I did some digital house cleaning this week. Scoured through digital
folders where I keep short story ideas. I found eight potentials that will
never go beyond the title and the first few paragraphs. Rather than keep them hidden, I
thought I’d share.
Cimco Lewis
Old man Cimco has cold hands and a warm heart.
Little Stories
A small ad in the classifieds:
Mail me a sheet of
clean white paper, with any one word typewritten in the centre. Include $5. I
will send you a story within a week.
Dozens of people followed these instructions. None were
disappointed.
Book Club
The room has
plain white walls. No windows. We occupy five chairs, arranged in a circle. Our
moderator wears a black tie.
“Today we
will orchestrate dialogue in a counter-clockwise direction,” he says.
A murble.
“The rules
have been previously explained,” he says. “Now let us begin.”
The Hospital For
Minor Complaints
A petty grumble can indicate serious psychological distress.
Paper cut?
Broken heart.
Sore knee?
Loss of ambition.
We provide daubs of ointment for abrasions of the soul.
Joy
I eventually learned she had dabbed Sunlight dish liquid
behind her ears, just before our first date.
"You smell good," I said, when I was close enough
to make an accurate assessment. I kissed her ear lobe. "It's like no
perfume I'm familiar with. You smell --"
"Clean?" she suggested.
I stopped for a moment and looked at Joy. "Yeah."
She was anything but her namesake.
Until You Can Turn No
Further
The rain became larger.
“The drops are so big,” she said. “They’re like little
fish.”
Silvery water fish danced outside her window. She stuck out
her hand and caught one. But it turned soft, a puddle in her palm where once
was a rainfish.
Destroying Green
Towers
The notice slid beneath my apartment door on a Thursday
evening. It was straightforward, except for this:
Tenants are the true energy of any building. Yet when a building is
sick and in need of replacement, we abandon it. Rather than letting strangers
with no emotional attachment to this place destroy our building, I think there
is a better way.
“That kook wants us to tear down our own damn apartments,” Kelly
said in the hallway, two days later.
The notice promised it would be a celebration. A chance to release
old ghosts and terrible arguments trapped behind walls. A final visit with our
memories, good and ill.
A meeting was inevitable. The landlord was offering a
six-month notice of demolition and a relocation offer for all residents. Still,
no one was happy.
A Number of Birds
Five thousand blackbirds, unable to fly, drop toward the
ground.
Blackbirds against blacktop. Atop white roofs. Into blue
ocean.
The loss of flight, a sudden inability to flap wings, this
loss of birdness, worse than death.
The blackbirds bruise the city in every possible location.
