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.

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.

The Ocelot and The Three Mikes, Installment #2

 The Ocelot and The Three Mikes, Installment #2 

Short Fiction (as usual: in progress, blemishes and all, minimally edited) by Jennifer McAuley

And so the story of  Beverly and Jeff, Grandmother and Grandson, continues. See my last post for the beginning of the story. Full disclosure: I may go back and edit old posts. After all, these are all works in progress . . .

Fire Curl Twins

After switching to the car, they stopped only twice. Once to grab necessities at a squatting strip mall with a grocery store and a Walmart, and then to pick up the twins. Sandy and the kids were sitting on the front steps waiting, front door wide and letting in flies, basking in the summer sun that had arrived so early that year.

“Your Dad’s been calling, leaving messages, says you’ve kidnapped your Grandma?” Sandy stood, pushing Kaleb’s back pack toward Jeffery. The twins disappeared into the house to collect their shoes and afterthoughts.

“You say anything?” Under his sunglasses she could see his eyes blink once, twice, but couldn’t make out their shape.

“Nah.” Sandy’s green eyes drifted to the Cherokee where Beverly’s white corona of hair bobbed above the dash.

Sandy knew how to keep secrets. Jeffery paid her every month, double what he had to legally. In cash. More if she needed it. Mostly punctual picking up Samantha and Kaleb. Whenever he could be. And he was great with the kids. Sandy wished he had loved her half as much as he loved the twins. She had figured out long ago Jeffery’s vines twisted in the opposite direction, nothing she could so about that.

“Well, don’t.” he said. “not a word.” She squinted at him then, trying to read him through the lenses, studying his mouth which was a grim line. She planted kisses on the children when they re-emerged, forced them into hugs, though they were excited to go.

“Go on then. But Jeff? We need to talk soon, ok?” Samantha and Kaleb had settled in the Cherokee’s dusty back seats and Beverly had rolled down the window to wave at Sandy.

East

They waved out the windows and headed east. Sky, water and lots of green. Emerald, olive, moss, smaragdine. Close enough that the drive couldn’t be called arduous. Far enough that cel phones didn’t work. Close enough that there was a paved road for a while, far enough that once the pavement ran out there was a long curl of gravel. There were neighbors, close enough that they might hear the occasional dog barking or the echo of a shotgun, far enough that conversations were private and the curtains could be left open.

They got to the cabin before dusk. They stood on the wood deck that Grandpa Al had built watching the sky go crazy before it let go of the sun. The sunset was reflected, upside down and backwards, in the still lake. The twins’ red curls clutched at the light making it appear as though their heads had caught fire. Beverly used Al’s old walker to shuffle around, inspecting for weak spots in the wood. Then she sat down on a rusted deck chair and studied her favorite grandson and her two great grandkids as they watched the sky. Her eyes landed again on Jeffery’s leather vest, the fearsome cat that had defined his whole adult life. After a moment she turned and said, “Did I ever tell you story about the Golden Ocelot?”

The Cabin

After a simple dinner, steamy Ramen noodles floating with snap peas, the twins settled onto the old sagging sofa in the dusty cabin, leaving the recliner for Beverly. The cabin had not been used much in recent years, but other than the dust, it was just as Beverly remembered. The long bookshelf along one wall, the pine walls that stared out everywhere with knotty, contorted faces. The curtains she had sewn out of Al’s old ties, a celebration of his retirement. The oval rag-rug her mother had made on the plywood floor Al never got the chance to finish properly. The gun cabinet, also of pine, locked tight and beckoning to her from it’s corner by the river rock fireplace.

Jeffery set about tidying up in the small kitchen, his hands lingering in the soapy water, his eyes drifting to the dusky field and darkening forest framed by the small window above the sink. Beverly’s lilting voice reminded him of his time with her as a boy. Wild stories, either about riding horses and shooting gophers or about foreign lands and magical creatures. They were the catechism of his childhood, a Sunday School that really mattered, if he had only managed to listen a little deeper. He had been distracted by his own fantasy, by the escape. The Ocelots.

“Many people believe,” Beverly started, “that Ocelots are found only in the humid jungles of South America, where the Mayan pyramids reach up to the sky in jagged steps. You’ve seen those in pictures, right? Hundreds of little steps like rows of pointy teeth.” Jeffery glanced over to see one garnet head nodding up and down, the other side to side. “Well, tomorrow, if you’re so inclined, you can probably find more about them in one of those.” She waved a hand towards the roughly hewn bookshelf filled with dated National Geographics, their yellow spines monopolizing three whole rows. On the shelf above those, a set of ancient encyclopedias, cream faux leather with fancy gold script, the edges of the pages gilded.

“In the ancient world there was a rare and mystical creature that lived in the far east. It was the Golden Ocelot, born in the Papyrus marshes that used to exist there, back before all of Egypt turned to sand. . .”

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