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/ 

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.

Pirates, Part 1 (excerpt)

This is an except from "Pirates." This is a story that is told from four separate character perspectives: A former flamenco dancer named Althea; her teacher-husband Tim; teenager, selfie-taking Turner; and, beat-boxing Diego.  Oh, and of course there might be Pirates.

Tim Morgan

The Medusa Virus, that’s what he had nicknamed it. Tim would never say that out loud, though. Especially not to Althea. Joking was no longer allowed. The words she threw at him. Chop, chop. Sharp like a cutlass. She threw objects at him too: old records like throwing stars, once a potted plant.

Tim scrubbed half-dried egg yolk off the garage door before she found it. He tossed the burning bag of dog crap sitting by the front door, grateful she had slept through the doorbell. Now he sat in his SUV, stalling before heading home from his job, back to the real work of handling Althea.

Those kids she blamed, they weren’t bad, he had taught almost every one of them at one point or another. She spent so many hours now, sitting at the window, watching them walk to school. It was her opera seria, the neighbourhood in three acts. The school kids were an easy target for her ire. Everyday they migrated, like the Great Blue Heron that flew over the neighbourhood, east to west in the morning then back again at dusk.

There was Diego, so dark he’d disappear at night, tiny like his mom, singing all the time. Sweet kid. Althea hated his headphones. Adam, hair like the straw at the end of broom. A twit, no question. But a rifle? Althea said she saw it sticking out of his backpack. When Tim saw him slouch up the sidewalk he said, “watch it, young man,” just in case. Loyalty, it mattered. Althea was the love of his life.

Young man. His father used to call him that. As in, you, young man, are in trouble. Tim let out a weasily giggle and glanced at the brown, bottle shaped bag he had flung on the passenger seat.  He caught his own eyes in the rear view. He needed to shave. His face was red, raw looking, as if he had a sun burn or had bathed in brine. Sand was crusted in the corners of his eyes.

When he really was a young man, his parents drove into the city through the east side. The bums stumbled and swayed and sat in circles at Pigeon Park, swilling from brown paper bags. It was right there, this foreign land, just around the corner from the scrubbed tourists. All it took was a wrong turn, an innocent semi circle. Imagine the horror, one minute they’re watching the steam clock blow and the next they’re tripping over drunks, passed out in guano-splattered sleeping bags. Trying not to make eye contact with the panhandlers, eyes empty like craters on the moon. He said: “Bottles in the bags? Do they think they’re fooling anyone?”

He picked up the bottle and untwisted the cap, poured the amber liquid into his stainless travel mug. He stuffed the bottle back into the wrinkled bag then pushed it under the passenger seat. In the mirror he saw an old man.