Ansel

This is the second of three short flash fiction pieces by Mitchell Grabois.

Ansel

by

Mitchell Grabois

Ansel Adams awoke in a black and white room. He’d bled the world of color as effectively as a 1947 Zenith console TV. He’d fallen asleep on the couch, and when he opened his eyes, the screen was static, pulsating flecks of Yosemite.

Noise was white.

His wife had fallen asleep on the other side of the couch wearing a white apron tied tightly around her Midwestern middle. His black and white cat rubbed against his legs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence, he said to the cat.  

Outside, a city bus rumbles by, accelerating loudly to make the hill. Jesus the Messiah is on the corner, shining shoes, a modern version of washing feet. He has to get some cash to make His nut, paying taxes to corrupt conquerors. His brother is a bourbon salesman, Hecho en Mexico, rotgut, not the good stuff from Kentucky, but he keeps Jesus well supplied. He’s always been amazed that he’s the brother of the Son of God, and wants to do what he can to make Jesus’s life better, until Jesus has to run through the Stations of the Cross, and then it’s all over.

Then it’s no more brother. He’ll have to drink all the samples himself and sit in the corner of the Mercado, depressed and alone, and worry about his mother, now entirely his obligation. Mary is a sword swallower on the street. Her partner is a flamenco guitarist. When Mary gets excited by dramatic strums, her feet start to jitterbug and she cuts her esophagus and spits red blood, which disgusts and excites the members of the audience, who know she always puts on a good show.

Jesus and His brother say: Mom, you’ve got to stop this. We will support you. But She’s independent and never listens. It is as if they are speaking another language, like English. She asks the mirror every day: Why is my life so complex? Why did I have to suffer from mental illness? Not everyone suffers like this.

Bio

Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois has had over twelve-hundred of his poems and fictions appear in literary magazines in the U.S. and abroad. He has been nominated for numerous prizes.  His novel, Two-Headed Dog, based on his work as a clinical psychologist in a state hospital, is available for Kindle and Nook, or as a print edition. To see more of his work, google Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois. He lives in Denver.

Army Brat

This is the first of three short flash fiction pieces by Mitchell Grabois.

Army Brat

by

Mitchell Grabois

When I was an army brat, we used food stamps to get by. Whether my father was with us or gone, my mother felt the weight on her shoulders.

He was in an M-48 Patton tank when it was blown up, fulfilling its fate. The only objects left intact were him and a Bible. He sat in the dirt among twisted wreckage and reached for the Bible, but couldn’t extend his arm that far. He thought he’d be frozen in that reaching position forever, that he had left Temporary Hell for the Permanent One.

There were many ways to interpret this event. Most soldiers probably would have decided that God had saved him for a purpose--to serve Him, that once he left the Army, he should be a minister or a missionary. My father became a gambler. We never had to use food stamps again. His luck held for a long time.

He felt like he was ten feet tall. My mother was shrinking. Anxiety made her hair and teeth fall out. She was clearly approaching death. Have you made a pact with the Devil, I asked my father. He laughed at me. He lifted my mother onto his shoulders and rode her around the back yard, as if she were a disabled Girl Scout in uniform or a wax saint on a narrow street in Spain, or Queen for the Day.

He knocked over the barbeque grill. The coals glowed red. Before I asked him about the Devil, he was about to grill fish with their heads on and their eyes wide, like his were after that tank blew up. There in the backyard, he was barefoot. He was fooling around, trying to make my mother think that he was going to flip her off his shoulders, or just drop her. She shrieked in his ear.

I felt a whiff of melancholy. I wanted to punch someone in the face. I stood, deathly tired. My mother bit his ear, as if she were a chimpanzee. She would have torn his face off if it weren’t so tightly attached. He walked across the hot coals that spread out from the toppled barbeque. He didn’t plan it, he was just wheeling around like a crazy man. The barbeque was old and rusty and a wheel had fallen off. He was the first man in the modern West to walk across hot coals. I saw astonishment on his face--not pain, or not enough to concern him.

I grew up, became hyper-individualistic, detached, a person who takes his boots off and trims his toenails with a Leatherman when he gets nervous. My father couldn’t get blown up in a tank, couldn’t be burned by hot coals. No wonder he didn’t become a missionary. No wonder he felt more powerful than God, felt it more than thought it. God kept trying to screw him over, but he kept coming through everything unscathed. I would not be that lucky.

Bio

Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois has had over twelve-hundred of his poems and fictions appear in literary magazines in the U.S. and abroad. He has been nominated for numerous prizes.  His novel, Two-Headed Dog, based on his work as a clinical psychologist in a state hospital, is available for Kindle and Nook, or as a print edition. To see more of his work, google Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois. He lives in Denver.

Break Even Stan

 This is a very old story which I submitted only a couple of times without success. I never though much of it. It's a bit of a 'so what' story, but I thought I'd share it with you because reading it made me aware of how far I've come as a writer, and how I have changed. What do you think?

Break Even Stan

by

D.A. Cairns

Stan Ledlin stood staring in disbelief at the monitor.  The race was over.  Running a large hand through his thick brown hair, he trudged out the door of the Kirrawee TAB.  He tore up the tickets and threw them into a garbage bin.

   

‘Hey Stan!’

   

He stopped and turned, lifting his hand to greet his friend Theo.

   

‘Did you blow much mate?’

   

The two men shook hands and Stan looked at Theo’s face briefly before settling his gaze over his shoulder.

‘You win some, you lose some,’ said Stan with a shrug.  ‘I come out even in the end.’        Theo nodded and gave Stan a good natured punch on the arm.  ‘You always break even Stan.  I gotta go.  See you later.’

  

‘Yeah, see you,’ replied Stan with a smile.  He did usually break even and that was

good enough.  It was a bit of fun.  Something for a single man to do in his spare time.  Beat the hell out of staying home and watching the walls.  Eating alone.  Drinking alone.

   

His girlfriend Jean came over a few nights a week to cook for him but she never stayed the night, although he wished she would.

   

Stan tugged at his belt to lift his sagging trousers and made a feeble attempt to tuck his shirt in.  Then he shuffled across the quiet street and entered the take-away shop where he bought a hamburger.  Jean nagged him about his love for  junk food and the effect it was having on his waistline but he ate it anyway.  It was convenient and tasty. Years of bachelorhood had made Stan a competent cook but he could not be bothered.

   

He was aware of his spare tyre belly and he grew a bushy beard to hide his second chin but generally Stan was unconcerned about his appearance.

   

Sitting down at the bus stop outside the shop, Stan munched on his hamburger and contemplated  life.  A persistent restlessness plagued him.  He didn’t know why after so many years of happily rolling along with his simple life, he should begin to feel dissatisfied.  Stan was in a rut.  His comfortable routines were suffocating him.

After wiping barbecue sauce off his mouth and brushing crumbs out of his beard, Stan stood up and made his way to the train station.  His mates would be expecting him at the Gymea Hotel.

Early in the afternoon the pub had only a handful of patrons.  Stan saw John Miles standing at the bar so he strode over and offered to shout the next round.

    

John was mildly surprised.  ‘Did you have a win this arvo?’

   

‘No,’ replied Stan. ‘I came out even.’

   

‘I thought you must’ve hit the big time.  You never offer to pay.’

   

Stan was happy to pay his share but he always waited his turn and if his turn never came that was okay by him.  Whenever he stood in the TAB, tickets in hand and heart in mouth, he imagined how good it would be to win big and shout not only his mates but everyone else in the pub.  The man who chases fantasies lacks judgment. Which wise man smart arse said that? Bloody horses were always spoiling his dreams.

   

‘Even Stan!’ yelled one of the blokes at the table, ‘What’s wrong?  Not like you to be so quiet.’

   

His mate John could read him like a book, unfortunately. ‘Nothing,’ he lied before taking another mouthful of beer from his half empty schooner.

‘Seen Jean lately Stan?’ John asked.

   

‘Yeah she was over last night.’

   

‘When you gonna marry her?’ asked another bloke.

   

‘Pull your head in Chris,’ said John as Stan retreated to his now near empty glass.

   

‘Your shout Chris,’ ordered Stan while giving Chris a mind-your-own-business look.                       If there was a good reason for Stan not asking Jean to marry him he wished someone would tell him.  She would definitely say yes.  He did love her.  They had been together for three years and everyone said they were right for each other.  At forty two years of age maybe he was afraid. His head hurt when he thought of how much his life would change if he married her.  He didn’t really understand what Jean saw in a stubborn slob like himself.  And he was worried that living together would ruin their relationship.  Was there a chance though, of losing her if he didn’t propose?  Possibly.

   

As the minutes passed the picture became clearer.  Stan downed his beer in one go then said goodbye to his mates and left.

   

Exhilarated by the prospect of breaking out of his shell and taking a chance, Stan went to the payphone outside the hotel and called Jean.  He asked her to come over that night because he had something important to say.

 Feeling like his luck was about to change, Stan called in to the TAB on his way home for one last bet.  An omen bet.  A nag called My Bonnie Bride was running in the last at long odds.  Stan laid his money down and waited for the starters gun.

Jean was very pleased with the wonderful dinner Stan had prepared for her and completely overwhelmed when he popped the question.  Naturally she said yes and when they finished kissing and hugging, Stan announced that he would have two pieces of good news for the boys tomorrow.

   

‘What’s the other one?’ asked Jean.

   

‘I backed a horse called My Bonnie Bride.  She came in first at 50 to 1.  I won ten thousand dollars!’

A Sympathetic Interlocutor

A Sympathetic Interlocutor

by

D.A. Cairns

Decorated was the word that first came to mind when he noticed her cheeks. Breaking eye contact only very briefly because he wanted to hold her gaze as long as possible, the strange patterns on her cheeks caught his attention. They might have been scars, burn scars or, had they been located somewhere else on her body, the kind of scars left after a surgical attempt to remove tattoos. The thought intrigued him for a moment and suspended the moment of greeting in time.

Suddenly aware of her soft hand inside his, he let go and stepped back gesturing for her to take a seat. When he had settled himself opposite her, he saw that she was watching him and he instinctively stiffened. Her eyes were huge, round and dark chocolate. Adorned with lid liner and shadow, her lashes were spruced and unnaturally thick, and she would have elicited a comment in his mind about her being overdone had she been someone else. Had they been somewhere else. Everything seemed different. He felt different. She shifted her weight slightly and tilted her head to the right, apparently waiting for him to speak.

Embarrassed, he cleared his throat and summoned sufficient strength to concentrate on what he was supposed to be doing. But even as he spoke, those funny marks on her cheeks wrestled for his attention. They could have been freckles, although they were lightly coloured in contrast to her olive complexion, but not single freckles gathered together in clumps. More like thousands of them packed into adjacent rooms for all night dance parties. This thought amused him, and his accidental smile was returned warmly and sincerely. This woman was breathtaking. Not classically beautiful because of her cheeks and the way her thick black hair was held away from her face in a clumsy ponytail -she looked like she had spent all her preparation time on her face and not left enough to do her hair properly. She was indisputably stunning nevertheless.

‘Why are you here?’ he asked her. ‘Why have you come here today?’

‘Well,’ she began slowly, finally looking away and thus releasing him from the spell she was casting over him. ‘I think I need to improve my reading and writing.”

A perfectly constructed sentence delivered in a languid Middle Eastern accent. Improve, he thought, how could you improve on perfection?

‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘Is not being able to read and write as well as you would like to stopping you from doing something you want to do. Like further study, for example?’

She thought for a moment, averting her eyes and thus giving him the chance to study her more closely. From her full lips dressed in red, over her chin and down her slender neck, his eyes stopped when they reached a golden angel sitting astride her cleavage. The line of the thin chain which suspended the angel matched the low vee cut of her white dress.

‘I would like to go back to work now that my children are older.’

He loved the way information was revealed slowly during these interviews, morsel by juicy morsel, peeling away the layers of protection, the walls people built around their personal lives. Those walls invariably crashed to the floor as the interview progressed. Whether verbally, in their speech or their writing, or non verbally in their body language, they communicated their lives to him, their hearts and minds and he was an avid reader.

‘How old are your children?’

‘I have three. Thirteen, eleven, and nine. All girls.’

It was impossible not to stare as the enchantment grew, filling the room like fog. He had thought she was probably aged in her early thirties. It was hard to tell sometimes, especially with women who were able to hide their age so much more efficiently than men. However with children that age she was more likely to be in her late thirties, even early fortes though that was scarcely believable. Desperately curious to confirm his suspicions that she was older than she looked, he selected a piece of paper from the pile on the desk which filled the space between them and placed it in front of her.

‘Please fill in this form.’

Date of birth was the fourth question so he watched eagerly as she wrote, his eyes glancing occasionally past her hands with jewelled fingers, to her breasts which seemed to have risen higher, threatening to spill out of her dress. Maybe it was the way she was sitting, leaning forward with her arms pressed tight into her sides.

She wrote 11/9/64. He wanted to tell her how surprised he was that she was forty three and how beautiful she looked but he couldn’t. How could one compliment a woman without her thinking that you were a pervert at worst, or a sleaze at best? The words would always be construed as flattery with intent, no matter how politely you phrased them. How could one be sure in himself that the words were merely a genuine compliment and not expressions of desire, or worse: lust? How could he be sure? There was a place, an inside world where he could be alone with his thoughts and feelings, where he could sift through memories and adjust them as necessary and use them however he wished. A place to fantasize and twist reality to feed his insatiable lust.  It was a place of both refuge and repression. A haven and a hell.

The interview proceeded normally; she answered questions, did the tasks, the reading, the writing and the mathematics while he filled in forms, ticked boxes, interpreted and analysed both her and her work, made her laugh, made her blush, made himself blush with his boldness, noticed the delicate chain around her ankle and her painted toenails, and averted his eyes when she needed to adjust her clothing to recover what was being gradually, conspiratorially revealed. All the while he wondered whether the chemistry he felt between them was real or imagined, and whether the way she tilted her head and played with her hair was flirtatious or merely absent minded. He even went so far as to suggest they could go on talking for the rest of the day, and she had agreed, and although the exchange was light hearted he felt the words expressed genuine sentiment. He really did enjoy her company. This admission was followed by a fist of guilt jabbing him in the ribs a few times. He was married and so was she.

‘The interview is finished now. You can go and have a nice cup of coffee. Thanks for your time and good luck,’ he said, slowly standing up.

She smiled as he took her soft hand in his and he wished her well a second time.

They stood behind the door in the small interview room savouring a ridiculously long good-bye. The truth was he did not want her to go and she was in no hurry to leave. In the pregnant silence, he began to feel dizzy and was still holding her hand when he opened his mouth to speak. Nothing but air escaped his nervously dry lips, and soon he felt as though he was drowning, like he had fallen into the deep, deep pools of her eyes and they had magically stolen his ability to swim. Seconds passed recklessly into what felt like long minutes as they stood there. Still, no words were spoken and the door to the outside world remained firmly shut.

Finally he released her hand, more from the carelessness of drowsy enchantment than deliberate action, and she looked away. The moment was over. The spell, shattered.

‘Goodbye,’ she said quietly as she opened the door. ‘Thank you.’

He swallowed and managed a very faint, ‘You’re welcome. Good luck.’

Then she left the room and walked away down the corridor. Away from him, away from the mysterious connection they had just undoubtedly shared. He smiled. She was now a new resident in his inside world. A traveller who had landed on his planet and not been allowed to leave, despite wanting to. A fellow prisoner, though not consciously aware of the fact, or even vaguely impacted by the reality of her incarceration.

‘Liliane,’ he breathed wistfully. ‘Goodbye Liliane.’

He sat down, and when he had completed the paperwork and written in his comments and recommendations, he collected all her papers and placed them neatly together inside a red manila folder. He closed the folder and read her name one last time.