Working and Breathing and Living and Dying

(Short Story)

You wake up in a tent and you can see soft puffs of your own breath floating above your sleeping bag.

Standing over you is your former boss just as you remember her, sipping on coffee and asking what you’ll be working on today.

You run out the tent because you can’t stand to be around the cunt for another fucking second, but when you get outside you step into a white void, oblivion. It’s not even curious blackness that you could wander and get lost in. You know too well the loneliness of this nothing.

You go back inside the tent because maybe being around that witch is better than dying alone, but she’s not there anymore because even she has found something else. Instead you’re joined by yet another former boss who tells you that you need to prove yourself if you want that raise you so richly deserve. That bastard, you think, he’s been here two fucking months and I’ve got five years on the job and a master’s degree. He can go to Hell, but then, then you realize he’s not their either. It’s just you and all you’ve got are some shitty memories of how hard you worked but how at the end of the day none of it mattered one iota.

This is terror.

 

Stop and smell what exactly?

This is a non-fiction rant I wrote after reading some magazine article telling me to stop and appreciate life.

If life is a gift then poverty is a drunk urinating on the gift before the wrapping paper is even taken off. For too many, this gift of life isn’t enjoyed not because they push themselves too hard, but because the circumstances of their individual lives are simply miserable. They struggle to survive. They’re not clocking extra time at the office to earn a raise or a bonus. They’re working a second job at Walmart because the collections agencies won’t stop calling.

You can’t swing a dead cat without finding some written work admonishing people to stop and smell the roses. How about making it a little easier for others to enjoy life?

Working too hard leadss to spiritual deprivation, no doubt. But why do we work too hard? Sure, some of us work too hard because we want too much or we want too much for our kids. Some of us though, work too hard because there ain’t no other option.

We’re All Going to Burn

The woman and the girl ran to keep from burning. They saw a small wooden shed in the distance. For the moment, it wasn’t on fire.

They went in and huddled into a corner. It was dark inside aside from the embers that showed through the cracked wooden walls. They covered themselves with a wool blanket the woman carried with her. Once they were under the blanket the woman held the girl close. The girl reached to hold her hand.

“Thank you for being with me,” said the girl.

The woman saw a giant flame fall to the ground nearby. She could hear people screaming. “Well, thank you for being with me. You close your eyes now.”

Though dotted with racing flames, the sky was darker than it had ever been before.

“It’s okay,” said the girl.

“Yep, it is.”

She looked up. “I don’t mean it the way you mean it.”

Fire fell closer this time. They could hear it crackle. “What are you talking about?”

“When you say its okay you mean that we aren’t going to burn. When I say its okay, I know we are going to burn. But that’s okay.”

The woman sighed. Ever since she found the girl filthy and living off garbage the girl could always tell when she was lying.

“I’m happy I have your hand and I can hold it”

“I wish I could make it different for you. I’m sorry things are like this. I’m sorry we have to go this way.”

The girl rubbed the woman’s hand with her thumb while she held it in her fingers. It wasn’t clear anymore who comforted whom. “Even if the sun didn’t break, we were still going to die.”

The roof caught on fire. Smoke filled their lungs. They held each other as they burned.

Attendants of the man-eater

The plane was a beast. The flight attendants its servants. The airport its lair, a façade used to lure prey.

Passengers are welcomed aboard daily and shown to their seats. Overhead compartments are filled and closed. An attendant displays the safety protocol and another smiles and greets the flight’s youngest passengers, asking the names of their stuffed animals.

A sound is heard; a deep rumble. The plane has finished digesting its last meal. The passengers believe it only to be the engine starting.

When the planes takes off a man pricks his finger on his seat and it starts to bleed. An attendant brings the man a band aid and says she has no idea what could have cut him. She lied. It was a tooth, the plane’s tooth.

Up high in the air, before the seatbelt lights come off, all the seats grow teeth. With its many mouths, the plane eats all the passengers. At 30,000 feet, only the attendants hear them scream.

Daniel and the Rats

(Very Short Story)

Daniel had never seen so many rats before. Usually, he only saw one at a time, skulking along the subway tracks. Far away, standing on a platform, he never saw how greasy they were, how grotesque they were. He saw them differently now. Locked inside the small room with him with only a dim overhead light that hung still on a thin cord, he watched as they climbed over one another and through each other’s filth. Hundreds of them.

He was sitting on a concrete floor against a cracked wooden wall with his legs spread in front of him. He didn’t know how long he’d been there with the rats. He had no clue how he’d gotten there.

His pants were soiled and they smelled like piss, but he couldn’t tell if the piss was his or if it belonged to the rats. His lower calves burned hot like a match was rubbed against his skin. He lifted his jeans and saw bite marks, red and bloody, raw with pain.

He screamed. He tried to stand. He flung his arms against the wall. A chain was wrapped against his waist and bolted to the floor. He kicked his feet and screamed more, more than he thought he ever could.

The grimy wall across from him started to crack and swing open surprisingly. A man stood in the entryway, burly and familiar, but Daniel couldn’t place him exactly.

“You’re name reminds me of the Bible,” said the man, as he threw Daniel’s driver’s license down with the rats. Then he walked away and left the door ajar. Some of the rats scurried out, but most stayed put because they knew dinner was coming.

Daniel remembered when he saw him. It was at night on the road, on the way home after a late night at work. He cut the man off and, vividly at last, remembered the man pulling to the side of him crashing his truck into him, forcing Daniel off the road into a ditch.

The man returned holding an axe on his shoulder, gripping the bottom of the handle with both hands. “Difference is,” said the man, “God’s not gonna protect you.” He lifted the blade over his head and stepped through the piles of rats at his feet over towards Daniel. “Oh, and you’re not surrounded by lions. You’re surrounded by rats and they’re gonna eat the meat off your bones when you’re dead.” The he came down with the axe on the top of Daniel’s head.

Ah, the Power of Prayer

I wrote this little story on my train ride home.

-SM

Simon spent Thursday night praying to a God that he only occasionally believed in. Staring at the ceiling above his bed, he silently petitioned his deity to vanquish his enemies. He had a meeting with them in the morning and the thought of it lit his nerves with anxiety.

As he pulled out of his driveway on Friday morning, his hands shook on the steering wheel. He had to tighten his grip to make them stop. He arrived and stepped out of his car with his thoughts heavily occupied by the impending foreclosure of his home. When he looked up expecting to see his bank, he saw nothing but an empty lot. There was no rubble and there were no signs. It was like the bank had never been there at all.

He drove home and tried to call the banker that managed his account. An old lady answered and told him there had never been no fucking bank at this number. He half expected his house to vaporize around him, but it never did.

He spent Saturday in front of the TV in a daze while his wife took their children on errands. Sitting on the toilet in the afternoon, he broke out in tears. He wasn’t sure why. Was he relieved or was he scared?

On Sunday, Simon woke up early, put on his dress clothes that had been hanging untouched in his closet since he had been laid off and grabbed the car keys from the window-sill. His wife asked him where he was going and he told her he was going to church, to pray.

Don’t Trust Words of Encouragement from a Giant Squid

When Bobby told his Mom there was a voice coming from under his bed, she interpreted it as a normal childhood fear; certainly there wasn’t really something under his bed. She never even checked. When Bobby told his Mom the voice was encouraging, nice even, she interpreted it as a sign of a healthy, normal imagination; nothing to be concerned about.

When Bobby insisted on wearing a towel draped around his neck to school, like a super-hero’s cape, his Mom was a little embarrassed, but she let it slide; let him be himself, she thought. When the school principal saw Bobby in his towel-cape, he smiled; another kid being creative, nothing to be concerned about.

In art class, when Bobby drew a picture of a giant squid under his bed, talking to him, its sharp beak bleeding, his art teacher was disturbed. She talked to Bobby about it. Sensing her concern, Bobby lied. No, he didn’t think it was real. Yes, it was just make believe. The kid was weird, beyond a doubt, thought the art teacher, but ultimately he was harmless; nothing to be concerned about.

When the school janitor saw Bobby go up the stairs, towards the roof, he was tired and angry. He’d spent his whole life putting saw dust on vomit and cleaning snot off of desks. He didn’t give a shit what the kid was doing on the roof. He soon regretted feeling that way, especially when he had to scrape Bobby’s dead body off the sidewalk.

When the media caught wind of the story, they condemned the school and his mother. How could they have missed the signs? Clearly they should have been concerned.

When the giant squid learned of Bobby’s death, it laughed. It never thought the kid would actually believe he could fly.

(c) Stanton McCaffery, September, 2013