A Thin Line

I've spent most of this crazy year in semi-isolation, head down, working on my novel. I literally have not written even one, teeny-weeny short story. Sure, maybe I've dabbled, but my focus has been pretty singular. So, it was nice to see my short story, A Thin Line, published and out there in the world for people to read. 

In this story, I wanted to explore the push-pull heart-wrench of a lost familial relationship. Like they say, the opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. And when we've loved someone or something, it seems impossible to be indifferent. No matter how wrought the relationship, no matter how many years pass, there's something that still binds us together.

Below is a excerpt from A Thin Line, but if you want to read the whole thing, hurry over to CAROUSEL Literary Magazine, Issue 44, it should be up a while longer. By the way, CAROUSEL is "hybrid literature for mutant readers."  What a great tag line!

True Confession: I don't usually post works in their entirety because then I may not be eligible to have them published by a magazine or publisher. So, this is your chance to read the whole story.

A Thin Line

It’s her. Even from this distance — through the reflecting glass of the café’s windows, across the busy street, through the throng of pedestrians and people waiting for their morning buses — I recognize her.

I stare hard, wanting confirmation even though I don't need any. I'd know her anywhere.

Truth is, I haven't thought about her in ages. I try not to think about her in general. Live in the moment like a Buddhist monk. Hi-yaa! In this moment, my toes are soaking. Freezing too because I spent forever slopping through the slushy rain to be here for the morning shift, needing some coin, so I can buy what Laz and I like to call, “a fisherman's breakfast”. Whatever we can catch.

Jesus. It is her.

Her hair’s a little grayer, probably thanks to me. Ha!

I shake my cup and work the morning rush, real gracious and trying to hit that perfect note between dignified and pitiful. Working the crowd, trying not to look her way. The whoosh of the train overhead wipes out the sound. It’s hard to ask for money when no one can hear you, so I stop for a beat, glancing over.

She's still there.

My mind is so clear it's painful. I notice everything. My freezing toes, going numb in my boots. My tingling head, itchy under my hat. My humming body, twitchy, coming down from last night. Usually, I have a little something in the morning to take the edge off. If I had been able to start the day right, I bet I wouldn't have even noticed her. My eyes tripped on her before my mind registered what was happening. There was some magical, crazy-ass pattern of movements and poses, strung up like laundry flapping on a line, together in familial sequence.

Even now, as I watch her, everything she does feels ridiculously familiar. Her brow scrunched in concentration, a pencil (chewed, I bet) tucked behind her ear; dainty hands lifting a cup (not paper, no drink and walk); the simultaneous shrug of rounded shoulders and the satisfied frown after she sips. Muscle memory? No, that's not right. Organ memory? Are eyes an organ?

Even through all the static I picked her out of the crowd. Even though I wasn't looking. It's like I heard her beating heart. Cue the jaws music. Bu-bump. Bu-bump. Bu-bump.

Want more? Here's the link: http://carouselmagazine.ca/issue44/ 

Re-wilding, an excerpt from my current work in progress

 Holly wiped her brow. Her stomach was rolling seawater, her mouth a desert. The truck rumbled over the rough road. Her back ached from the strain of too many hours spent sitting. She had never driven so far, for so many hours. She placed a palm on her stomach, a wizard performing a spell, her imaginary baby-bump a crystal ball. The sickness remained, but the weight of her own hand grounded her, kept her from floating out the window, over the endless bush and forest, back to the relative comfort and convenience of the city. Maybe her sister Cedar was right. Half-right, anyway. Traveling in her condition was madness.

⇼⇼

“I don’t understand why you’re doing this,” Cedar had said, the night Holly had announced their departure. Kenneth had been in the kitchen, basting a chicken. Cedar and Holly were sitting on the sagging couch in the living room. The whole apartment smelled of roasting chicken and herbs; a smell that Holly usually loved but was making her slightly queasy. Outside the apartment windows, the senso-lights had flickered on one by one, warming the darkening city. Projected advertisements danced on distant walls.

“Heaven knows it isn’t perfect here, but we have what you need, a hospital, doctors—” Her sister’s cheeks bloomed pink, her mouth contorted into a frown. “You won’t have that there.”

“Ken is a doctor,” Holly had argued feebly, detesting how fragile her voice sounded.

“What about the bandits, Northerners? There are no peacekeepers up there.” Outside an alarm wailed, an angry shout echoed against the buildings.

“Ken’s been to camps before. It’s safe, safer than here really. Cedar, it’s beautiful. You can dip a net in a lake and the fish jump right into it. It’s clean. At night, you can see stars. It’s better, better than here. Can’t you see? That’s why we’re going.” Her hand floated to her belly.

Cedar wasn’t listening. 

“If anything goes wrong out there—” She shook her head. “And I’m here. To help. There, you’ll be in the middle of nowhere, with no family. It’s insane. It’s still a dangerous place. You don’t know anyone; you have no experience living in the wild.”

Holly shook her head. “I’ll learn.” Her voice deflated as she continued. “Can’t you try to be happy for us?”

“I’m too worried to be happy for you. What if you—after—what if you’re—like last time?” Cedar shook her head again. Her skin was pale, like Holly’s, splashed with cinnamon freckles. On her cheek there was a Bloomers mark, a star burst of raised skin. Her curly red hair had been scooped up in a bun. Her blue eyes had looked moist. “And you’ll stick out there, more so than here even.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“What about me, then? Huh? You’re my only family too.”

Holly bent her neck, studying her hands. “I’m sorry.” What else could she say? It was true. Family was important, she was lucky to have a sister, lucky to have Cedar.

“You’ve always been a follower, sis. A romantic. I know you love Ken and he’s convinced you—”

“He didn’t convince me,” Holly countered. She felt her throat constrict. She hated this. “Look, I don’t want to fight.” Now that she was upset it was impossible for her to articulate. How could she explain anyway? How could she explain how much she wanted a child, how much she feared that another flu or fever would sweep through the city and kill them? Or that the chemicals and pollution would affect the pin-sized fetus that she was carrying? That another conflict with the Americans or Albertans might grip the city, the way it had when she was a child? How could she explain that she loathed the city, that she wanted more, and that she simply couldn’t endure another disappointment? No, she could not have this baby in the city.

“You’re running.” Cedar shifted away from Holly. She eyed the glass of water Kenneth had placed on the coffee table, then lifted her head, staring out the window, into the shadowy street.

“Are you thirsty?”

Cedar shrugged. Holly carried the glass to the kitchen, poured the water out, refilled it from the tap. Kenneth raised his gaze from the cutting board and mouthed “Okay?”

Holly shook her head, no. She returned to the  living room, held the glass out to her sister. Cedar took the glass and sipped. Her eyes were fluorescent against their red rims.

“We’ve done our research, we’re not going in blind. I know it’ll be hard, ” Holly mumbled. “ But it’s an opportunity. An adventure.”

Cedar let out a grunt and folded her arms across her chest. “You sound like a Bloomer. You sound like Mom.” It was the ultimate insult. Holly placed an arm across her belly and sighed. Cedar always got the last word.

It didn’t matter. She wasn’t going to argue. Holly was going. She was gone. And Cedar would just have to forgive her.

The Dusts (excerpt)

Setting can make all the difference in setting the tone of a story. I'm a visual person and often write stories inspired by landscape. This piece of speculative fiction is mostly about Ethan, the narrator's long-dead brother, but the landscape is almost a character in its own right. The dim, dusty backdrop sets the stage for the siblings formative years. 

The Years of Night. That's what we called them. Although it wasn't the kind of night we knew years ago, when I was a small child. It was more like a permanent haze, an erasure of stars. One day the Big Star forgot to rise. The next day it did the same. After that, crops failed. The forests suffocated, struggling onward, trees stunted, foliage brownish gold. At least, that’s what happened here, in the mid-continent.

My mother had picture books, made before. She spent hours reading them to Ethan and me as children. In the books, the trees are garish, painted bright, bright green. The skies unnatural blue. There is the Big Star, of course. The lost sun, not a bulb behind a dusty pane, but hanging there, often drawn with a smile or wearing a pair of goggles. No, that's not right. We called them sunglasses.

The world wasn’t like those pictures. I was there, and though it was a long time ago and I was very little, I would remember colours like that. The sun didn't wear glasses of course. But the people did. Sunglasses. Like spectacles, only the lenses were tinted. Can you imagine? The Big Star was that bright! And the colours were infinite, so bountiful that they were taken for granted, many left unnamed.

With The Dusts, the landscapes lost their crisp corners and contrast. The blacks bled into white, greens into reds, indigos into yellows, until everything was soaked and brown. Everything we observed, everything we knew, was filtered through The Dusts. Forests eventually turned into clumps of standing spears, rampikes ready for lightening to burn.

Ethan was nine and I was six when the crops were moved indoor so that the growings could be done in shelters. All the grown-ups complained: dreary, they said. My brother and I adapted. Ethan taught me what my parents could not. We approached our world with fascination when all the adults could see was entropy.

That was the thing about Ethan. Curiosity was his defining feature. It ruled everything he did. When you have that kind of thirst, it leaves no room for the baser levels of personality: ignorance, judgement, bitterness, lethargy. Sometimes it made it seem as though he cared more for ideas than for people. That wasn’t the case. He was simply preoccupied.

I had friends at school, for Ethan it was harder. Something about him spelled difference, and children are like animals, they scent difference from a great distance. He was never disliked outright, only gently cast out, which he never noticed or minded. His mind was on broader things: the movements of the invisible stars, the echo of molecules, the polarities of the earth and the jigsaw of numbers that hummed a foreign language in his synapses. As for me, life was simple. I kept an eye out for beauty and I kept my hands busy. I’ll tell you this: I always enjoyed my brother’s company best.

Walking the Beach

This is a little story inspired by a writing prompt I did with my writing group. It is a fun slice of fictional narrative that is a bit meta - a writer writing about a writer and writing. Enjoy!

    It’s cold out, the wind whipping the ocean into a frenzy. Still, Daisy needs walking and I best do it before the sun slips down the horizon and the daylight is gone. I shove my feet into my rubber boots, feeling like a failure. I shrug into my jacket and we’re off, my dog full of the enthusiasm I lack. I was supposed to be writing today. Spinning my imagination into gold.

     I sat at my desk for nearly an hour, staring out at the choppy grey waves waiting for inspiration. I folded laundry. Wrote two hundred words, deleted them, started again. I swept the floor. Wrote fifty more. Deleted. I sat on the third to bottom step and counted my losses: my father, my best friend, my favorite sweater, a five-dollar bill, my sense of humor.

     I’m not sure where it has gone -- the idea I worked out last night when I was supposed to be sleeping. Something about a one-legged clown falling in love with a totem-pole carver. The one-legged clown wiping off his make up. The carver glistening, wood chips collecting in her long black hair.

    It was good, really. Brilliant even. The setting evocative: a Ferris wheel being built, a dust storm in the desert, the taste of salt in the air.

     On the beach, the dog bounds ahead, crashing into the waves and then jumping back again as if the novelty of the ocean surprises her. Ecstasy. Ah, to be a dog. The wind is biting and I’m waking up from my fugue state, my word-rich coma. My clown. I’ll name him Circuit. He will fry eggs with his electric fingers.

     I find a suitable stick and throw it for Daisy. She bounds after it, into the crashing surf. Happier than a moment ago, if possible. We play this back and forth game until finally she loses interest. We continue along the beach. She starts digging. At first, I don’t notice because I’m naming the totem-carver. Aleka . . . it means “she who makes the wood speak.”

     I’ve kept walking and Daisy’s not catching up. She’s nosing something frantically. Paws working the sand, inhaling in greedy breaths. I make my way to her and kneel. Something metal, rusty. I brush away the sand. It’s a box, metal, with blooms of rust decorating the top, the corners are sharp. There is a looped clasp, no lock.

     I unclasp the latch. Inside there’s a book. Perfectly preserved as though that rusty box is waterproof. On the cover there is clown in white face. The title of the book is titled “Circuit.” I turn the book over. A tragic love story between a one-legged clown and a totem pole carver, set in the desert during a sand-storm.

    Daisy and I walk on, toward the middle distance, where I see them erecting a Ferris wheel on the board walk, the taste of salt in the air.

Abandoned: Excerpt from Novel In Progress by Jennifer McAuley

Abandoned Places (excerpt from a work-in-progress) by Jennifer McAuley

We all think of the west coast as the land of perpetual grey. Swollen clouds and weeping skies, puddles you can fall into and sink so deep you end up in an alternate dimension. I think when you grow up there, when you’re a child, you take it all with a grain of salt. I don’t remember my formative years as particularly wet, in fact I think, maybe because the drip, drip, dripping becomes a sort of soothing metronome drumming out the beats of time, it becomes as normal and reassuring as a heart beat. It’s the blood softly circulating in your veins, you take the rain for granted.

In 93, David Duchovny was probably hanging out at the Orange, watching strippers, between shooting scenes for the Xfiles and Robert Pickton was dropping body parts in the wetlands across the highway from the Ruskin gas station. I’m sure it rained a lot, like it always does, but I remember that year as warm and sunny. That was the year I fell in love with Aaron. If there was rain it was drowned out by the pounding in my chest as we practiced being together for the rest of our lives, though we didn’t have a clue and didn’t bother worrying about forever because we were so young.

Aaron wasn’t the kind of guy I usually noticed. He was quiet, at least until you took the time to get to know him. He dressed and moved and spoke in a way that made him invisible, nondescript. There are people like that in high school, when you think back. They don’t stand out, they blend in. There is a magic and an art to this trick, to this blending. Not everyone can do it. The bullies and opposite sex miss them completely, it’s as though they lack some vital pheromone that alerts predators.  When you finally do notice them, when they reach out, a hand slipping between the folds on their invisibility cloak to touch you, it’s doubly shocking. Not only because of the shiver of electric energy ripping down your body, but because all of sudden you become aware of your own festering myopia. 

It was like that with Aaron. When I finally looked at him, really looked at him, it was a revelation. He was blinding and beautiful. He was the sun. And when you grow up on the West Coast you get a punch drunk on sun, let’s be honest. On sunny days you skip school to wipe the water from the neglected park benches and bask lizard-like in the sun. Out of the 354 days each year you see it, what, maybe 90? Most of the time we were curled up like embryos listening to precipitative heartbeat of the mother ship but on sunny days we were born, again and again. Maybe that’s why I remember my childhood as mostly sunny.