“Why do I have to wear this?” said Maria, tugging at the black satin skirt as she bounced on the passenger seat of her father’s van. Her feet dangled a few inches off the floor.
“It was your mother’s. It always brought her luck.”
“I know what it brought her,” replied Maria, scowling.
“These things happen.”
The van hit a pothole and bounced, sending her father’s cigarette flying onto the floor. He reached down to pick it up, cursing.
Steam rose from vents in the sidewalk, the feeble breath of life for crowds huddled around them.
Offices glowed orange from the morning sun. Everything smelled like coffee, grease, and cigarette smoke.
“I miss her to. Believe me…and now we’ll have to start back at square one.”
Maria looked out her window; it felt like the van was just wiggling in place while the world passed. She could see her own round olive face in the window.
“This was your mother’s too,” said her father as he reached over and pulled an old make-up kit from the glove box. Maria pawed through it while he wiped his nose on his sleeve.
“I don’t want to!” cried Maria.
“We have a family to take care of! Look around you! Why don’t you think about someone else for a change!”
The van rattled along while Maria began choosing a lipstick.
“These things happen! If it wasn’t for your mom…” He snubbed his cigarette in the ashtray. “We all have things to do. I have things to do. Your brothers, too. It took us time to get used to, too. But this is how things really are! You’re old enough to know now. Just do as you’re told, and you’ll be fine,” said her father.
The van came to a stop next to a sand-colored building with dark windows and a few lewd posters on the walls. Glass and what looked like blood speckled the stairs. Maria’s cheeks burned despite the bitter cold. She climbed down from the van.
“I love you,” said her father. “Make sure you bring me all the money you make. If you don’t, I’ll know.”
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Monday, February 2, 2009
"Just This Once", Submission 14 by Lee Martin
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“Three…two…one…” said Sara, looking at her watch. Lena stood next to the stone stairs of the porch.
“I still feel the same,” replied Lena.
“Well, cheers,” said Sara, sarcastically raising her cracked crystal glass full of sparkling cider and tapping it against Lena’s. She turned at the sound of fireworks a few blocks away. Sara looked back at her watch; only seven hours until her flight home.
“Any resolutions?” asked Sara. Lena stared down the dim street hoping to catch a glimpse of some cheap sparks. “Lena?”
“No. No diet, no goals, and I think I will actually take up smoking.” They laughed. “Nothing too simple.”
“Come on,” said Sara, grabbing Lena’s thin arm and pulling her up the stairs into the large suburban mini-mansion filled with black jackets, spaghetti straps, and conversations that mixed into one haphazard mélange. Some kids ran out the door and onto the lawn with armfuls of firecrackers. “Let’s pretend we are rich tonight, Lena. Just tonight I want to feel like I matter.”
They weaved between the parents that danced and the parents that compared portfolios. They circled the room twice; neither new what to do. The minutes were ticking away fast; they could feel the memory of their month together begin to fade into a blur…into something that “happened a long time ago.” No one in the room noticed the pair of 12-year-old girls. No one ever did.
Lena found some stairs and pulled Sara up into a darkened room filled with expensive wooden shelves and generic books, and reached behind Sara to close the door to the drone from the floor below.
They sat together in an ugly red leather chair and held hands. Lena pulled an atlas from the shelf.
Sara sighed and turned to a map of North America and Europe. “I wish the world was this big,” and spanned part of the length of the open pages with her hand.
“We would only be nine inches away,” said Lena, “and that couldn’t keep us apart.”
.
“Three…two…one…” said Sara, looking at her watch. Lena stood next to the stone stairs of the porch.
“I still feel the same,” replied Lena.
“Well, cheers,” said Sara, sarcastically raising her cracked crystal glass full of sparkling cider and tapping it against Lena’s. She turned at the sound of fireworks a few blocks away. Sara looked back at her watch; only seven hours until her flight home.
“Any resolutions?” asked Sara. Lena stared down the dim street hoping to catch a glimpse of some cheap sparks. “Lena?”
“No. No diet, no goals, and I think I will actually take up smoking.” They laughed. “Nothing too simple.”
“Come on,” said Sara, grabbing Lena’s thin arm and pulling her up the stairs into the large suburban mini-mansion filled with black jackets, spaghetti straps, and conversations that mixed into one haphazard mélange. Some kids ran out the door and onto the lawn with armfuls of firecrackers. “Let’s pretend we are rich tonight, Lena. Just tonight I want to feel like I matter.”
They weaved between the parents that danced and the parents that compared portfolios. They circled the room twice; neither new what to do. The minutes were ticking away fast; they could feel the memory of their month together begin to fade into a blur…into something that “happened a long time ago.” No one in the room noticed the pair of 12-year-old girls. No one ever did.
Lena found some stairs and pulled Sara up into a darkened room filled with expensive wooden shelves and generic books, and reached behind Sara to close the door to the drone from the floor below.
They sat together in an ugly red leather chair and held hands. Lena pulled an atlas from the shelf.
Sara sighed and turned to a map of North America and Europe. “I wish the world was this big,” and spanned part of the length of the open pages with her hand.
“We would only be nine inches away,” said Lena, “and that couldn’t keep us apart.”
.
Monday, November 24, 2008
"Reconstruction", Submission 13 by Ryan Wrenn
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The steam engine, while certainly small by any standard, wasn’t small enough to fit between or around any of President Lincoln’s vital organs. The doctor had considered the intestine or the liver (which, in hindsight, may have been best as it ended up being that the President couldn’t any longer ingest liquids in any traditional sense, thereby leaving the liver a sort of useless weight. The doctor consoled himself that the space the liver took up now could one day be used for further improvements). He had settled on the right lung in the end. Some of the engine’s considerable power had to be devoted in assisting the left lung make up for it’s other half’s absence but the doctor thought it was an acceptable sacrifice. A series of lead tubes snaked themselves under the skin of the President’s back, working to cycle the steam from the engine, cooling it down and removing any particles that might result from the burning of the coal. The doctor debated several methods on the eventual release of the engine’s product and eventually settled on the relatively subtle, albeit slightly rude, method of belching. While undoubtedly those around the President would notice a marked increase in this habit, no one would think to complain to the President or anyone else lest they be seen as indelicate. And it was certainly a better option than the doctor’s original, more flatulent plan.
An elaborate system of gears and pullies, the likes of which the doctor himself never thought he would see, ran up and down the President’s spine. They powered the mechanics scattered around the body; some meant to compensate for functions the President had lost to Booth’s bullet, others meant to accentuate or protect other aspects of the body. The legs were essentially pistons in a locomotive, necessary to support the imposing weight of the president’s new protective armor. A system of the War Department’s devising was grafted into the President’s left shoulder. It fed musket balls to the barrel in his forearm. His right hand was removed and replaced entirely with a mechanical substitute. Unfortunately it did not look anything natural, so the President was obliged to wear gloves regardless of the weather. The hand’s strength was adjustable though, allowing for a firm but gentle handshake for dignitaries, and a vice-like grip for defending against assailants or breaking through a jail’s iron bars. The strength was entirely dependent on the President remembering to adjust it properly. With the President’s mind not exactly what it used to be, this caused some embarrassment in the early days. A young soldier’s hand was crushed, broken in almost a dozen places, when he shook the President’s hand during a state dinner. It certainly quelled any doubts about the President’s strength after the assassination attempt, but it was not what anyone would call discreet. The President’s transformation was still very much not mentioned if it was known at all. The gloves, the belching, and the fact that the President’s iconic tophat was welded onto the armor plate of his scalp to make room for the addition mechanic that kept the pressure from building up too much in the slowly healing wound all inspired whispers and rumor. That combined with a second, public assassination attempt, this by another one of Booth’s co-conspirators, that yielded nothing more than a loud clang from the President’s breastplate meant that it was all the doctor and the President’s aides could do to keep the truth of the matter among a relative few.
It did not help that the President no longer slept, and took to leaving White House grounds on his own at night. Those who knew tried to ignore the headlines, the stories passed around pubs and brothels. About an impeccably dressed who would had bounded down Virginia Avenue, rapidly gaining on a man fleeing him on a horse. About musket fire leading policeman to a massacre of irregular Confederate saboteurs in the wood surrounding Georgetown. About locks broken at Ford’s Theatre, and a chair in the balcony overlooking the stage that at least one morning a week the owner would find shattered under the weight of something incredibly heavy.
.
The steam engine, while certainly small by any standard, wasn’t small enough to fit between or around any of President Lincoln’s vital organs. The doctor had considered the intestine or the liver (which, in hindsight, may have been best as it ended up being that the President couldn’t any longer ingest liquids in any traditional sense, thereby leaving the liver a sort of useless weight. The doctor consoled himself that the space the liver took up now could one day be used for further improvements). He had settled on the right lung in the end. Some of the engine’s considerable power had to be devoted in assisting the left lung make up for it’s other half’s absence but the doctor thought it was an acceptable sacrifice. A series of lead tubes snaked themselves under the skin of the President’s back, working to cycle the steam from the engine, cooling it down and removing any particles that might result from the burning of the coal. The doctor debated several methods on the eventual release of the engine’s product and eventually settled on the relatively subtle, albeit slightly rude, method of belching. While undoubtedly those around the President would notice a marked increase in this habit, no one would think to complain to the President or anyone else lest they be seen as indelicate. And it was certainly a better option than the doctor’s original, more flatulent plan.
An elaborate system of gears and pullies, the likes of which the doctor himself never thought he would see, ran up and down the President’s spine. They powered the mechanics scattered around the body; some meant to compensate for functions the President had lost to Booth’s bullet, others meant to accentuate or protect other aspects of the body. The legs were essentially pistons in a locomotive, necessary to support the imposing weight of the president’s new protective armor. A system of the War Department’s devising was grafted into the President’s left shoulder. It fed musket balls to the barrel in his forearm. His right hand was removed and replaced entirely with a mechanical substitute. Unfortunately it did not look anything natural, so the President was obliged to wear gloves regardless of the weather. The hand’s strength was adjustable though, allowing for a firm but gentle handshake for dignitaries, and a vice-like grip for defending against assailants or breaking through a jail’s iron bars. The strength was entirely dependent on the President remembering to adjust it properly. With the President’s mind not exactly what it used to be, this caused some embarrassment in the early days. A young soldier’s hand was crushed, broken in almost a dozen places, when he shook the President’s hand during a state dinner. It certainly quelled any doubts about the President’s strength after the assassination attempt, but it was not what anyone would call discreet. The President’s transformation was still very much not mentioned if it was known at all. The gloves, the belching, and the fact that the President’s iconic tophat was welded onto the armor plate of his scalp to make room for the addition mechanic that kept the pressure from building up too much in the slowly healing wound all inspired whispers and rumor. That combined with a second, public assassination attempt, this by another one of Booth’s co-conspirators, that yielded nothing more than a loud clang from the President’s breastplate meant that it was all the doctor and the President’s aides could do to keep the truth of the matter among a relative few.
It did not help that the President no longer slept, and took to leaving White House grounds on his own at night. Those who knew tried to ignore the headlines, the stories passed around pubs and brothels. About an impeccably dressed who would had bounded down Virginia Avenue, rapidly gaining on a man fleeing him on a horse. About musket fire leading policeman to a massacre of irregular Confederate saboteurs in the wood surrounding Georgetown. About locks broken at Ford’s Theatre, and a chair in the balcony overlooking the stage that at least one morning a week the owner would find shattered under the weight of something incredibly heavy.
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