. The phone showed two recent calls so I scrolled through the call log until the blinky-green light turned off.

My watch must have been wrong. Had to have been less than an hour since I typed a meaningful sentence of text. Had to.

The phone rang. I should've let the machine take the call, but I could afford another ten minutes. My father. He wanted me to bring him chips. I told him no, his blood pressure was too high. We argued. I ultimately agreed to bring him popcorn.

Thirty minutes less in my time slot. I had to make at least three hundred words or I couldn't even count it as writing.

With the kettle filled and plugged in, I rinsed out the tea pot and dropped in another bag. I watched it fall to the bottom. What little water remained as residue at the bottom of the empty pot seeped into the bag and coloured itself pink. Cranberry tea. It was my last line of defence on a wordless day.

Judgement

Her judgement faltered, in herself, in her relationships, in every task she ever performed. Though she tried to make good choices and she held onto the belief that she maintained a sense of right and wrong, she sabotaged her life, one mistake at a time.

In her sessions with her therapist, she dodged the issue. Always bringing up more pressing concerns like the promotion at work that didn't pan out or the chemo therapy her father endured. The mechanics of her mess, the truths behind why she fell for emotionally unavailable men or why she loved her cat more than herself, these she kept buried, locked, and isolated.

Love hurt. Men didn't like her, they used her. Sustainable relationships were a myth. The mantra of despair to live by.

She cycled through destructive behaviours. One week, she would eat and snack until she made herself sick. The next she would visit the gym every day, doing two maybe even three aerobics classes to distract herself from sadness. The worst, though, was when she would visit her mother's grave and sob, after work each night, sharing her grief with the only person who had seemed to understand her. The net result bought her more unhappiness and a bigger sense of loss for the life she wished she had.

If only she could dig herself out of the dungeon she'd built. If only she could secure happiness without tying it to a man she'd never truly understand. If only life would cut her some slack.

Steam

She painted shadows with steam. Each one a fleeting work of art embossed on acrylic, porcelain, and chrome. Though they captured her mood, they could not hold it for more than a few moments once her body moved away.

Her hand touched the cold faucet, leaving a curve reminiscent of the worn slopes of ancient mountains long eroded by time's passage. When she submerged her hand in the tub once more, she watched the mountain evaporate, reducing to a thin line and then gone.

Pressing her heels against the far side of the tub, she left mid-air footprints in white sand. One after another, her toe prints left a trail of mystery. Where did she travel? What had she seen? Whose lives had she touched.

Many lives.

And like the friends who fade when circumstances change, the prints scattered, leaving her alone.

So dreadfully alone.

Hike

The hike through the woods always brought a sense of peace. The oxygen, the tall boughs, and the whispering of leaf against leaf in the wind.

She stepped carefully, keeping her feet low to the ground and her eyes ahead on the trail. A squirrel darted across her path and scurried up a tree.

"Good day to you sir. Or are you a madam?"

The creature did not respond.

Further along, the trees grew closer to the path and roots stuck up, tripping her more often than not. She searched for each step, cautious of brown bumps. But they hid themselves well, eager to bring her to their level.

They succeeded.

Her pants torn, and her knee scraped, she struggled back to her feet. "I won't let you win. I'm smarter than you give me credit for."

After a steep climb, she dodged a pair of beech trees growing around each other and rounded a corner. Beyond the path, a brook beckoned. She eased down to a rock in the middle and dipped her fingers in the cool water.

Unsure of its cleanliness, she hesitated before cleansing her scrapes. The coolness won out and she dabbled relief on her aches.

"Thank you, brook, for your kindness."

"Do you expect it to answer?"

She spun around to find a man, handsome and strong, standing within arm's reach.

Dizzy

The dizzy spell lingered, like bad food past midnight.

She wanted to rest, to put her head down and sleep for hours on end. But single mothers can't afford that kind of luxury. The gods don't allow it.

So she pushed herself on, one slow step at a time. To stop her fingers from numbing up, she cranked the heat. The bill wouldn't be due for another two weeks. To keep her energy level up, she drank tea. Cup after cup of it, until she lived in the washroom. To maintain her sanity, she mediated. But her thoughts wouldn't focus, they drifted to the edges where romance reigns king.

The kids played, fighting with swords one minute and action figures the next. Extras arrived, increasing the fun level but adding to the responsibility factor. She kept them in snacks and videos, watching the clock and praying for bedtime to race closer.

The phone rang. She hoped against hope that the person on the other end would rescue her. Drawn into the depths of the drama triangle, she longed for release from her dizzy prison.

Would she like her carpets cleaned? The price had never been lower.

She didn't have any carpets.

The room spun and she closed her eyes to the turmoil once more. She would find inner calm, even if she had to wait until midnight, or later. One slow breath at a time.

Granola

I hate granola bars. They have to be the closest thing to cardboard while still being considered a food. My mother used to pack them in my lunch every single day for the twelve years I was in school. I will never eat another one for the rest of my life.

Until today.

I ate my lunch on the steps of my office building. Along came the most beautiful woman I've ever seen. Rather than ignoring me completely, she plunked down beside me and said, "I love your tie."

I shrugged. "Got it at Sears."

"Cool," she said. "Wanna swap lunches?"

How could I say no? A beautiful woman couldn't possibly have a bad lunch, or so I thought. Then she opened her bag and pulled out three different kinds of granola bars.

So I'm chewing one, and holding a smile. I wonder if she thinks its a fake smile? I'm betting that my salmon sandwich buys me a phone number. If only I could swallow this cardboard and grin.

Elephant

I grabbed the elephant's tail and pulled. It was a stupid thing to do, I know, but I was only six years old at the time.

He kicked me straight in the chest, knocking me a good twelve feet into the side of a concrete shed. My back snapped in two.

That's the short version of how I ended up in this wheelchair. I'm used to it now, believe me, after twenty one years, eleven months and twelve days in it. Give or take. But every night I dream that I can walk.

I miss it so much.

The day I first saw the blonde at the mall, she stared past me, like everyone else. Her eyes glanced down once, then flicked away, embarrassed, ashamed. That's the worst part about being a cripple. People are afraid to notice me, as if their mothers will smack them upside the head and complain that they're staring. I wouldn't mind a good stare. It's better than being ignored.

The second time I followed the blonde from stall to stall. She pretended not to notice me trailing her, but she knew. I listened to her haggle over the price of mangos and complain when the guy at the corn stall tried to stuff two bad cobs into her dozen. She was strong, intelligent, and self-confident. I needed to know her name.

Alone

A woman can't live on bread alone. Nor can she survive without a lava lamp, a Japanese teapot, and Billy Holiday on CD.

Yet on a daily basis, Chloe didn't make time for these frivolities. She listened to books on tape to save time, took fast showers so she'd get to work early, and her aroma beads grew stale on the top shelf of the medicine cabinet.

Dreams are free, drifted through her mind on the drive to Huntsville Elementary. Dreams didn't require Hep A shots, or fat wallets, or condoms for that matter. Dreams kept her alive. Without them, her soul would surely wither and die.

Teachers don't meet many men above the age of twelve. The ones who show up for parent-teacher conferences are married. And male coworkers either had significant others attached at the hip or were too young to consider.

Her best years had bypassed her entirely. They skipped town on a Greyhound and never sent postcards. They were probably shacked up with the daydreams of the wealthy and carefree.

She passed a coffee shop and longed to stop. Every day she tasted a Chai tea in her mind. But her wallet stayed fused. Money paid for three things: the mortgage, the car, and the bills. Extra was a hard to come by as a good man.

Destroying

She spent the days building the world and the nights destroying herself.

Food provided all that she required: nourishment, comfort, and the tool with which to kill herself, one bad calorie at a time.

Every day she awoke, dreaming of a healthy lifestyle. Today would be the day she would eat only salads and soups and curl up with a good book as a pat on the back for her achievement.

She started with breakfast, a couple of slices of toast, no margarine, and a hint of jam. A small victory.

All morning she worked. A phone call here, a spreadsheet there, one solid task after another.

For lunch, she ate a salad. Sure, she added a slice of lean turkey breast and indulged in salad dressing, but a metered portion, and the light variety. After, she slogged back two glasses of water to convince her stomach to move on. It worked.

The three o'clock snack cravings arrived but she resisted. Wait until dinner, and the rewards will pile up. She compromised by making dinner early, but a healthy one, with meatless chilli topped with yogurt not sour cream.

After dinner, she ran errands, staying well clear of the house and temptation. But upon her return, she crashed. First a nap snuck up on her. Then she awoke and realized she hadn't finished the dishes. They stood on the counter in the kitchen. Right beside the pantry where a bag of Doritos lived. They whispered in her ear. "We're here. We're yummy. Just eat a few."

Soon, the dishes forgotten, she inhaled the bag, munching harder and faster on the chips until she almost bit a finger. Another good day wasted, another disappointment.

Next trip to the grocery store, she would skip the chip aisle.

Clumsy

Alma moaned from the pain of being clumsy. Another bruise -- a giant green and purple kaleidoscope of misdirected blood.

She always had one somewhere. Not because her man beat her and not because she had a lack of coordination. Frustration makes for physical discomfort. Plain and simple.

Most days, she held back the urge to cry. An extra heavy sigh here, a shiver then, the hurt boiling within a breath of the surface. But the tears, they rarely escaped. Only sissies cry.

Wealth was a strange mistress. She crept up on Alma when she least expected, whispering in her ear, scratching at her palm. She seeps in the nooks and crannies, til she's established like an ant farm or roaches. Monthly spraying and mist-bombs won't have much effect.

Some people, maybe they're smarter, or maybe not, they play wealth's games, indulging in her tastes and smells til the well runs dry. They have two choices then -- work harder or walk away forever.

Alma, she didn't choose either. She fought wealth, with second-hand clothes and self-control. No weakness would ever get the best of her. Not ever.

She shoved at life so hard that it fell down and skinned its knee. No self-sacrifice was too grand. With her head down, and her nerves ablaze, she pressed on, cleaning, running, counting, whatever the moment demanded. But when you don't look where you're going, you're bound to walk into a wall.

It hurts.

And it doesn't stop. It's only replaced by a fresh wound. But the tears, they never come.

If only she could raise her chin and dodge. Find a strong hand to grab onto. Fight through to happiness.

But misery's always easier to unearth.

Roses

The Roses fell at her feet. Not the beautiful long-stemmed kind that lovers buy each other in the height of courtship. Not red or white or yellow or pink.

The dead ones. Black, naturally.

Herdalisha tried to kick them off the platform, but for each one she knocked away three more hurled down from the crowd. She wasn't a witch, and she sure as hell didn't deserve to be burned alive.

Then again, there was that incident with the butcher's wife. And the slaughtered dogs, but that one wasn't entirely her fault. The Gredgelys were hungry and the girls needed to eat or they'd never achieve their fourth level as seogglers.

Breqlando, a slimy unkempt slob and demon worshipper to boot, spit at her as the platform rolled past. Some thanks for the parts-of-a-woman lesson she'd given him for free at the age of nine. Memories in the town of Yvmozekk lapsed swifter than the currents of the Splux River.

"Die, you whore witch!" Arypnavia kicked at the platform.

"After you," said Herdalisha. She couldn't stand the skinny little pleaser. Arypnavia would sweet talk the shit right out of the dumphouse if she thought it would bring her praise or good fortune. If anyone in Yvmozekk mixed secret potions or cast spells on the unbelieving, it had to be Missy Ary.

When the platform slowed to a halt in front of the pyre, Herdalisha caught the gaze of the one person she'd hoped not to see her die. Locbil's reddish-brown hair glinted in the sunlight. His green eyes filled with tears at the sight of her. Then his lips formed the words she couldn't bear to see. The ones she'd longed for him to whisper in her ear after their lovemaking, but had never come.

"No!" Herdalisha found the core of her power. Deep within her chest, between her heart and her ribs, in the pocket of fluid where potent chemicals mixed, she called forth the lightning mélange.

The crowd covered their eyes in the blinding flash of force. The ropes binding Herdalisha's arms evaporated. The platform below her smashed into kindling. And the pyre scattered beyond the outskirts of Yvmozekk.

"Don't mess with a seoggler," she said. Grabbing Locbil's hand, she dashed from the dazed audience before anyone found the courage to stop them.

Slacker

For those of you who were about to kill me for taking so long to post again, I give you an appropriate word. :)

*

Serena had been a slacker for months, saying yes to every request for help and never getting ahead on the pile of work at home. Sure this made her popular among the sorry and downtrodden members of society, but she was on the verge of procrastinating herself into the poorhouse.

Right.

This particular Monday morning, she decided to sleep in, hoping the extra rest would set her on the path to productivity. The shakes were back, worse than the day before. With two months still to go in winter, she figured she'd better stay on the higher dose of meds. Then again, if the shakes got any worse she would certainly jump right out of her skin.

The first job she hauled out of the pile was a photo job. McCrank from the docks wanted her to catch his wife soliciting the neighbour. She grabbed her camera and car keys.

The old Ford hadn't been driven in over a month. It turned over, but only after some kind words and some serious cranking. The plume of smoke would have choked a crowd to death. Luckily the garage door had been stuck in the open position for years.

Right after she turned onto Forsyth, the railroad crossing bars dropped and a freight train crept along the tracks. The guy in the car in front of her pulled a U-turn and drove the wrong way down Forsyth to Second Avenue. Serena considered following his lead; there was hardly any traffic on the one-way street and everyone was stopped for the train. However, her mother's voice of doom and criticism echoed in her head. Don't do it! It's not worth your life. How long can the train possibly take?

But the old bag hadn't been thinking of freight trains near the docks that moved endlessly back and forth as they dropped off and picked up cars.

Seconds turned to minutes. The blue car with the white graffiti moved past Serena's car for the fifteenth time.

Disoriented

Sandra was disoriented on the drive home from the hospital. Despite the pain killers, her body ached all over, especially where the doctor had stitched her up.

Her mother, hater of the highway and lover of nature, took the gravel roads home to the little blue house on Flang Drive that her daughter had fallen in love with. Large maples drifted past, their leaves abloom in reds, oranges and yellows. Sandra watched one leaf plummet towards the car and willed it to slow before it was run over.

It hit the windshield and with one swipe of the wiper blades, its mangled remains dove for the ditch. Timing, the cruel harbourer of fate.

The accident flashed into focus. The red truck, the telephone pole, the crunching sound. The sirens that took ages to creep any closer, as though they were stuck in quicksand on their way to rescue the latest victims. Then the beeps of monitors and stabs of needles. Sandra remembered the IVs most vividly, a painful prick in a sea of torment.

Now, in the bright daylight, with nature ablaze all around her, she could not place herself within the world. She lived in the nether-region of humanity, the places where time means nothing, where one minute you're in a car and the next in recovery. The territory where pain hitches a ride on a freight train and hops from car to car, looking for the best place to settle. Sandra's train neared the station, and soon pain would transfer to another destination.

Sobs waited to erupt from her lungs, but she couldn't birth them yet. Not surrounded by joyous sunshine. The world would scold her for such rudeness. She would save her collapse for the house. Or perhaps the driveway. Close enough.

Her mother kept glancing over at her, asking, "Are you okay?" How many times could Sandra say she was fine before it sank in?

"Oh, look," said her mother. She pulled over to the side of the road and turned off the engine. "Do you see her?"

She pointed to the left where a deer stood staring at the car. The women waited in silence for the doe to bolt. Yet she stood still.

Then she reached up and yanked leaves off the branch of a chestnut sapling. As she chewed her snack, she watched the car.

Sandra said, "She'll be ready for winter soon."

"Yes."

The tight feeling in Sandra's chest eased. The cry that had lingered for the drive home caught the current of an unseen wind and drifted away. What remained was a kinship with the doe. We're both preparing for the hardship ahead.

Limelight

Colin promised me that after four years in the limelight, he'd retire. It's been fourteen. And we still live out of a suitcase and call a van home.

That's show biz, I guess.

I'm a writer. I don't call myself an author because that would imply that I've actually published something. But I make time to write every single day.

For the last two weeks, ever since that empty gig in Cleveland, I've been writing the same thing in my notebook. It's more like lines--the type of repetitive sentences that the teacher would make me write for doing a "thumbs down" to the brown noser whenever he answered a math question or sauntered up to the front of the classroom to claim another honour. Back then the line was, "I will not give a thumbs down to Kevin Snochiez." Now the line is, "I will leave Colin before I turn forty."

It's a got a ring to it.

I've stopped trying to change him. The little guy feels naked without his guitar. And the only time his smile seems genuine is when he's jamming a new blues riff with his friends.

I don't know what it is about the name Colin. Ladies, if you ever have a baby and you don't want him to fall in love with a guitar, then don't name him Colin. Go with Chase, Cassidy, or Cobra even, pick ANY other name that starts with a "C". Leave Colin be.

I mean it.

There have got to be dozens of Colins doing the blues circuit in Canada alone. Colin James and Colin Linden come to mind first, but I could name a half-dozen others. No point though. The end result is the same.

Getting back to my woes, I bought a new notebook at the dollar store yesterday, while Colin and the boys were eating at the Denny's. I can't stand that greasy crap. I'd rather eat a salad in the van. Anyway, the new book has a big, bright, cheery flower on the front. I'm usually not one of those "frilly-girl" types, but this one caught my eye. It screams, "Joy," and that's what I need to finally write my novel. I'm gonna start planning the plot today. In the new book. On page one. Where all the good stories have to start.

Restore

I set myself the goal of three months to restore the ship. Seemed like enough time to get the parts I needed. Ninety days of tracing short circuits and swapping loose couplings and I'd be off Forbi for good.

I had enough cash to keep my rent up until then. Good thing, since my scum-lord would eat me if I couldn't make rent. Nasdool sent regular comp cheques for wrecking my back in the "incident". They paid a lot of us off. We traded money for our silence; a good deal in my books. I'm no stoolie. Besides, I was probably partly to blame for what happened.

The screaming haunts me at night. Len and Brod, they worked on level eight in my sector that night. I was up to my elbows in coolant, swapping out a bad seal on the forechurners when the turbines started to fail. Without circulation, the air up on six and higher got ripe fast. Len and Brod didn't wear their gear regularly, none of us did. The stuff weighed over a hundred pounds and even with the point-six-gees factor, we couldn't maneuver into tight places suited up.

So they rabbited.

I heard the alarm and scrammed out from under churner three. Brod secured a line, hopped the railing, and started to rappel down to safety. I saw Len up there, and yelled at Brod to pick him up.

His line couldn't hold their combined weight. I knew, but I figured the load reqs were understated. I was wrong.

I watched my friends fall, saw their panicked faces, heard their last screams of fear. Then the chunk of railing that Brod used to secure his line landed on me.

Cozy

The old leather chair by the fireplace was so cozy that I slept in it often. So many times, in fact, that I lost all track of the days.

I was between jobs. The kind of between where food comes out of a can and the heat comes from trees in the neighbourhood parks. If someone came to the door, I wouldn't answer. If the phone rang, I ignored it. But it didn't ring any more since I let that bill slip.

Eventually the cans ran out and the wood got used up, so I had to admit that the world held what I needed--a job. I washed my best clothes in the sink, dried them in the sunshine, and headed to the local hire-front.

I'd passed it on the bus on my way to my old job. It was a storefront on the run-down side of downtown, with a big glass window painted with the slogan "Work Today, Get Paid Today." Luckily, the place was still in business.

I picked the only red plastic chair and sat down. A lady behind a Plexiglas window slid it across and said, "Please register."

I stood and approached the window. A clipboard with a wrinkled piece of paper was covered in the scribbled names of trampled men. I printed my own. The letters looked scattered and jiggly, like I'd trapped my elbow in a washing machine. I hadn't written much in a dog's age.

I sat again in the red chair and leafed through battered magazines. I looked at the pictures mostly, reading wasn't something I fancied. Some of the faces looked familiar; a president here, a movie starlet there, burned-out buildings in wore-torn cities. The news was old but familiar. I could have been reading last week's or last century's events. No matter. Big things only happened to big people. And I was a member of the insignificant micro-people. The ones who society pretends don't exist.

Did I exist? I wasn't sure any more.

Wide

Her hips were wide--big enough to birth a decent baby but not so large that they wouldn't fit into the seat of a Mustang convertible. Not that Bill owned a stang yet.

He watched for her from his Chevette on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. He would wait outside the Starbucks on Pico then follow her in.

She didn't order the same drink every time. She had a short list though: Caffè Americano, Double Chocolate Chip Frappuccino, and Cinnamon Spice Mocha. Three drinks on which to build a foundation of living the good life.

For three months Bill had been building up the courage to ask her out. He wasn't much to look at, with his receding red hairline and his freckled cheeks. His over-abundance of arm hair was a particular sore spot on his self esteem-o-meter, but he chose long sleeves to mask the issue. The second Thursday in February was the perfect day for the big nudge. If she said yes, he'd spend Valentines Day with a woman for the first time since his mom took him for ice cream in the fifth grade.

Bill waited inside the Starbucks, holding a copy of the L.A. Times in one hand and his sunglasses in the other. He leaned against the door frame, doing his best to be ready to approach her and also not block the entrance for the other morning patrons. He didn't want to offend the employees, or they might ask him to leave, or worse ban him from the store.

She stepped through the door, wearing a pink skirt and a brown leather jacket with a striped scarf.

He took a deep breath.

She dropped a penny.

He lunged to grab it before she could.

"Here." It came out slightly louder than he'd planned as he thrust the penny towards her face. "I'm Bill. What's your name?"

"Thanks, Bill." She turned her attention to the Starbucks menu board.

"I didn't catch your name," he said.

"I didn't offer it."

"I've seen you in here. I thought we might get together for a coffee sometime. Here, or anyplace you like. Maybe tomorrow, I know it's not your regular day, but--"

"No thanks." She left the line up and hurried out the door. Bill never saw her again.

Clean

Since I moved to Nabdona, I've never felt clean.

The indigenous people cleanse themselves with hot sand. They warm the granules over a fire or in an electric oven and then scrub their skin raw. I don't prepared the sand myself. Kejru and I usually visit the sand bars.

During our welcome tour, the guide brought us to the Hacclad bar--a huge pit filled with fine granules and epithelials. I shudder whenever I imagine the countless pieces of patrons brewing and ripening in the pit. The bar itself was built over hot vents, so the sand is kept at a constant temperature. Sifters turn the contents every hour, and particulates drop through screens in the base to be "reclaimed". Kejru summoned the courage to ask how they are reclaimed and what they are turned into, but he did not share his knowledge with me. I thank him every day for that.

The sand is warmer, more penetrating, than bathwater could ever be. But the feel of it is nothing like a liquid. When chatting with my new friends and neighbours here, I've tried to explain what swimming felt like. How the water filled my ears, damping some sounds and amplifying others. How my body floated, what buoyancy did to my human spirit. But they cross their stalks or exhale in short bursts, both ways of conveying their puzzlement. I didn't think to bring images. I left in too much of a hurry.

Kejru had been sentenced to death or removal. He had used up the goodwill that Earth had to offer. A Bpooni, he skipped from planet to planet unloading cargos of exotic furnishings in exchange for hospitality and cultural exposure. He said that home decorating is the only true ambassador. That to share and explore with a people, one must adorn their living spaces then bask in the ambiance.

I fell for his tales of adventure. And when they caught him shooting uwenqs into his veins, he was convicted on the spot. Interstellar drug dealers are unwelcome in our solar system.

Tide

High tide always scared the hell out of me. The stories I used to read as a kid, where the hero was in a cave and got trapped by the tide would leave me with my security eroded and my body alert for attack. The nights I read adventures like that I'd sleep with my head buried under the covers and the pillow, trying to stop water from seeping into my soul.

I don't know why I've never moved away from the sea. Considering my phobia, living in a place like Hallaton or Chelmorton might have made more sense. Little stone houses and patchwork fields cut with streams that have no tides. No highs and lows of salty danger invading my life twice each day.

But I've lived in Deal all of my days. On the beach. I can't count the number of days I've watched the waters come and go, in a never ending cycle linked to the moon. I've never learned what beasts lurk under that dark surface. I've never investigated a cave at low tide, or picnicked beside tidal pools teeming with interesting creatures. I've always given the tides a respectful distance.

And they have provided the same courtesy.

Last night on the news, another tidal surge was headed for Texas. People were packing their lives into their vehicles and heading for higher ground. I would join them. I would pack my photographs and my Japanese fighting fish and drive until I felt safe.

Safety has been a harsh mistress for me. She has lurked in my closets and read a book while I ventured toward my future. But will she always be my saviour? Or did I merely rack up points owed so that one day the sea can claim me?

Candle

Halva kept a candle on her desk. Not the romantic kind, or the tapered kind, but a big cube of orange wax with a bat on the side. She picked it up one Halloween, mesmerized by the bat. She loved bats. More than she loved herself.

But that wasn't hard. She pretty much hated herself.

Life had started out lousy for her, not only because her parents argued all the time, but also because she had no money and few friends. The skinny kid down the street--Lucy Kwidbunker--was her friend, but that wasn't saying much. Lucy was "touched" or "slow" which basically meant that Lucy didn't have any hope of ever being treated like a regular kid. But that was years ago. Now Halva was an adult, responsible for her own failures. Her life had turned out exactly as she had feared. And it showed no signs of improving any time soon.

Halva sat most nights, staring at a blank computer screen and dreaming of being a writer. She decided to never use her real name. She chose the name "Priscilla Pasterline" because it sounded pretty and romantic. Priscilla was the kind of woman who had tapered candles that emanated scents of lavender and cinnamon. Priscilla had several boyfriends, all of whom adored her. She was smart, funny, athletic, but most of all she loved herself only enough to be happy. Not too much; that wouldn't do. Only enough that it boosted her self-esteem.

This particular Tuesday, Halva lit the tea light inside her bat candle. Long ago, she'd used up all of the fuel within the original candle, but she couldn't part with her lucky dollar store treasure.

The black outline of the bat flickered in the flame light. Bats had to be the best mammals alive, except for humans of course. They were night creatures. They didn't see, they only heard. And by hearing they could see more than humans. They were fast and smart, light and strong, and the most amazing creatures to fly without wings or feathers. Too bad Halloween had taken them on as mascots. They deserved better: Christmas or Easter or some nobler holiday.

Paper

The guy came to the door, asking me to order a subscription to the paper. I hadn't done the news-thing in awhile, and the deal was uber-cheap so I signed up. Figured my six year old could practice reading on the headlines.

The next thing I knew, the papers started coming. First it was one a day. Then two. I thought two was a bit odd, but maybe the paperboy was shortchanging his route, or trying to make extra bucks?

Then one day I got four. That's right, four. How is it that a single Mom in a 2 bedroom bungalow needs four papers every day? What was the delivery guy thinking? I checked my bank account, to make sure I wasn't being charged for all of this multiplicity. I wasn't.

Took me a week--and by that time I was getting six papers a day--but I found the guy's number and phoned him. He didn't answer, so I left a message on his machine. No big surprise that he didn't return the call.

I left him six messages, a kind of "code" so that he'd know which irate customer I was. He never phoned me back.

My house didn't have room for all of the paper. The recycle truck only picks up every other week. My kids started to build forts out of all of the stacks. When the two-year-old climbed to the top of one pile, fell off, and broke her collar bone, I decided to take matters into my own hands.

I'm not one to get up at three o'clock in the morning to catch a paperboy in the act of delivering, but a five hour trip to a hospital with a toddler can change a mom's perspective. So I sat with a big cup of coffee and waited.

The steam from the cup drifted through the morning haze. The street light flickered in front of Bill's house across the way. Moths drifted in and out of the bright places, dive-bombing over and over for the fake-sun.

Then the dark blue mini-van--black in the dim light--pulled around the corner and into view.

Extrasensory

Thanks for the word, Joseph.

*

They used to call it extrasensory perception, or ESP. Now they just call us know-it-alls, or KIAs.

My name is Sirla, and I work for the marketing department of an advertising agency. They use us to gauge reactions to new campaigns in focus groups. The rats come in, they watch our commercials or read our print ads, they eat our sandwiches with the crusts cut off, and all the while I probe their brains for their reactions.

Personally, I enjoy the food reactions the most. A guy last week loved tuna salad so much that he practically wet himself. Apparently he goes to focus groups to supplement his pathetic income. I wanted to slip the guy a few cans of coffee or something on the side, but they don't let the clients see me. Keep me locked in a room with two way glass. If the subjects knew they were being scanned, they'd never come back. Plus, commercial use of my abilities is against the law.

But all the big name firms do it.

Ever since the bio-spray raids of 2008, KIAs have popped up everywhere. Something about our bizarre mix of DNA made us less susceptible to the virus. Instead of dying or living the rest of our lives hooked up to oxygen, we got a two day cold and the ability to read other people's thoughts. Good for us. Not so good for those with common DNA.

Like my parents. And my dog.

But hey, there's more food for the rest of us now.

Algorithm

Billy always followed the same algorithm when he packed: first the personal stuff, then the business stuff. Last, he packed the fun equipment, all in cozy, non-descript brown paper bags.

Over the years, Billy had been hassled more times than he wished to count by the border guards in almost every country in North America, South America and Europe. "What's in the bags?" they would ask.

After some simple explanations like, "leather" or "tools", he'd be waved through. But if he lucked out and landed in the nosy guy's line-up, they would open up his secret bags and wham! Billy found himself in a small and sterile room for hours of picky and unenlightened judgment. And yes, rubber gloves were often involved.

The worst trip, in Billy's forty-something years of travelling, was the one he took with his mother. She had always wanted to see Romania to visit all of the Dracula tourist-centric sites. Billy packed only a bare minimum of fun equipment, figuring his chances of picking up interesting ladies were limited with his mother around. Some things are best done alone anyway.

The customs guys at the airport didn't speak much English. Apparently, a North American tourist had passed through a week before with a bomb hidden in a brown paper bad. Bad luck for Billy. The worst of it was that they put him in the small sterile room with his mother.

His high school Calculus final was a walk in the park compared to the humiliating exam he and his mother endured that night.

She did not travel with Billy again.

Steals

He steals my keys every chance he gets. Then he sits back and watches me hunt like a maniac for them in the morning; a sly grin partly hidden behind his coffee.

I'm getting even. In a big way.

My first thought was to hide his keys, but that's too easy. Then I thought about the usual stuff: saran wrap on the toilet seat, toothpaste in his shoes, that sort of thing, but they're all too juvenille. I need something unique and oh-so-devious. He can't suspect it's me either, because I know his guard must be up.

Today, I'm doing it. I should probably tell you what I'm planning, but if even a hint leaks out, the whole notion will fizzle. Nope, but I can tell you this:

Even his mother will laugh. And she's dead.

I purchased a few supplies at the corner store last night. I told him I was going out for a walk to the mailbox. Luckily, the stuff fit in my coat pockets. He never looks through the closet. I've already moved them anyway.

Just before breakfast, I set the first electronic components up. I've placed them on a timer, set for a time in the next few days. I won't tell you when. It's still open for negotiation, depending on what I purchase at the wharf today. I've heard the pickings can be pathetic this time of year. I might have to try the warehouse district if they don't have what I need.

Sheers

Just remember, this is FICTION. Any similarity to my acutal mother is purely coincidental.

*

My mother always loved the sheers on the front windows of our house. It didn't matter that she didn't own the house and they looked like granny curtains, what mattered was that somehow she had made it in the world of Suzy-Homemaker and Good Housekeeping because her front windows looked proper.

I remember the day that she installed them. She must have stared at the instructions for hours, holding a screwdriver in one hand and a hammer in the other. They were the only two tools she felt she'd mastered. Advanced tools like levels and wrenches were beyond her grasp--strangers lurking in the rear sections of the hardware store where only men belong. Once she had digested the elaborate drawings, she started in to hanging the track. I thought it was crooked, but I would've never told her. She would have cried and I can't stand it when she cries.

Sitting at my laptop now, contemplating the nuances of my own existence, I think of the word "sheer" and wonder who the heck decided it applied to curtains. In the dictionary, I found references to unmitigated qualities, exclusivity, pureness, and vertical extremes, but nothing about big, flimsy curtains that barely cover a window. The hip things to install now are roller blinds with the ugliest valences ever constructed. The last time I shopped in that section of Home Depot, I discovered that they actually sell roller blinds that behave like sheers. In the daytime, you can see out but people can't see in. At night, people can see in and you can't see out. Just like sheers. I guess they're the cool version of the old classic. We've finally stepped out of the 1950's ladies and gentlemen. Let's all buy roller blinds.

Okay, back to my mother. After all, she's the sheer lover. The curtains had two components. The inside part was white, with a kind of embroidery thing going on. The outside layer was another set of sheers that were pink. Man, I've hated that colour my whole life and I think those sheers are to blame. Why would anyone need two curtains? The only place I've ever seen the two curtain fiasco is in hotel rooms.

Maybe that's what my mother was going for? The hotel look?

Who knew?

Crushed

He crushed my hand under the gyro-stabilizers. I didn't see it coming. As a matter of fact, I thought he loved me.

Jarvis was the perfect bad boy--he ran weapons in the eighth worm-path, used more drugs than he sold, and never committed to a relationship for more than a shift. So why was I attracted to him? Maybe because I saw him as the perfect experiment. Or maybe because he reminded me of Bixton, the first guy I ever kissed behind the storage shipments on Loading-Bay six.

The first few dates went smoothly; we laughed, we spilled the sordid details on previous relationships and how they ended. When we both passed our viral tests, the bedroom fun began.

And lasted.

The next thing I know, I'm humming the latest stream tune and a stabilizer is landing on my left hand.

The buzzers screamed, but not as loud as I did. The medics arrived soon after and doped me up with the best pain relievers in their kits. While they didn't kill the pain, they wounded it badly enough that I could make it to the hospital without embarrassing myself by crying like a baby.

They said the hand will survive, though it might not work like it used to. They asked how it happened. I thought about lying, but not for long. I named Jarvis. I gave them his ident details. They detained him.

I didn't cry then either.

Though when he gets out next night shift, I think I'm going to be in some serious trouble. That's why I'm sitting in the departures zone, hoping for a stand-by seat on whatever has room for me.

Fought

We fought like dogs most nights. The long, complicated arguments with insults slung back and forth like a political mudfest. And that wasn't the worst of it.

We deserved it.

I've come to the conclusion--now that time is on my side and glacial ice ages of water have flowed under the bridge--that most arguments between couples are about miscommunications. I know that shouldn't be a surprise, hell television shows are full of communication asymmetry. Comedies base their foundations on it. So why do real life couples become immersed in it, consumed by it, and unable to see clearly to the rational side of the tunnel on the other side?

Because we're egotistical beasts. We think we're right. We think our opinions are the most right and our feelings the most valid and that our job in life is to pass on that impressive wisdom to the populace at large. I wonder now, that it's too late, why I wasn't able to let up sooner. Why I couldn't sit back and listen to the other side of the conflict. Why my priorities got so bent out of shape that a pretzel would be envious of my delirious logic.

So now we ignore each other. Occasionally a Christmas card arrives in the post or an email pops up on my birthday. We won't likely ever forget each other, but the good moments have evaporated forever. How was I to know that there was a finite supply of water in the cistern of love? We filled it up in the first month we were together and the relationship ended when it dried out. The smart ones, those who nurture the cycle, manage to make clouds and rain and whatever moisture is lost through attrition barely dips the surface below the full line. But those of us who are too absorbed in our own priorities, we look the other way when some spills to the ground. And we shrug when a cloud blows beyond the horizon, figuring another cloud will be by soon.

But they never return.

We only got one allocation. Next time, I'll treat it with care.

Is it a poem?

Chocolate puppies stare bitterly at their sordid fluff.

*

I bought one of those fridge magnet sets full of words to inspire the poet in me. I just had to post the first one to this blog. I promsise I won't make a habit out of it. :-)

Yanked

I yanked the control bar with all of my might, praying to the Guardians of Mylanor that the damned wagon would slow.

But it didn't.

My horse, Dwindle, galloped on, terrified that the Bligators were still chasing her. You'd think she would have learned by the age of six that a Bligator can't run more than ten feet without collapsing. They're big and mean but they have no stamina.

I tried to pull back on the reigns, yelling in the most pleasant and gentle voice (is that even possible) for Dwindle to ease off. She would kill us both if she didn't stop before we reached the Heglig River. I could smell water in the air now, a relief after so many hours riding through the dusty plain.

"Stop, you bloody stupid horse. Or I'll eat you for supper tonight!"

That seemed to get through to her. Though it was a total lie. I can't digest horse meat--too tough. She slowed to a canter, then a trot.

She must have been thirsty, for as soon as she spotted the river, she sped up again. But this time, I had her under control and we didn't tip on the steep gravel road to the east bank.

The nearest bridge was half a day south of us. The sun was sinking low in the sky, so I decided to make camp for the night. Too tired to hunt for firewood, I ate hard cheese and a few balls of rice. Dwindle nibbled on the reeds near the river's edge and sipped on the water to rinse it down. She'd had her fill of field grass.

"Hey."

A woman stood on the other side of the river. Her hair shone bright as amber and she was dressed like a man, in travelling clothes.

"Hey, back," I yelled.

"Has your horse had the skibbers?"

Skibbers was a nasty intestinal ailment that could drive a horse mad or in some instances kill it. "No. Why?"

"It's been in the towns upstream," she yelled. "And it might flow in the river."

"Thanks for the warning."

I hauled Dwindle away from the water. She protested fiercely, so I tied her to a shrub beyond the reach of the Heglig. It wouldn't hold her for long, but I could cleanse the water over a fire.

Storm

I witnessed a great storm this morning on the lake. So thanks to nature for this one.

*

The sky whispered of a storm. Not much, just a bit of haze on the horizon and the occasion rumble of thunder. I swam in the lake, calm and peaceful, a cool relief from the clinging humidity.

Normally, I would have exited the water at the sound of thunder, but it sounded absent, muffled, as though it hid under a blanket beneath the world. So I floated, filling my ears with water, and listened to the rush of air in and out of my lungs.

Thunder clashed, closer this time. I stood, for the water was shallow, just above my hips. I scanned for dark clouds and some billowed at the other end of the lake. The flag filled with a gust and flapped for a moment, straightening the big red maple leaf into a symbol of pride, then flopping back to hang against the pole.

I dove forward and swam for deeper waters, searching for fish. I always wear goggles when I swim, to protect my contacts from whatever germs lurk in the depths. A large white fish with yellow highlights and a black stripe pecked at the plastic lenses. I leaned back. It stared at me. I stared at it. A cloud passed overhead, darkening the water.

I poked my head above the surface, and the change startled me. Waves rippled in long lines a few hundred meters beyond. The flag was flapping wickedly in a strong breeze. A veil of heavy rain painted the trees on the far shore.

How could the storm move that quickly? The water had been calm only moments before.

I swam for our shoreline. The raft started to oscillate in the waves. The ladder end fell as the north end rose on another crest. Then the north end sank and waves crashed across the green carpet. I concentrated on my stroke, swimming as fast as I could for cover. In the shallows, I rose to my feet and trudged the last few steps to rocky land. Lightning struck, close. I felt it through the delicate hairs on my arms. Another strike. The thunder hit me simultaneously from each. I needed to get out of the water.

Weakling

Okay, so I'm a bit of a weakling, and I should have left her long ago, and she probably only stays with me for the fringe benefits, but I can't exactly get away from her. The mission lasts six years and there's no jumping off in dead space.

That's what we call it, because it isn't the "space" we learned about in grade school. It isn't full of photo-perfect stars and planets and asteroids. That kinda stuff is for cheap science fiction magazines where ships can travel faster than the speed of light and we all know how impossible that is. We travel through the domain of the wormholes, jumping from one to the next through the junction boxes that the engineers maintain.

The walls of a wormhole, if you can call them walls, block out everything: light, sound, time, your own freakin' sanity. It's no wonder that Lissy and I are barely speaking to each other. We've both been starved of basic human needs for far too long.

Except for you know. We make time for that whenever we can. She's "fixed" so we don't have to worry about the future, and believe me, it could be a lot nicer with more affection blown into the mix. But a guy's gotta live, you know? And there isn't anything else to do. The ship flies itself. The wormholes direct it straight ahead. Whenever we come to a junction, there's a bit of work to do, o'course. Setting orthogonals and paying tolls and such, but at most we get a day's worth of entertainment out of a reroute.

This latest wormhole's been over two years long. Our relationship turned sour about eight months ago. I'd give anything to download intellishrink software. Have a session or two, or fifty, to get some animosity out into the open. But every day is the same. She sits in the co-pilot seat and hums to herself while she types random drivel into the computer. She says she's "writing" but she won't show me any of it. I bet she's typing: "I hate the bastard!" over and over again. I don't believe for a minute she could be thinking words as fast as she's typing them out.

"Wayne?"

"Yes, Lissy?"

"I'm finished."

"Finished what?"

"The novel. Wanna read it?"

Discovery

They labelled my discovery "miraculous". I thought it was pretty mundane. Slablits visit new worlds all the time, but apparently not Earth. How was I to know?

My warning censors have been off-line for years, decades really. So I didn't read the giant "stay clear of this planet" warning before I landed to rejuvenate. My mistake.

Now they're all over me. What do you eat? Where do you come from? What do you want from us? Plus all of the paranoid guys with their primitive projectile devices. I've keep my cool, haven't zidled them, not once. It would be so easy. They don't even suspect I'm wired for security. Their technology couldn't scan a pile of dung let alone a Slablit wired for intercepts.

On the positive side, I'm enjoying the food. So many varieties, though they all taste tarnished to me -- they've polluted their ecosystem without restraint. On the negative side, they don't have any contraband worth smuggling. Most of their "sinful" (that's what they call their intoxicants) offerings don't affect me at all. What I would give for a slider of bruunks right now. On the hot side, easy on the motion variants.

For now, I'm refuelling with whatever soil I can scrounge until I can extract some isotopes dirty enough for the blast drivers. In the meantime, I've heard the dessert is worth a trip. Plenty of granulares and dry, dry, dry. My ship could use a good abrasive. Recycled moisture gets downright rank after a generation or two.

I can't wait to run my feelers through the layers of warmth, descaling whatever I can. My dribs are curling just thinking about it.

Uranium

Thanks for the word, Mark. And thank you, oh gods of the internet, for giving me access to high speed internet once more!

*

Twenty packs of uranium in my hold were enough to get me killed. The Scranters scrounged this DMZ for hot ships. Twenty more hours and I'd be free and clear.

Then the warning siren started wailing. Two ships, intercept course, class seventeen Artrops with double armour--the perfect pillaging machines.

So I backed my engines, buying me about a second of time and purged my logs. They'd steal the packs but they couldn't report the incident. Whatever rumours they'd start about the origin of their windfall wouldn't have my ID plastered through them. And with any luck, they'd take the decoys and leave my cargo undisturbed.

Most smugglers have their tricks--secret compartments, shielding devices, or big ass guns. I'm a decoy woman, always have been. No matter how big a gun I get, they always have a bigger one. And secret compartments are old-school, besides most high end pirates have better scanners than the military, let alone freelance shippers. Whenever I trade in uranium, I shield the packs with multiple appliances, but radiation has a funny way of sneaking through the best of containment options.

So I crossed my fingers, bit my lip and waited for whoever would come aboard.

The ships clanked, startling me. Space is pretty quiet and I knew they were coming, but I covered my out-of-practice ears and shrieked.

They deactivated my hull safeties and stormed in, shockers at the ready. Three Umfels skittered along the deck, stopping in front of me. If they were wearing translators, they didn't use them. Two grunts and a gun up my nose and I can figure out what they want. They shifted their weight around in circles, from flange to flange, like spiders stuck in molasses. Gave me the creeps to watch them. Still we stared at each other.

Then boots clanked through the hatch. Not the smoother patter of Umfels, but the unmistakable steel-boots-on-a-steel-floor of a Pukq. The worst kind of malicious ass-riders in the galaxy. This one was a female; her third antennae stuck out of her shiv-suit like a scorpion's tail, arched above her head and ready to strike.

Retired

I retired the day after I buried my partner. Eighteen years we served together. Both of us had been around the block, he on various outposts and me on twelve freighters. Then we both ended up on the Wig.

They called it that because it looked like a giant, out-of-control wig of alloy hair sprouting from a turbine head. Every power hook-up on Compset connected to our grid. The wig was life, and Mowpav and I were the night crew that kept her breathing fire.

On the night we met, he hung from his harness, a blow torch in one hand and a roll of solder in the other. I clanked my own harness to pillar 17, I remember it distinctly. I have this thing about prime numbers. They've always been good luck for me. So to start a new job with a prime gave me confidence.

Mowpav swung down and tapped me on the shoulder with his wire. "Hey, bud. How's about we work together every shift 'til we either kill each other, or find a trust."

I smiled and said, "Done."

We stuck like a weld from that point on. Mow and Hup, the stuck-brothers of the night. We took a lot of ribbing that first contract, mostly from the other welding crews who rotated all over the place. They all had kids, and would trade their own mothers for more nights off. So long as Mow and I shared a shift, we didn't care about the hour.

Neither one of us had anything to go home to. Or to lose, for that matter.

Then I lost Mow. Not to a fall, or a burn, or lung-rot. Damned fluke. He died in his bed, aneurism they said. But it was a load of medical bullshit. My betrayal killed him, plain and simple. His heart broke and his brain split apart and he fell into another place where welds always hold, torches never run out, and he can fly without falling.

I let him down and I can't ever say I'm sorry.

Meeting

The meeting ran later than a staff meeting should run. Well into the night. After all, our lives were at stake.

I wanted so much to have the epiphany that would fix our problems; the insight that would resolve the ventilation jam. My friends were counting on me to design a solution to our slow asphyxiation.

But I was out of ideas and the team had eight hours of oxygen left.

Billox suggested scrubbing the induction tubes, maybe scraping another half hour out of the system. Galma kept tapping a torx-head screwdriver against her leg and muttering curses under her breath. Marply sketched a half-dozen routing diagrams on the board, bypassing the jammed pipes and melted control systems.

But we didn't have the parts to make a new router. We didn't have enough tubing to access the good supply. Most importantly, our air support expert had fried himself when the first electrical surge toasted the system in the first place. Now Huintel was watching him in the infirmary--probably dabbing cold facecloths over his face and praying to the powers-that-be to teleport a miracle our way.

In the meantime, we met, discussed, and tried to brainstorm our way out of the shit hole we found ourselves in. Man, did I need a drink.

Hour Glass

The customs dudes laughed at me when they found the hour glass in my luggage. After all, what good is a gravity-centric device on a zero-g spaceship?

I ignored them. My husband gave me the heirloom and there was no way I was going to leave it behind. It looks ridiculous bungeed to my cot. The sands are floating around in it, and the occasional one bumps another through the hole, but for the most part they all hang out in their own half. So I'm living the same hour perpetually.

Funny. Since when Rick gave it to me, he said he was, "buying me some time." Well it worked, honey. Now I've got all the time in the galaxy.

I bought this ticket to free me from my past. From cancer, pollution, and everything that has made Earth a pit of a place to live. I thought the change would be liberating. Yet every night, I stare at my hour glass and I miss it all. I miss my husband. I miss his grave; the last physical attachment I had to him. I miss gravity. I miss the feeling of solid ground beneath my toes and a big, open, blue sky. I miss sushi at Makka's and I miss the sound of crickets.

Crickets always reminded me that the ecosystem hadn't completely collapsed. Someone told me once that they're bringers of luck. I haven't felt lucky of late. Maybe I should've tried to catch one of the little critters and brought it along.

The customs dudes would never have allowed it aboard.

Country

It used to be that my home country defined me, to some extent, as a person. I was Canadian. I was from Canada. I was proud of my land, my people, my culture.

Now, the idea of a country is a feeble memory stored somewhere in the recess of my tired brain. Two hundred and eleven, or so, Earth years have passed since I flew out to the reaches, searching for a fresh start. My children were killed in a flood, my husband ran away with a baker, and my success as a writer fell from mid-list to the obscurity of delete bins and yard sales. No point hanging around a place where I don't belong and have nothing to contribute.

So I gave up my identity for money. All I've got now is the twelfth. That's the rank of our hunk of ore; our position within the hierarchy of raw materials. The twelfth most valuable asteroid in a belt of harvestable non-planets, three year's ride to the closest hop from the least interesting refuelling station in...where the hell am I?

I miss it. Being Canadian. It's not much to say I'm twelfth. A twelver? Twelfthish? I'd give anything for a beer made from actual grain. Or to make a snowball, or listen to a loon.

One thing we do have is mosquitos. I got no clue how they stowed aboard. They breed in the air ducts and buzz me at night, with their high pitched torture song.

Peach Pit

Thanks for the word, Rob.

*

I sniffed at the peach pit, trying to suck another speck of enjoyment from the remnant. I hadn't had fresh fruit in seven months. No matter how slowly I ate, I couldn't stretch out the moment for long enough.

A trickle of juice dotted my chin. I wiped it with my fingers and sucked them again. I popped the pit back in my mouth, ejected whatever I could, then I gripped it between my molars. I pressed, not so hard as to hurt my teeth, but hard enough to test the structure of the pit. Would it taste any of peach?

I spit it out. Holding it up to the light, I studied the pattern of ridges and holes. I remembered a math lesson from years back that talked about the golden ratio. I tried to find a pattern I could count. No thirteens jumped out at me.

I couldn't just throw it out. But eating it wouldn't serve any purpose. I could keep it, suck on it from time to time, but that would be too much of a tease. Making me want fruit more than anyone should. If only I could plant it. Grow myself a peach tree. But the soil on Tridale-2A4 was sterile and anaerobic. We shed it from our suits before we entered the facility. The only thing that came close was the endless dust, micro-particles that nothing could contain. And you can't grow a tree in a bowl of dust.

Zoo

When the Mindroins landed in Toronto, they freed all the animals from the zoo. They said it was a "rights issue". I said it was insane.

For the first time in my life, I was glad to be living in Etobicoke. The people in Scarborough started disappearing first. The lions and the cheetahs and the polar bears had to eat. Sure, the people with guns were safe, but majority of people were defenceless.

Every day I'd ride the subway, wondering if a snake or a spider would come at me. I'd heard stories about the reptiles too, crocs and the like love cold dark places. That's why I kept with the crowd. The more people around me the better. Let them take the young and the old and the sick. I stayed in the middle with my healthy peers.

I begged Julia to move in with me. She lived in North York with her parents. They had a fenced yard, and her father had a hunting rifle and that was supposed to be enough to keep her safe. I didn't buy it. The old man would panic if anything bigger than a coyote came at him. And Toronto had those before the zoo break.

I think the Mindroins planned the outbreak. If they could travel at near light speed, then they could choose the month when they arrived. In April, all the animals were mating. Plus, all the warm-climate creatures would have months to get established before winter came.

No park in the world was exempt. But once CNN ran the story, zoos vamped up security. The Bronx Zoo was probably more protected than the White House. Kinda made me wonder if the Mindroins had other plans.

Patriot

Needles was the most devout patriot in the settlement. He hung the old Canadian Flag from his window and aimed his vent at it so that it appeared to blow in the wind. He even designated day 197, the halfway date of the Cycalitran calendar, as Canada Day and blared the old anthem from his speakers in an endless loop to celebrate.

They called him Needles because he gave everyone their weekly anti-fungal shot. But his real name was Tim Horton, after the old donut stores. He liked having a nick name, because it freed him from the teasing. Donut-head, Coffee-dude, he had heard them all. And despite the international makeup in the settlement, everyone knew he had the stupidest name.

Glory kidded him most. She was smart and fit and beautiful and the most ruthless comic in the seven worlds. She lived in Needles's settlement for 39 days a Cycaltiran year. The rest of the time she toured the other worlds, doing her stand up routine or writing speeches for politicians. Somehow humour had surpassed musicianship and dramatic performance as the most sought after talent. Maybe because people who spend all of their lives under fragile domes that protect them from radiation, toxicity and vacuum make people edgy and depressed. Humans are meant to live under a sun. Their sun--Sol. And the seven worlds were about as far from Sol as a guy like Needles can get and still eek out a living.

Promise

Ruwina promised me that one day we'd see Mars. Then she got cancer and was too sick to fly. So I held her hand and watched her die. The day her life insurance money arrived, I booked a flight to Mars with tears streaming down my face.

I trained for months, lifting weights and running, getting my body in shape so that I wouldn't atrophy into a slug on the long zero-G journey. Sure, there were beautiful women at the club and I was single again (or a widower if you like the term; I can't stand it myself) but I couldn't get Ruwina out of my head. She was my wife, my lover, and most of all, my best friend. We ran together, ate together, talked, argued, and worked side by side for twelve years.

I miss her.

The last fifteen days before a flight, the interplanetary medics make you live in a bunker of sorts. It's basically an isolation chamber where meals are slid under your door and all you have for entertainment is a vid and whatever else you can fit into a shoe box. The whole point is to make sure you aren't about to infect the entire ship with the plague after take-off.

I brought the Bible and Ruwina's favourite book, "The Calling of the Loon-Ghost". I tried every night to open her book, but I couldn't read through the tears, so I gave up. Instead, I worked my way through the old black-bound King James classic.

Now you're probably thinking that I'm some kind of religious zealot or some such, but I'm not. Really. I just figured I ought to read the Book before I died, and since I was trapped in a room with nothing else to do (I hate vidtainment) I slugged through it.

Some parts were more interesting than I expected. Some were pretty ridiculous. I honestly can't figure out how someone could read the thing so many times that they would actually memorize passages, and not only that, but the references to them as well. Not my cup of noodles, I guess. After all, I've probably only been inside a church a dozen times in my entire life.

Collateral

Fredricka never expected to use her own fingers as collateral. But when you owe Kranzer money, you have to play by his rules.

They had sliced her right thumb and index finger off on Monday at 10 pm. She had until Thursday at 10 am to have them reattached. Any later and the severed limbs would start to degrade while the flesh on her stumps would repair the wound beyond reattachment. It was now four am on Tuesday morning. She had fifty-four hours to go.

She fumbled with her butterfly knife. For years she could swing it open in the blink of an eye, but that was with her right hand. As she slunk down the alley behind Teaser's, she practiced the maneuver a few times then stowed the closed blade in her panties. The bouncer glared at her.

"Beat it, Freddie. Kranzer blacklisted you."

"I'm not here to dance, muscle-head. I need to talk to Almar."

"He's busy."

"Get him anyway."

"He ain't gonna bail you out. And if he did, you'd only lose something else." The bouncer leaned closer, his head hovering over her chest. "Maybe something more interesting."

"Get Almar, now!"

Vinkler the Varmint weaseled up behind the bouncer. "Hey, Freddie. Or should I call you stubbie? I can loan you some cash."

"Over my dead body," she said.

"I'd rather just be over you, ma femme."

Vinker reached toward her crotch. She pulled the knife and tried to flip it open. It slipped out her grasp and clattered on the ground. Vinker and the bouncer burst out laughing. Fredricka wanted to deck them both, but instead she reached down to pick it up and got a pinch on her butt for her trouble.

Distance

Thanks for the word, Kij. (I borrowed it from one of your books.)

*

The hordes stood at a distance from the army, waiting, taunting. More than mere soldiers, the Kitlamianis were fanatics with one unified goal. To eliminate any trace of the human race from their planet. One body at a time.

Their carnage involved more than killing. They purged the dead, vaporizing their flesh for fertilizer to enhance their crops. The soldiers in Kelso's division knew what fate they faced if struck down in battle. Many of them clutched at their chests, feeling for their missing idents.

For the first time, the army changed policy on the dog tags they'd utilized for generations of soldiers. Against the Kitlamianis, no trace of a fallen soldier would remain, so all combatants left their idents on the transport ships. At the end of the fight, as they returned on the drop ships, they picked up their tags. Families were notified for all un-retrieved idents.

That's how Kelso learned of his brother's death. That's why he stood here on this battlefield instead of moving markers on a strategic map back on the HQ ship. That's how his last remaining sibling, his sister Tarina, would learn of his death if he fell today.

When he fell.

Their battalion was outnumbered and exhausted. He had hand-picked his men. Each had lost a family member in a battle with the Kitlamianis. Revenge hovered over the field like flies on carcasses. Kelso sniffed, inhaling the micro-fine particles of dust from the Kitlamian soil through his filter. Then, with resolve, he let out a slow breath. The filter vibrated, sounding like a dog growling. His men followed suit, adding their own rumbles to the war cry.

Bilious

Thanks for the word, Lenora.

*

Monica looked bilious--doubled-over and grasping her gut as though an elephant had taken up residence inside her and was bent on escaping. I put my arm around her shoulder to comfort her, but she shoved it away.
"Don't."

"Just trying to help."

"Page the doctor again. I've got to have this gallbladder out. Today."

I tried Dr. Miller again, but his answering service picked up. I left another message, stressing Moncia's discomfort.

Heath care sucked in the Kuiper Belt. Most people died in space, from suit malfunctions or grinder wounds. Minor stuff like gallbladder attacks broken bones were ignored more often than not.

Tell that to my wife, though. She was in constant pain. I couldn't stand to watch her suffer.

"Get your suit," I said.

"I can't."

"You will. We're going to park ourselves outside the clinic until someone cuts the damn thing out."

I helped her into her suit, and secured a vomit bag just inside her helmet. I suited up, grabbed two accelerators, and headed for the airlock.

Driscan was on duty. He eyed Monica, in her bent-in-two position. Even I could see how green she looked through the visor.

Driscan said, "She's not up to a--"

"Save it. We're headed for the clinic. And the only way you're going to stop us is if you can help my wife's condition yourself. Last I checked, you weren't qualiscreened for medical, Driscan.

He nodded and ushered us through the lock. The sooner we were out of his jurisdiction, the better for all of us.