This is a work of fiction. No real people, places or events were used. Copyright ã 2011 Plot Roach.
When Death Won’t Cooperate
By Plot Roach
I’m not a bad person, but I’ve tried to kill my neighbor at least five times now.
I like my privacy. I like my home to be my sanctuary away from the woes of reality. And I like to be able to come and go as I like without someone snooping into my business.
With a woman like Margareta, these things become impossible. It’s like she has some sort of sixth sense that tells her when I’m tiptoeing around her and trying to get some ‘alone’ time for myself.
If she does this to the other neighbors, no one had sympathized with me. Instead they all say that she’s an urban saint and we’re all blessed to have someone in the apartment complex like her to watch over us.
Demon from Hell is what I call her. What my neighbors fail to see is the horns holding up that tarnished halo of hers. In fact, I’m almost certain that if you took it off her head, you’d see someone else’s name stenciled on the inside of it with a ‘please call if found’ message on the side.
She’s evil, but the others don’t see it. Either because they don’t want to or because they are afraid to ban together and cast her out of our little building. She snoops through the mail, opening anything that might look interesting (say a check she can wash the name off of and cash herself or a letter from a bill collector which she can use for juicy gossip when talking to the other residents of our complex). She barges into your home, looking for food or alcohol she can mooch off of you, making you feel like a heel if you don’t invite her to dine at your table. She’ll borrow your car, and use up all the gas without offering to pay for more. She’ll take your clothes, and return them ruined. You get the picture. If you have anything of value, it is best to destroy it or sell it before she can get wind of it, or else you’ll never be rid of her.
I eat out, I take public transportation and none of my clothes will fit her. My home is as sparse as that of a nun’s. So the only thing she can take from me is my sanity.
“Howdy, neighbor!” she yells at the top of her lungs, no matter who she sees, or if she’s already seen you ad greeted you earlier that day. Her penchant for gossip keeps her talking most of the day. And she has a tendency to forget that the gossip she has shared has already been heard before, repeating herself even if you’ve told her that you know what she’s talking about.
She talks to me at least twenty minutes before work, snagging me as I try and slink out of the building. I’ve tried leaving earlier in the morning, but she’ll just talk to me that much more. She stops me at the mailbox, as I wonder which bill of mine she has 'accidentally' opened that day in order to find dirt on me to share with the others. And usually I can’t shake her off until another unsuspecting soul tries to enter the apartment and she leaps off of me onto them like a humongous flea draining away their life so that she can live another day.
I was so tired of her little games that I snapped one day. On the way out of the complex, she rushed up to ‘walk me out of the complex' and share a bit more of her toxic gossip about the neighbors on either side of me. As she began to descend the cement steps in front of the building, I stepped on the hem of her tent sized sundress. It jerked her off center and she fell the rest of the way down the steps. I panicked at my actions and flew down the steps, almost falling in the process myself.
She appeared to be fine, but one of the neighbors called an ambulance anyway and she was sent to the hospital. She was only there for an hour, so there was little rest from her chatter. In the end, she sued the building’s owner and not only got a settlement in the sum of six figures, but she insisted on staying in the complex. Which meant that the place had to be renovated for handicap access. A chair lift was placed at my end of the building to take her wheel chair from the bottom of the complex to her floor. It’s not as if she actually needs the chair, she just likes to use it to ‘rest in’, and doesn’t want to be without it. All of our rents were raised to pay for the lawsuit and the renovations. And to make matters worse, the engine of the lift hums and thumps right next to the wall of my apartment. It sounds like my bed is next to a bowling alley and no noise machine in the world will cover it. I would move, but since my rent has been raised, I can’t afford the security deposit on a new place, much less the moving van.
The next time I tried to kill her, I was ‘helping’ to clean her bathroom. I was still feeling bad about her little trip down the stairs and made the mistake of offering my help whenever she needed it. She asked me to do a little spot cleaning of her bathroom, so that she could have people over and not feel embarrassed. What I had thought would be light work, turned into a three hour hassle as I tried to chip dried cat crap off the floor with a screwdriver before I could even begin to mop the mess she called a lavatory. Before I left the apartment, I set the cleaning supplies in the kitchen. Some of the bottles were leaking and so I put them into the kitchen sink, not thinking much about it. It wasn’t until I heard the sirens that I put it together and remembered that mixing some household chemicals together can cause a toxic gas to form, killing you if you don’t have proper ventilation.
Margareta was overwhelmed with the fumes as she walked into her apartment, a neighbor found her passed out on the floor and called the ambulance. I hid in my apartment for days, hoping that no one would trace it back to me, since I hadn’t actually tried to kill her that time -it was just my negligence that caused her harm.
She healed and was back in the apartment in a few days. It was a few days I could have used for sleep, since the chair lift motor wasn’t grinding against my headboard. But guilt kept gnawing at my brain like an ice cream headache that wouldn’t go away. In the meantime I wondered if Death was avoiding her as well. Was it too much for him to cooperate a little and drag her off where she would never bother us again?
The next time she almost died, she took the keys from a neighbor’s place while he was out back taking out garbage. He had told me earlier that week that his car was making funny noises and wanted to get it checked before he went out on a long road trip. Margareta never asked for his permission, just taking things as she usually did. So I neglected to tell her about the odd noises of the car as I waved goodbye to her.
An hour later the police found the car in a ditch, turned over and on fire. The brakes had failed and gas tank had leaked. What was left of the burned out heap had been identified and my neighbor alerted to his missing cars’ whereabouts.
As for Margareta, she had actually stopped to fill the tank with gas (for the first time in her life) and had left the car idling. Teenagers stole the car and rolled it just off the freeway and into the ditch. Margareta was not only safe back at the gas station, but also got several news interviews and was flown out to a Hollywood studio to give her side of her ‘heroic’ story for an early morning talk show.
Then came the time that a man broke into her apartment to steal her electronics. I didn’t really have much to do with that one, except that one day I was on the bus, talking with a man just released from prison who was finding life on the outside a bit rougher than he remembered having left it. He told me of the times he would sneak into someone’s home, steal anything of value and be able to party for a month off of what he pawned it for. “It’s a good thing that you stopped doing that for a living then, since my handicapped neighbor would be such easy prey.” I said. I managed to work into the conversation which building I lived in, in case he was looking for a place to move to, and the number of Margareta’s apartment, since she was the ‘saint of the complex’ and would no doubt try and help him to settle in.
Yes, I know. I could not have given him better directions unless I had drawn a map for him and knocked Margareta out with chloroform to make her easy for the taking. What I had not planned on was that he did attempt to break in, only to have his skull bashed in by Margareta, usually a sound sleeper who was kept up that night by a bad cabbage stew she had eaten earlier that evening. To make matters worse, she used the award she had received from the talk show she had visited. When they learned that she had broken it by defending herself from this intruder, not only did they replace it, they flew her back out to Hollywood for another interview.
The last attempt to get death to alleviate our apartment complex of the plague who was Margareta resulted in a fire, an earthquake and a singing clown.
We had had an earthquake earlier in the week, and the manager sent a workman through each of the dwellings to check for damage. Margareta was out of her apartment at the time when the man checked out her apartment, leaving a notice that she should vacate for the time being while he worked to repair a leak in the gas line. He would be back in three days with the proper equipment and trusted the temporary seal to hold. But in the meantime, no one should use her stove. I snatched the note from her door and smiled at her as I passed her in the hallway.
It turns out that she put a frozen pizza in the oven and went downstairs to gossip with one of my neighbors to wait while it cooked. A singing telegram performer in the costume of a clown passed her on the way up to her apartment. It was a thank you message from the studio in Hollywood who had interviewed her twice. The man was unable to reach her by knocking, but was told by a neighbor that she would be back in twenty minutes. So he waited, sitting in front of the door to await her arrival. He pulled out a cigarette and a lighter, the flame sending him almost through the wall when it touched the gas leak from the stove. Again, Margareta was nowhere near the danger, but benefited from it. For she had everything insured the week before. As the ambulance scraped off clown bits from the hallway of the apartment complex, and the insurance company took copious pictures of the wreckage, Margareta was put up at a local motel for the rest of the week. Once the repairs were completed, she moved back into her apartment. And then no one saw her for three days.
She had a heart attack the very night she returned to her apartment and died in her sleep.
Her friends, neighbors and family were called together a week later for the reading of her will. Her daughter received a check for money -but unfortunately the taxes against her mother’s property cost more than the money she had left behind. The boat she had just purchased with the insurance check had a lien against it for more than it was worth, as her son found out belatedly. Various odd bits and pieces of the woman’s life were bequeathed to the people she loved to torture. I ended up with her parrot who was trained to say “Howdy Neighbor!” and nothing else. It was an ugly thing that had damn near pulled most of the feathers off its body and looked like a miniature game hen ready for baking.
A week of its shrill calls and I was about to roll the bastard thing in flour and deep fry it when there was a knock at the door. It was one of Margareta’s sons, Adam. He had not received a damn thing from his mother during the reading of the will. I thought that he got off better than the rest of us, plagued with useless and costly reminders of her.
I gave him the bird. The parrot, I mean. And he was so thrilled with a piece of his mother’s life he sat down on my couch to regale me for the next few hours about everything he remembered about his mother. And I sat and listened, a fake smile plastered to my face. I couldn’t say bad things about her to her son now that she was dead, right?
Deep into the night the one sided conversation continued, he cried, laughed and spoke adamantly about what a saint his mother had been, to touch so many people’s lives.
About an hour until dawn I wondered if I could use the same plan on him that I had set aside for the parrot. Rolling him in flour wouldn’t be the problem. But I would have to cut him into tiny little pieces if I wanted him to fit into my deep fryer.
Saturday, May 7, 2011
Friday, May 6, 2011
A Lesson For Teacher
This is a work of fiction. No real people, places or events were used. Copyright ã 2011 Plot Roach.
A Lesson For Teacher
By Plot Roach
Jamie was into her third week of student teaching when her master teacher gave her the job of contacting the parents of ‘problem’ students to call at home. She rolled her eyes and took the assignment, knowing that she would be fighting an uphill battle. If their children did not care what was going on in school, why should the parents be any different? She asked herself as she dialed the first of twenty phone numbers. A few were ‘wrong numbers’, some were disconnected and three were call blocked. Of the few who did answer, the parents made lame excuses as to the performance of their child, blaming ADD, ADHD, or just plain ‘bad genetics’. One blamed the school system itself. And another said that her child was the state’s problem until he turned eighteen. On the last phone call Jamie reached what sounded like an older couple, who sympathized with the school’s views on the absence of their son. “As it turns out, John was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor a month ago. He has maybe a few more months before he dies or is rendered a vegetable.” The boy’s mother said over the phone. “So knowing that he’s got so little time left, we try to let him do as he pleases.”
Jamie hung up the phone and cried. If I was in his place, I would do the same thing, she thought. The next day she reported her answers to her master teacher, a woman who dressed like she came from the pages of a fashion magazine and seemed to have the IQ of the page number she had found her outfit on.
“If you can’t be hard nosed about it and demand that they take more of an interest in the lives of their children, then you won’t make it as a teacher. We need to get bodies in those chairs, and have them all on the same page.”
“You mean ‘the state needs those bodies in the chairs to get paid and will pass everyone along at the same time, whether they are ready for it or not.'” Jamie said. She had read enough articles on the subject and gossiped with enough of the older, tenured teachers to know who loved to touch the hearts of their students and who were just there to collect a paycheck.
“I think I would be making a mistake if I recommended you as a teacher for this district, once you are done with your student teaching program. I suggest that you look for a different career. Maybe one for bleeding hearts.” Her master teacher said.
Jamie cried that night, for herself, for the child whose mind was being eaten alive by cancer, and for the students who were unreachable under the current standard of teaching because no one would take the time to make the subject matter relevant and understandable to them.
The following morning, as she waited for her guidance counselor at her school, she spied a flyer on the wall of the information kiosk in the building.
“Seeking young and ambitious teachers to be part of an upcoming project. Travel. New cultural experiences. Unlike anything on this Earth.”
She copied down the phone number and called once she was done explaining to her counselor why she could not continue to student teach under her current master teacher. The following day she found herself in the office of “Teachers to Go”, the originator of the flyer she had seen. The interview took twenty minutes, and was run by a cheerful woman Jamie could not help but think of as a human squirrel. The woman spoke swiftly and gestured with her hands that appeared almost to move independently of the woman herself. Jamie had felt like her options were few going into the interview, but leaving the room, she felt as though she would have a new lease on life.
She packed her bags, gave a notice to the university she was attending and called her family, telling them of her plans on the road starting her new life. “It’s kind of like ‘Doctors Without Borders, but with teachers.” she explained to her mother. “I’ll call you whenever I can and I’ll send you the pictures and the brochures they gave to me during the interview. I really think that this was something I was meant to do.”
A car came for her the following morning. She sat back, enjoying a drink that one of the counselors had offered to her who would be tagging along on her first assignment, to help her get into the swing of things. Between the lack of sleep the night before (new places always made her nervous), and the rocking motion of the car, she fell into a deep sleep. When she woke and found herself on a cot in a small room. Oh, Crap! She thought. I’ve read about things like this. Now I’m going to be somebody’s sex slave in a third world country or something. She paced the cell until her counselor approached.
“Have a nice sleep?” she asked.
“Where am I? What have you done to me?” Jamie asked.
“We haven’t done anything to you, besides bring you to your first assignment.” The woman explained.
“Where exactly am I?”
“Cirrus 5, in a town called Theazar.”
“Excuse me?” Jamie asked.
“Perhaps it would be better if I showed you.” the woman said and motioned to the wall behind Jamie. Immediately it became transparent, and showed a world with a purple sky and grass that looked more like clumps of feathers than anything Jamie had ever seen in her biology class. As she watched two beings that looked like bipedal seals waddled past the invisible wall.
“This can’t be…”
“It is, and you seemed a good candidate for it. If you are still willing, of course.”
“What do I do?”
“You came to teach them. And teach them you shall.” said her counselor. “You will teach them about what it is like to be human. Let them ask questions and be as honest as possible. You’ll find that unlike the human children that you have had to work with, these beings are eager to learn everything that you have to teach. There is no assigned syllabus. You teach them what they need to know as they need to know it. Everyone learns together and no one gets left behind.”
The counselor lead Jamie out of the small room and lead her to her first class session. It was out in the open, in a type of natural auditorium. Her students were not assigned to her, or came at the call of a bell, but drifted in and out as their own curiosity called them.
“Hello, class.” Jamie said.
“Hello, Teacher.” they said as one.
“What would you like to learn from me today?” she asked. And was overwhelmed by the number of questions the seal people had for her. She answered them as they were asked, and to the best of her ability. As she spoke, she felt her heart lift from the cell it had been imprisoned in by the state school system. She could be herself, teaching what interested her and what they needed to know. Nothing was forced here for the sake of a test score or because ‘that was the way it was always done’. What was spoken of here was easily accepted and of immediate use.
“Teacher,” asked a young pupil in the front, her whiskers twitching with excitement. “Can you tell us about ‘faith’?”
“I do not know how faith is treated in your culture, but I can tell you what I have experienced of it as a human. Keep in mind that faith can mean different things for different humans, but for me…” Jamie paused and took a deep breath, choosing her words carefully. This was going to be a long lesson. One that she would gratefully teach.
A Lesson For Teacher
By Plot Roach
Jamie was into her third week of student teaching when her master teacher gave her the job of contacting the parents of ‘problem’ students to call at home. She rolled her eyes and took the assignment, knowing that she would be fighting an uphill battle. If their children did not care what was going on in school, why should the parents be any different? She asked herself as she dialed the first of twenty phone numbers. A few were ‘wrong numbers’, some were disconnected and three were call blocked. Of the few who did answer, the parents made lame excuses as to the performance of their child, blaming ADD, ADHD, or just plain ‘bad genetics’. One blamed the school system itself. And another said that her child was the state’s problem until he turned eighteen. On the last phone call Jamie reached what sounded like an older couple, who sympathized with the school’s views on the absence of their son. “As it turns out, John was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor a month ago. He has maybe a few more months before he dies or is rendered a vegetable.” The boy’s mother said over the phone. “So knowing that he’s got so little time left, we try to let him do as he pleases.”
Jamie hung up the phone and cried. If I was in his place, I would do the same thing, she thought. The next day she reported her answers to her master teacher, a woman who dressed like she came from the pages of a fashion magazine and seemed to have the IQ of the page number she had found her outfit on.
“If you can’t be hard nosed about it and demand that they take more of an interest in the lives of their children, then you won’t make it as a teacher. We need to get bodies in those chairs, and have them all on the same page.”
“You mean ‘the state needs those bodies in the chairs to get paid and will pass everyone along at the same time, whether they are ready for it or not.'” Jamie said. She had read enough articles on the subject and gossiped with enough of the older, tenured teachers to know who loved to touch the hearts of their students and who were just there to collect a paycheck.
“I think I would be making a mistake if I recommended you as a teacher for this district, once you are done with your student teaching program. I suggest that you look for a different career. Maybe one for bleeding hearts.” Her master teacher said.
Jamie cried that night, for herself, for the child whose mind was being eaten alive by cancer, and for the students who were unreachable under the current standard of teaching because no one would take the time to make the subject matter relevant and understandable to them.
The following morning, as she waited for her guidance counselor at her school, she spied a flyer on the wall of the information kiosk in the building.
“Seeking young and ambitious teachers to be part of an upcoming project. Travel. New cultural experiences. Unlike anything on this Earth.”
She copied down the phone number and called once she was done explaining to her counselor why she could not continue to student teach under her current master teacher. The following day she found herself in the office of “Teachers to Go”, the originator of the flyer she had seen. The interview took twenty minutes, and was run by a cheerful woman Jamie could not help but think of as a human squirrel. The woman spoke swiftly and gestured with her hands that appeared almost to move independently of the woman herself. Jamie had felt like her options were few going into the interview, but leaving the room, she felt as though she would have a new lease on life.
She packed her bags, gave a notice to the university she was attending and called her family, telling them of her plans on the road starting her new life. “It’s kind of like ‘Doctors Without Borders, but with teachers.” she explained to her mother. “I’ll call you whenever I can and I’ll send you the pictures and the brochures they gave to me during the interview. I really think that this was something I was meant to do.”
A car came for her the following morning. She sat back, enjoying a drink that one of the counselors had offered to her who would be tagging along on her first assignment, to help her get into the swing of things. Between the lack of sleep the night before (new places always made her nervous), and the rocking motion of the car, she fell into a deep sleep. When she woke and found herself on a cot in a small room. Oh, Crap! She thought. I’ve read about things like this. Now I’m going to be somebody’s sex slave in a third world country or something. She paced the cell until her counselor approached.
“Have a nice sleep?” she asked.
“Where am I? What have you done to me?” Jamie asked.
“We haven’t done anything to you, besides bring you to your first assignment.” The woman explained.
“Where exactly am I?”
“Cirrus 5, in a town called Theazar.”
“Excuse me?” Jamie asked.
“Perhaps it would be better if I showed you.” the woman said and motioned to the wall behind Jamie. Immediately it became transparent, and showed a world with a purple sky and grass that looked more like clumps of feathers than anything Jamie had ever seen in her biology class. As she watched two beings that looked like bipedal seals waddled past the invisible wall.
“This can’t be…”
“It is, and you seemed a good candidate for it. If you are still willing, of course.”
“What do I do?”
“You came to teach them. And teach them you shall.” said her counselor. “You will teach them about what it is like to be human. Let them ask questions and be as honest as possible. You’ll find that unlike the human children that you have had to work with, these beings are eager to learn everything that you have to teach. There is no assigned syllabus. You teach them what they need to know as they need to know it. Everyone learns together and no one gets left behind.”
The counselor lead Jamie out of the small room and lead her to her first class session. It was out in the open, in a type of natural auditorium. Her students were not assigned to her, or came at the call of a bell, but drifted in and out as their own curiosity called them.
“Hello, class.” Jamie said.
“Hello, Teacher.” they said as one.
“What would you like to learn from me today?” she asked. And was overwhelmed by the number of questions the seal people had for her. She answered them as they were asked, and to the best of her ability. As she spoke, she felt her heart lift from the cell it had been imprisoned in by the state school system. She could be herself, teaching what interested her and what they needed to know. Nothing was forced here for the sake of a test score or because ‘that was the way it was always done’. What was spoken of here was easily accepted and of immediate use.
“Teacher,” asked a young pupil in the front, her whiskers twitching with excitement. “Can you tell us about ‘faith’?”
“I do not know how faith is treated in your culture, but I can tell you what I have experienced of it as a human. Keep in mind that faith can mean different things for different humans, but for me…” Jamie paused and took a deep breath, choosing her words carefully. This was going to be a long lesson. One that she would gratefully teach.
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Chasing the Muse
This is a work of fiction. No real people, places or events were used. Copyright ã 2011 Plot Roach.
Chasing the Muse
By Plot Roach
Violet sat with the rest of the students through the boring lecture on the importance of copyrights, ISBNs and barcodes on self published novels. She took notes, but only halfheartedly, waiting for the next lecturer to take the podium. Twenty minutes later, the little man in the tweed jacket was replaced by a woman in a tie dyed dress and black leather fringe boots.
“Greeting, class.” She said. “I am here to talk to you about the spirit of writing. And most importantly, how to capture your muse.”
Some of the students left the lecture hall, having dismissed the woman’s words as a frivolous thing not needed in this modern world. They were men and women in neutral colored suits to match their somber moods. All of which Violet had seen in the nonfiction classes. And she guessed that there was not two atoms of creativity to rub together among them. Their loss she thought, and turned back to the lecturer.
She spoke of the many processes writers used to break through writer’s block. Some had a special ritual prior to sitting down at their computers. Other used tools like a special 'writer’s cap', lucky shirt or other accessory that let them shed the shackles of reality long enough to touch the divine. Still other had personal totems, a reminder of their muse, that sat next to their computers to remind them that they were not alone in their quest as writers.
Then came the moment that Violet had waited for: a guided meditation. The woman had them rest as comfortably as they could given the hard wood chairs in the stadium, asked them to close their eyes and breath deeply as she guided them into their unconsciousness. She told them to imagine the room in which they did the most writing, to see and feel the tools that they used to write with. To feel a warmth and love enveloping them in a white light. And finally, to look beside them and see their muse, in whatever form it wished to take. Violet looked through this imaginary version of her writing room back home and found only the piles of books, papers and writing supplies that surrounded her computer at her desk.
She waited, turning in the room to take in all of the corners, the walls filled with bookcases, and even the ugly brown carpet. But she found nothing. The guided meditation was over and the lecturer signaled an end to the class. Violet felt cheated and talked with the woman before she left.
“I didn’t see anything.” Violet complained.
That sometimes happens at first, you just need to focus more and get more practice is all. What of your writing area? What does it look like?” the woman asked.
“It’s kind of cramped, with tons of stuff everywhere.”
“That could be part of your problem. If it’s too filled with stuff for you to feel comfortable, then how can your muse feel at home there as well?”
“But I like it that way. I’ve tried to clean it out before, only to come up completely blank while writing if everything was empty."
"Then your muse must be a creature that thrives in small dark spaces as well. Just give it some time and you’ll find it.”
Violet left for lunch, speaking with the other students of the writing workshop and getting their input on the matter.
“Mine was a huge killer whale.” A man said, forking some potato salad into his mouth. “I didn’t think he would fit into my studio apartment, but when he decided to show up the walls of my place disappeared and it was like I was living at the beach.”
“I had something similar.” said a woman sipping tea. “I was looking out of my kitchen window -I work primarily at the kitchen table while the kids are away at school- and I saw a stable in my backyard. And there was the most beautiful Palomino horse waiting there for me.”
Hawks, snakes, tigers and badgers peopled the rest of the imaginary worlds and helped their writers. Violet felt lower than before, everyone had seen something except her. What’s wrong with me? She thought. Why is my muse not there for me?
The writing conference ended a few days later and Violet had tried the meditation several times with no luck. Once home she unpacked her things and surveyed her writing room. She started to shift things around, to grant her “muse” more space. But halfway through her mission, she abandoned the task, feeling that the empty spaces she made would encroach on her creativity. She grabbed a diet soda and made a ham and cheese sandwich, taking it back to her desk so that she could eat while writing an article that was now overdue for the local newspaper.
One bite into her sandwich she saw it, a thick dark cockroach the size of a small mouse darted out from between a stack of newspapers and made a dash towards the plate of food she had set on a pile of books.
“Oh no you don’t!” Violet yelled, throwing a book at the beast. She picked up her plate of food and the can of soda and set them on a high shelf away from the pest. Then she grabbed a can of bug spray from the closet in the hallway and went in search of the vile intruder.
She checked the stacks of newspapers and books. And even checked the area where the food had been sitting, in case the roach had felt courageous enough to attempt its raid again. She saw movement from the corner of her eye: the roach was on her computer’s keyboard.
“Ah, man. Now I can’t spray it without dousing my computer and smelling bug spray on my fingers every time I write.”
That was when she noticed that the roach was not simply walking along the keys of her keyboard, but hopping up and down like a mad Mexican jumping bean. It came to a standstill and seemed to be waiting. Violet read the message on the screen.
Hello… I am your muse.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Violet said, lowering the bug spray. “I could have had a tiger or a whale, or something big and badass like that. But I have a roach?”
We’re great survivors. The next message read. And thrive in small cramped places filled with cellulose.
Violet remembered that newspapers and books were considered cellulose and looked at the cramped area around her.
“So be it.” she said, tossing the bug spray can to the side. “Now what?”
There were more acrobatics from the bug as it brought up a website that showed her the lifecycle, feeding and breeding habits of her newfound friend.
Violet brought into the room an old terrarium she had used for a pet lizard now many years deceased. She filled the bottom of the cage with dried oatmeal, set a cardboard paper towel tube down into the oats and set a wet cotton ball into a corner, on top of an upturned old plastic milk carton cap. She finished with a crust of bread she had set to the side for the creature to munch on.
“If you are going to stay here, you are going to live in the tank.” she said.
The roach dashed up her arm and somersaulted into the tank. Violet shuddered and closed the lid. “If you serve me well, there will be some beer and pizza in it for you.” she said, and turned to her computer to begin her writing.
An hour later she sent off her article to the newspaper, feeling like she had accomplished a miracle. She nodded to the cockroach, resting in its cardboard tube and ordered a pizza. She pulled a beer out of the refrigerator and used an eyedropper to put a few drops of the liquid onto the crust of bread. The roach left the tube long enough to drink the beer and Violet smiled. It may not be a pretty muse, she told herself. But I’d like to see the others fit their totems into their homes. And what would the food bill be for a killer whale, anyway?
Chasing the Muse
By Plot Roach
Violet sat with the rest of the students through the boring lecture on the importance of copyrights, ISBNs and barcodes on self published novels. She took notes, but only halfheartedly, waiting for the next lecturer to take the podium. Twenty minutes later, the little man in the tweed jacket was replaced by a woman in a tie dyed dress and black leather fringe boots.
“Greeting, class.” She said. “I am here to talk to you about the spirit of writing. And most importantly, how to capture your muse.”
Some of the students left the lecture hall, having dismissed the woman’s words as a frivolous thing not needed in this modern world. They were men and women in neutral colored suits to match their somber moods. All of which Violet had seen in the nonfiction classes. And she guessed that there was not two atoms of creativity to rub together among them. Their loss she thought, and turned back to the lecturer.
She spoke of the many processes writers used to break through writer’s block. Some had a special ritual prior to sitting down at their computers. Other used tools like a special 'writer’s cap', lucky shirt or other accessory that let them shed the shackles of reality long enough to touch the divine. Still other had personal totems, a reminder of their muse, that sat next to their computers to remind them that they were not alone in their quest as writers.
Then came the moment that Violet had waited for: a guided meditation. The woman had them rest as comfortably as they could given the hard wood chairs in the stadium, asked them to close their eyes and breath deeply as she guided them into their unconsciousness. She told them to imagine the room in which they did the most writing, to see and feel the tools that they used to write with. To feel a warmth and love enveloping them in a white light. And finally, to look beside them and see their muse, in whatever form it wished to take. Violet looked through this imaginary version of her writing room back home and found only the piles of books, papers and writing supplies that surrounded her computer at her desk.
She waited, turning in the room to take in all of the corners, the walls filled with bookcases, and even the ugly brown carpet. But she found nothing. The guided meditation was over and the lecturer signaled an end to the class. Violet felt cheated and talked with the woman before she left.
“I didn’t see anything.” Violet complained.
That sometimes happens at first, you just need to focus more and get more practice is all. What of your writing area? What does it look like?” the woman asked.
“It’s kind of cramped, with tons of stuff everywhere.”
“That could be part of your problem. If it’s too filled with stuff for you to feel comfortable, then how can your muse feel at home there as well?”
“But I like it that way. I’ve tried to clean it out before, only to come up completely blank while writing if everything was empty."
"Then your muse must be a creature that thrives in small dark spaces as well. Just give it some time and you’ll find it.”
Violet left for lunch, speaking with the other students of the writing workshop and getting their input on the matter.
“Mine was a huge killer whale.” A man said, forking some potato salad into his mouth. “I didn’t think he would fit into my studio apartment, but when he decided to show up the walls of my place disappeared and it was like I was living at the beach.”
“I had something similar.” said a woman sipping tea. “I was looking out of my kitchen window -I work primarily at the kitchen table while the kids are away at school- and I saw a stable in my backyard. And there was the most beautiful Palomino horse waiting there for me.”
Hawks, snakes, tigers and badgers peopled the rest of the imaginary worlds and helped their writers. Violet felt lower than before, everyone had seen something except her. What’s wrong with me? She thought. Why is my muse not there for me?
The writing conference ended a few days later and Violet had tried the meditation several times with no luck. Once home she unpacked her things and surveyed her writing room. She started to shift things around, to grant her “muse” more space. But halfway through her mission, she abandoned the task, feeling that the empty spaces she made would encroach on her creativity. She grabbed a diet soda and made a ham and cheese sandwich, taking it back to her desk so that she could eat while writing an article that was now overdue for the local newspaper.
One bite into her sandwich she saw it, a thick dark cockroach the size of a small mouse darted out from between a stack of newspapers and made a dash towards the plate of food she had set on a pile of books.
“Oh no you don’t!” Violet yelled, throwing a book at the beast. She picked up her plate of food and the can of soda and set them on a high shelf away from the pest. Then she grabbed a can of bug spray from the closet in the hallway and went in search of the vile intruder.
She checked the stacks of newspapers and books. And even checked the area where the food had been sitting, in case the roach had felt courageous enough to attempt its raid again. She saw movement from the corner of her eye: the roach was on her computer’s keyboard.
“Ah, man. Now I can’t spray it without dousing my computer and smelling bug spray on my fingers every time I write.”
That was when she noticed that the roach was not simply walking along the keys of her keyboard, but hopping up and down like a mad Mexican jumping bean. It came to a standstill and seemed to be waiting. Violet read the message on the screen.
Hello… I am your muse.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Violet said, lowering the bug spray. “I could have had a tiger or a whale, or something big and badass like that. But I have a roach?”
We’re great survivors. The next message read. And thrive in small cramped places filled with cellulose.
Violet remembered that newspapers and books were considered cellulose and looked at the cramped area around her.
“So be it.” she said, tossing the bug spray can to the side. “Now what?”
There were more acrobatics from the bug as it brought up a website that showed her the lifecycle, feeding and breeding habits of her newfound friend.
Violet brought into the room an old terrarium she had used for a pet lizard now many years deceased. She filled the bottom of the cage with dried oatmeal, set a cardboard paper towel tube down into the oats and set a wet cotton ball into a corner, on top of an upturned old plastic milk carton cap. She finished with a crust of bread she had set to the side for the creature to munch on.
“If you are going to stay here, you are going to live in the tank.” she said.
The roach dashed up her arm and somersaulted into the tank. Violet shuddered and closed the lid. “If you serve me well, there will be some beer and pizza in it for you.” she said, and turned to her computer to begin her writing.
An hour later she sent off her article to the newspaper, feeling like she had accomplished a miracle. She nodded to the cockroach, resting in its cardboard tube and ordered a pizza. She pulled a beer out of the refrigerator and used an eyedropper to put a few drops of the liquid onto the crust of bread. The roach left the tube long enough to drink the beer and Violet smiled. It may not be a pretty muse, she told herself. But I’d like to see the others fit their totems into their homes. And what would the food bill be for a killer whale, anyway?
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Picture Perfect
This is a work of fiction. No real people, places or events were used. Copyright ã 2011 Plot Roach.
Picture Perfect
By Plot Roach
Sylvia was a photographer. It had been her wish since childhood to change the way the world saw things through her photos. She was in the yearbook club in high school and majored in photography in college. She traveled the world in search of the perfect subject and brought home more than enough photographs to fill five portfolios. Her dream was to work for National Geographic Magazine, taking pictures of people and places few ever saw, but would be brought to the eyes of millions through her hard work and determination.
She never even got an interview with her dream magazine, or any other for that matter. She spent the first five years out of college developing film at a local drugstore before being “downsized” since the modern digital camera made her job all but obsolete.
She picked up a few odd jobs through word of mouth. A wedding here, a birthday there. There was even one animal wedding between a Bulldog and a Chihuahua that she took photos of, trying to keep a straight face and a steady hand. The bride and groom were a handful, and the photos had to be carefully staged. Even one misstep created chaos in the photos and she had to edit the hell out of the final product with Photoshop before she could call the end product “good enough” for its owner.
Whenever perspective employers saw these doggy photos, they immediately hired her on the spot. There was just something about a Chihuahua in a top hat and a Bulldog in a tiara that made people’s hearts melt. It was suggested that she do more pet portraits. And Sylvia shuddered at the thought. It had been hard enough to keep the groom from humping the bride in public without losing her patience, but to do this on a daily basis? It would drive her crazy. But it would pay the bills.
She practiced on a few of her neighbor's pets. But her patience ran as thin as her wallet. There has to be a way to do this, she told herself. I’m just missing something obvious. A week later, while posing a stuffed animal in a makeshift costume to test out a new lens, it struck her. She called a friend who worked in animal control and asked him to start bringing his work home with him.
A few months later, and Sylvia not only had two calendars in the works, but a coffee table book and a line of greeting cards featuring her photos. She made sure that a percentage of the profits went to local animal shelters, but had developed quite a hefty sum in her own personal bank account as well.
She was featured on several local news stations as a local “interest’ story of small time girl making it big. When asked how she got the animals to pose for the camera, she gave her usual reply: love, treats and lost of patience.
What the rest of the world did not know, except for Dave, her friend from animal control, was something that would ruin her if the reality of the situation ever surfaced.
Dave was in charge of euthanizing the animals that had outlived their stay at the shelter. There were only so many kennels and so much food to go around. It was not just the old an infirm animals which were lethally injected, but whole litters of young animals which had no hope of being adopted out before their time ran out.
He simply carried a really big duffle bag to work with him every day, claiming that he would be going to the gym after his shift was over. He would bring the animals to Sylvia at the end of the night, where she would photograph them in various positions and costumes until dawn. Then he would put the animals back into his bag and dump them into the incinerator at the beginning of his shift. Since no animals were technically ‘missing‘, Dave kept his job and Sylvia’s secret.
The dead are so much easier to work with, Sylvia thought to herself as she dressed up a calico kitten in a Victorian dress, using a wirework frame to hold the body in position. It’s a shame that humans don’t still photograph their dead like they did in the old days. She worked fast, she had to. Otherwise the eyeballs would fog up and rigor mortis would set in.
Picture Perfect
By Plot Roach
Sylvia was a photographer. It had been her wish since childhood to change the way the world saw things through her photos. She was in the yearbook club in high school and majored in photography in college. She traveled the world in search of the perfect subject and brought home more than enough photographs to fill five portfolios. Her dream was to work for National Geographic Magazine, taking pictures of people and places few ever saw, but would be brought to the eyes of millions through her hard work and determination.
She never even got an interview with her dream magazine, or any other for that matter. She spent the first five years out of college developing film at a local drugstore before being “downsized” since the modern digital camera made her job all but obsolete.
She picked up a few odd jobs through word of mouth. A wedding here, a birthday there. There was even one animal wedding between a Bulldog and a Chihuahua that she took photos of, trying to keep a straight face and a steady hand. The bride and groom were a handful, and the photos had to be carefully staged. Even one misstep created chaos in the photos and she had to edit the hell out of the final product with Photoshop before she could call the end product “good enough” for its owner.
Whenever perspective employers saw these doggy photos, they immediately hired her on the spot. There was just something about a Chihuahua in a top hat and a Bulldog in a tiara that made people’s hearts melt. It was suggested that she do more pet portraits. And Sylvia shuddered at the thought. It had been hard enough to keep the groom from humping the bride in public without losing her patience, but to do this on a daily basis? It would drive her crazy. But it would pay the bills.
She practiced on a few of her neighbor's pets. But her patience ran as thin as her wallet. There has to be a way to do this, she told herself. I’m just missing something obvious. A week later, while posing a stuffed animal in a makeshift costume to test out a new lens, it struck her. She called a friend who worked in animal control and asked him to start bringing his work home with him.
A few months later, and Sylvia not only had two calendars in the works, but a coffee table book and a line of greeting cards featuring her photos. She made sure that a percentage of the profits went to local animal shelters, but had developed quite a hefty sum in her own personal bank account as well.
She was featured on several local news stations as a local “interest’ story of small time girl making it big. When asked how she got the animals to pose for the camera, she gave her usual reply: love, treats and lost of patience.
What the rest of the world did not know, except for Dave, her friend from animal control, was something that would ruin her if the reality of the situation ever surfaced.
Dave was in charge of euthanizing the animals that had outlived their stay at the shelter. There were only so many kennels and so much food to go around. It was not just the old an infirm animals which were lethally injected, but whole litters of young animals which had no hope of being adopted out before their time ran out.
He simply carried a really big duffle bag to work with him every day, claiming that he would be going to the gym after his shift was over. He would bring the animals to Sylvia at the end of the night, where she would photograph them in various positions and costumes until dawn. Then he would put the animals back into his bag and dump them into the incinerator at the beginning of his shift. Since no animals were technically ‘missing‘, Dave kept his job and Sylvia’s secret.
The dead are so much easier to work with, Sylvia thought to herself as she dressed up a calico kitten in a Victorian dress, using a wirework frame to hold the body in position. It’s a shame that humans don’t still photograph their dead like they did in the old days. She worked fast, she had to. Otherwise the eyeballs would fog up and rigor mortis would set in.
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
At the Bottom of the Bottle
This is a work of fiction. No real people, places or events were used. Copyright ã 2011 Plot Roach.
At the Bottom of the Bottle
By Plot Roach
I love Nana Mary, but sometimes I wonder if I’m adopted. My family is filled with weirdoes and packrats. But Nana Mary takes it to the extreme.
She asked for my help to clean out her storage unit. Not because she was getting rid of everything in it, but because she was trying to get rid of some of her old collections of things in order to put more stuff into the already cramped unit.
So stacks of magazines, old videotapes, chipped planters and old cereal boxes made their way to the dumpster (amid much head shaking on my part and tearful farewells from Nana Mary), so that she could put in her new collection of things she had bought off of late night television.
I asked her why she just didn’t return the things back to their various manufacturers or else use them in her home, but all she would tell me was that they were worth something now, and would be doubly so ten years in the future.
Again, I shook my head and kept myself from arguing with Nana Mary. I had learned long ago that she had an answer for why she kept everything, even if she didn’t have a place for it. So while she was working her way through a box of old oatmeal cans, I pulled down a box of apothecary bottles.
Some of them were quite nice and in decent shape, their contents turned to a thick syrup or dried up entirely with age. I handed Nana Mary the box and asked what she had wanted to do with them. I advised her to put them up on an online auction or sell them to a collector here in town, since most still had their labels and seemed in almost pristine condition (considering most were probably older than Nana Mary herself).
"Oh, you go ahead and take them, dear. If you can find a use for them." She said, folding the cardboard top of the box in on itself to seal the box.
"But it’s your collection, Nana. Don’t you want to keep some of them?"
“No, dear." she said, unloading the contents of the car into the corner of the storage until we had just cleared. A microwave pasta maker and a screen-printing machine were the base of the next tower to her collecting insanity.
As I moved the box to the trunk of my car, thinking that I might stop by the local antique store on my way home to see if I might unload a few of the bottles and pay some bills in the process, the bottom of the box unfolded, and a few of the bottles snuck out and shattered onto the pavement.
I cursed my bad luck as I picked up the glass. Nana Mary murmured something about ‘spilled milk’ as I cut my hand on one of the glass pieces. A few minutes later, the glass was collected from the pavement, but the contents of the bottles were not. Most soaked into the hard blacktop, to become mystery stains that future renters would gawk at and wonder to its origin. But one of the bottles had held something that I had thought was a twig, until it moved.
"Nana, is that a worm?” I asked, nudging the twitching form with my shoe.
"Yes. I think it is, dear."
"Why would that be in a medicine bottle? And why is it still alive?"
"They used to use tapeworms in medicine, back in the day. Everything from weight los pills to helping sick people get their appetite back. Although some were used to test the proof of alcohol in a syrup.'
"Like some bottles of tequila, where the alcohol kills the worm?"
"Exactly. Though this one seemed to preserve the worm instead of killing it." Nana Mary looked down at the worm, which had stopped twitching and seemed to foam, sinking into the pavement with the rest of the ‘natural’ cures of the other bottles.
"Poor thing" she said. "To have been trapped in the bottle so long, only to die now."
"Yuck."
"Laugh it up little missy, but what one person calls icky, another calls medicine."
The day went faster after the worm incident. We cleared out half of the storage unit and Nana Mary managed to fill only half the space we had cleared, vowing that she could now buy more things for her latest collection.
When I went home, I cleaned my wound and helped myself to a beer as I watched the news. Once the beer had kicked in and I didn’t feel as sore from my workout hefting boxes of useless items to the trash dumpster, I peeled off my clothes and headed for the shower. I noticed that the cut on my hand was almost healed and thanked my luck for at least one good thing coming my way.
The next morning, I headed off to work at my usual time, feeling a bit sluggish and attributing it to my hard work form the day before. By noon I suffered from stomach cramps and by the time my shift was over at the office, I felt as though I was going to faint from the pain. My whole body was riddled with cramps, and I had a massive fever. This was no common flu bug or food poisoning. I headed to the hospital and waited my turn, cursing a medical system that had yet to come up with a solution to waiting endlessly in line with other miserable patients.
The doctor took a urine sample, a few vials of blood and checked me up and down with a critical eye. When nothing helped, including injections for the pain, they decided to do a series of x-rays. That was when they found it. The worm that had died on the pavement when the box opened, breaking the bottle and exposing it to the elements, had somehow produced offspring. The children were now squirming around in my body, somehow invading me through the cut in my hand as I picked up the pieces of the broken bottle. The doctor had never seen anything like it, and said that traditional therapy would be of no use, since the parasites ran throughout my body. If I attacked them with poison, I might kill my own body in the process.
When I left the hospital that night I checked the box of bottles and pulled out the remnants of the worm’s bottle I had tossed back into the trunk only because I had thought to save the bottle’s label and frame it for my wall. So in retrospect, maybe I am as much of a packrat as they rest of my family. I looked at the faded label under the dying light of sunset and squinted to read its writing:
Dr. Simon’s miracle worm. The cure for whatever ails you: consumption, earache, fatigue, etc. Just keep the worm well fed and watch the wonder of nature’s custom cure.
The back of the bottle said to drink a glass of pure grain alcohol at least once daily in order to keep the worm performing at optimum conditions.
I shrugged and headed to my local grocery store, and picked up a mix of different liquors. The pain hit me so bad in line that I almost dropped the basket before I could finish paying for it. I began to drink a large bottle of vodka before I even left the parking lot, hoping that no police officers stopped me on the way home for driving under the influence.
I felt almost back to normal by the time I got back to my tiny little apartment. The contents of three more bottles made me feel as though I was a teenager again with endless energy and a feeling of immortality.
The next morning I did not have a hangover as I had expected, but suffered from something far worse. The crippling pain was back again, as was the fever. I quickly made myself a rum and Coke to take the edge off. I felt almost normal once I finished off the rum. Though I had imbibed more than enough alcohol than could be healthy for me, I should have felt ill or at least drunk. But the worms must have taken the toxins as well as the ‘buzz’. Only then did it occur to me that I would have to be in a constant state of inebriation in order to lead a normal life ever again. I would forever be an honest to goodness ‘functioning alcoholic’. The upside was that I would never suffer another illness, broken bone or fatigue again as well as I maintained a certain blood alcohol level. The bad news was that I hoped that I could afford the breath mints and the liquor bill.
I scan the newspaper every once in a while, hoping that one of the local breweries has an opening soon. I hear that the employees get to drink as much as they want while on the job. And I think I can use as much help as I can get.
At the Bottom of the Bottle
By Plot Roach
I love Nana Mary, but sometimes I wonder if I’m adopted. My family is filled with weirdoes and packrats. But Nana Mary takes it to the extreme.
She asked for my help to clean out her storage unit. Not because she was getting rid of everything in it, but because she was trying to get rid of some of her old collections of things in order to put more stuff into the already cramped unit.
So stacks of magazines, old videotapes, chipped planters and old cereal boxes made their way to the dumpster (amid much head shaking on my part and tearful farewells from Nana Mary), so that she could put in her new collection of things she had bought off of late night television.
I asked her why she just didn’t return the things back to their various manufacturers or else use them in her home, but all she would tell me was that they were worth something now, and would be doubly so ten years in the future.
Again, I shook my head and kept myself from arguing with Nana Mary. I had learned long ago that she had an answer for why she kept everything, even if she didn’t have a place for it. So while she was working her way through a box of old oatmeal cans, I pulled down a box of apothecary bottles.
Some of them were quite nice and in decent shape, their contents turned to a thick syrup or dried up entirely with age. I handed Nana Mary the box and asked what she had wanted to do with them. I advised her to put them up on an online auction or sell them to a collector here in town, since most still had their labels and seemed in almost pristine condition (considering most were probably older than Nana Mary herself).
"Oh, you go ahead and take them, dear. If you can find a use for them." She said, folding the cardboard top of the box in on itself to seal the box.
"But it’s your collection, Nana. Don’t you want to keep some of them?"
“No, dear." she said, unloading the contents of the car into the corner of the storage until we had just cleared. A microwave pasta maker and a screen-printing machine were the base of the next tower to her collecting insanity.
As I moved the box to the trunk of my car, thinking that I might stop by the local antique store on my way home to see if I might unload a few of the bottles and pay some bills in the process, the bottom of the box unfolded, and a few of the bottles snuck out and shattered onto the pavement.
I cursed my bad luck as I picked up the glass. Nana Mary murmured something about ‘spilled milk’ as I cut my hand on one of the glass pieces. A few minutes later, the glass was collected from the pavement, but the contents of the bottles were not. Most soaked into the hard blacktop, to become mystery stains that future renters would gawk at and wonder to its origin. But one of the bottles had held something that I had thought was a twig, until it moved.
"Nana, is that a worm?” I asked, nudging the twitching form with my shoe.
"Yes. I think it is, dear."
"Why would that be in a medicine bottle? And why is it still alive?"
"They used to use tapeworms in medicine, back in the day. Everything from weight los pills to helping sick people get their appetite back. Although some were used to test the proof of alcohol in a syrup.'
"Like some bottles of tequila, where the alcohol kills the worm?"
"Exactly. Though this one seemed to preserve the worm instead of killing it." Nana Mary looked down at the worm, which had stopped twitching and seemed to foam, sinking into the pavement with the rest of the ‘natural’ cures of the other bottles.
"Poor thing" she said. "To have been trapped in the bottle so long, only to die now."
"Yuck."
"Laugh it up little missy, but what one person calls icky, another calls medicine."
The day went faster after the worm incident. We cleared out half of the storage unit and Nana Mary managed to fill only half the space we had cleared, vowing that she could now buy more things for her latest collection.
When I went home, I cleaned my wound and helped myself to a beer as I watched the news. Once the beer had kicked in and I didn’t feel as sore from my workout hefting boxes of useless items to the trash dumpster, I peeled off my clothes and headed for the shower. I noticed that the cut on my hand was almost healed and thanked my luck for at least one good thing coming my way.
The next morning, I headed off to work at my usual time, feeling a bit sluggish and attributing it to my hard work form the day before. By noon I suffered from stomach cramps and by the time my shift was over at the office, I felt as though I was going to faint from the pain. My whole body was riddled with cramps, and I had a massive fever. This was no common flu bug or food poisoning. I headed to the hospital and waited my turn, cursing a medical system that had yet to come up with a solution to waiting endlessly in line with other miserable patients.
The doctor took a urine sample, a few vials of blood and checked me up and down with a critical eye. When nothing helped, including injections for the pain, they decided to do a series of x-rays. That was when they found it. The worm that had died on the pavement when the box opened, breaking the bottle and exposing it to the elements, had somehow produced offspring. The children were now squirming around in my body, somehow invading me through the cut in my hand as I picked up the pieces of the broken bottle. The doctor had never seen anything like it, and said that traditional therapy would be of no use, since the parasites ran throughout my body. If I attacked them with poison, I might kill my own body in the process.
When I left the hospital that night I checked the box of bottles and pulled out the remnants of the worm’s bottle I had tossed back into the trunk only because I had thought to save the bottle’s label and frame it for my wall. So in retrospect, maybe I am as much of a packrat as they rest of my family. I looked at the faded label under the dying light of sunset and squinted to read its writing:
Dr. Simon’s miracle worm. The cure for whatever ails you: consumption, earache, fatigue, etc. Just keep the worm well fed and watch the wonder of nature’s custom cure.
The back of the bottle said to drink a glass of pure grain alcohol at least once daily in order to keep the worm performing at optimum conditions.
I shrugged and headed to my local grocery store, and picked up a mix of different liquors. The pain hit me so bad in line that I almost dropped the basket before I could finish paying for it. I began to drink a large bottle of vodka before I even left the parking lot, hoping that no police officers stopped me on the way home for driving under the influence.
I felt almost back to normal by the time I got back to my tiny little apartment. The contents of three more bottles made me feel as though I was a teenager again with endless energy and a feeling of immortality.
The next morning I did not have a hangover as I had expected, but suffered from something far worse. The crippling pain was back again, as was the fever. I quickly made myself a rum and Coke to take the edge off. I felt almost normal once I finished off the rum. Though I had imbibed more than enough alcohol than could be healthy for me, I should have felt ill or at least drunk. But the worms must have taken the toxins as well as the ‘buzz’. Only then did it occur to me that I would have to be in a constant state of inebriation in order to lead a normal life ever again. I would forever be an honest to goodness ‘functioning alcoholic’. The upside was that I would never suffer another illness, broken bone or fatigue again as well as I maintained a certain blood alcohol level. The bad news was that I hoped that I could afford the breath mints and the liquor bill.
I scan the newspaper every once in a while, hoping that one of the local breweries has an opening soon. I hear that the employees get to drink as much as they want while on the job. And I think I can use as much help as I can get.
Monday, May 2, 2011
One Penguin Too Many
This is a work of fiction. No real people, places or events were used. Copyright ã 2011 Plot Roach.
One Penguin Too Many
By Plot Roach
My friend Henry is a zoo keeper. Not the kind that gets to handle big and dangerous animals, just the cute and cuddly ones. He told me that at first it was a real let down, not being in charge of something cool like the tigers or bears. Then he saw a coworker mauled to death by rhino and thought twice about the penguins he watched over.
“For Christ sakes, a rhino is built like a small car but looks as docile as a dammed cow. I didn’t think the thing had the brains of a peanut. And I never thought that the ones we have here in the compound would charge a man, much less crush him into the dust like it did Rick.”
I imagine that if I had been kept in a small cage all my life with nothing more to look at than the same damned faces of the zoo workers, my fellow “herd” and the obnoxious tourists they had that threw paper cups, peanuts and chocolate covered bananas at me, I’d stomp the first bastard that got in my way and make sure to defecate on him for good measure. Maybe ten years of working a mall job had given me a bit of insight into the plight of caged animals. You be the judge.
“So now you’re content to work with the penguins?” I asked.
“They seem to be good chick magnets.”
“You can’t take them out of the zoo, can you?”
“Oh hell no, they wouldn’t let that happen or else Joe would be walking up and downtown all Friday night with a Bengal tiger on a leash trying to get himself laid.” Considering what Joe looked like and his personality, he had a better chance coupling with the tiger.
“So how does it work?”
“Well, I’ve been going into pet stores lately looking for 'treats' for my little feathered friends. When the lady helping me in the bird section asks me what kind of bird I have, I explain that I’ve got a job looking after various ‘rescued’ penguins.”
“So how well has it been working?”
“Sometimes good, sometimes not at all. I think I’ve spent more on bird toys and fish treats for my birds than on beer for myself. And I was about to give up on it all when I met Gina.”
“Another pet store employee?”
“No, an environmentalist.”
“I bet the pay is great.” I said sarcastically.
“Yeah, I know. She doesn’t have a real job that pays the rent, but she does odd jobs around town and stays with her parents.”
“Hmmm… A real winner you’ve got there.”
“Just listen, will you?” Henry asked. “I was thinking about getting her a part time job at the zoo gift shop if I could swing it, but then it happened…”
“What did you do?”
“Well…”
“Spill it, Henry.”
“I was thinking of a good way to ask her out. Something really romantic and spectacular that she couldn’t really say no to.”
“Isn’t that how you’re supposed to propose marriage? Why not just look at her and say: ‘hey, you want to go for a movie or something?’”
“That’s not my style.”
“No, you have to buy a ton of bird toys in order to try and get a woman’s phone number, I think I know your style.”
Henry turned red from frustration, but continued with what he referred to as the ‘incident.’ “You see, I have been training the penguins for a new show this summer. If I can get the audience interested in them, then I can get more funding. More funding means a bigger enclosure and-”
“More bird toys?” I teased.
“Anyway, I’ve been training them to work this little catapult thingy I made. In the first part of the show, I fill it with fish and they all hop into the counterweight, the rope releases and the fish are flung over to the seal enclosure, where they flip around and do cutesy seal things. The second part of the show is when my assistant gets 'accidentally' flung over to the seal tank, but the show continues over there. It’s all planned down to the last detail, except…”
“Except?”
“I thought it would be cute for one of the penguins to come up to Gina with a note from me asking her out on a date, but they won’t just walk up to anyone. So I trained it to take the note to the catapult.”
“I think I can see where this is going, unfortunately…”
“Just listen, okay?” Henry sighed. “I set Gina down next to the catapult -not in it. And I tried to get the penguin to take the note to her. But while I was wrestling with the little guy, she decided that the chair on the catapult was a lot more comfortable than sitting on the cold ground. And as soon as she took the seat, all the other penguins took the cue and piled into the counterweight. But it wasn't enough to launch her. So I thought everything was okay until the little bird that I’ve given the note to took a flying leap to join its kin in the counterweight rather than bringing her the note.”
“One penguin too many.”
“You’ve got it. She got launched over the fence and into the seal enclosure. And they danced and frolicked all over until they realized that she wasn’t part of the show and wasn’t going to feed them any treats. Then things got angry.”
“What could they do? They’re seals!”
“That’s what I thought about the rhinos, remember?”
“Oh, God. How bad was it?”
“Well, they settled down after a bit. Gina was bitten in a few places, but didn’t suffer from any wounds needing stitches. Evidently the seals were really hard on their trainers, but Gina gave as good as she got.”
“So everything is okay?”
“Yes and no.” Henry said. “Gina won’t even look at me, without thinking of the traitorous little penguins that launched her into the tank. And I was supposed to be upgraded to seal handler once the penguin show had taken off, so to speak.”
“So?”
“It turns out that the seals have more respect for Gina then they do for me. So I found her a job after all. But between the post dramatic penguin stress and the clause in our contracts that says that handlers can‘t date one another, the perfect girl has slipped though my fingers.”
“Cheer up, Henry.” I said. “There’s always more fish -or penguins, seals, etc. in the sea.”
One Penguin Too Many
By Plot Roach
My friend Henry is a zoo keeper. Not the kind that gets to handle big and dangerous animals, just the cute and cuddly ones. He told me that at first it was a real let down, not being in charge of something cool like the tigers or bears. Then he saw a coworker mauled to death by rhino and thought twice about the penguins he watched over.
“For Christ sakes, a rhino is built like a small car but looks as docile as a dammed cow. I didn’t think the thing had the brains of a peanut. And I never thought that the ones we have here in the compound would charge a man, much less crush him into the dust like it did Rick.”
I imagine that if I had been kept in a small cage all my life with nothing more to look at than the same damned faces of the zoo workers, my fellow “herd” and the obnoxious tourists they had that threw paper cups, peanuts and chocolate covered bananas at me, I’d stomp the first bastard that got in my way and make sure to defecate on him for good measure. Maybe ten years of working a mall job had given me a bit of insight into the plight of caged animals. You be the judge.
“So now you’re content to work with the penguins?” I asked.
“They seem to be good chick magnets.”
“You can’t take them out of the zoo, can you?”
“Oh hell no, they wouldn’t let that happen or else Joe would be walking up and downtown all Friday night with a Bengal tiger on a leash trying to get himself laid.” Considering what Joe looked like and his personality, he had a better chance coupling with the tiger.
“So how does it work?”
“Well, I’ve been going into pet stores lately looking for 'treats' for my little feathered friends. When the lady helping me in the bird section asks me what kind of bird I have, I explain that I’ve got a job looking after various ‘rescued’ penguins.”
“So how well has it been working?”
“Sometimes good, sometimes not at all. I think I’ve spent more on bird toys and fish treats for my birds than on beer for myself. And I was about to give up on it all when I met Gina.”
“Another pet store employee?”
“No, an environmentalist.”
“I bet the pay is great.” I said sarcastically.
“Yeah, I know. She doesn’t have a real job that pays the rent, but she does odd jobs around town and stays with her parents.”
“Hmmm… A real winner you’ve got there.”
“Just listen, will you?” Henry asked. “I was thinking about getting her a part time job at the zoo gift shop if I could swing it, but then it happened…”
“What did you do?”
“Well…”
“Spill it, Henry.”
“I was thinking of a good way to ask her out. Something really romantic and spectacular that she couldn’t really say no to.”
“Isn’t that how you’re supposed to propose marriage? Why not just look at her and say: ‘hey, you want to go for a movie or something?’”
“That’s not my style.”
“No, you have to buy a ton of bird toys in order to try and get a woman’s phone number, I think I know your style.”
Henry turned red from frustration, but continued with what he referred to as the ‘incident.’ “You see, I have been training the penguins for a new show this summer. If I can get the audience interested in them, then I can get more funding. More funding means a bigger enclosure and-”
“More bird toys?” I teased.
“Anyway, I’ve been training them to work this little catapult thingy I made. In the first part of the show, I fill it with fish and they all hop into the counterweight, the rope releases and the fish are flung over to the seal enclosure, where they flip around and do cutesy seal things. The second part of the show is when my assistant gets 'accidentally' flung over to the seal tank, but the show continues over there. It’s all planned down to the last detail, except…”
“Except?”
“I thought it would be cute for one of the penguins to come up to Gina with a note from me asking her out on a date, but they won’t just walk up to anyone. So I trained it to take the note to the catapult.”
“I think I can see where this is going, unfortunately…”
“Just listen, okay?” Henry sighed. “I set Gina down next to the catapult -not in it. And I tried to get the penguin to take the note to her. But while I was wrestling with the little guy, she decided that the chair on the catapult was a lot more comfortable than sitting on the cold ground. And as soon as she took the seat, all the other penguins took the cue and piled into the counterweight. But it wasn't enough to launch her. So I thought everything was okay until the little bird that I’ve given the note to took a flying leap to join its kin in the counterweight rather than bringing her the note.”
“One penguin too many.”
“You’ve got it. She got launched over the fence and into the seal enclosure. And they danced and frolicked all over until they realized that she wasn’t part of the show and wasn’t going to feed them any treats. Then things got angry.”
“What could they do? They’re seals!”
“That’s what I thought about the rhinos, remember?”
“Oh, God. How bad was it?”
“Well, they settled down after a bit. Gina was bitten in a few places, but didn’t suffer from any wounds needing stitches. Evidently the seals were really hard on their trainers, but Gina gave as good as she got.”
“So everything is okay?”
“Yes and no.” Henry said. “Gina won’t even look at me, without thinking of the traitorous little penguins that launched her into the tank. And I was supposed to be upgraded to seal handler once the penguin show had taken off, so to speak.”
“So?”
“It turns out that the seals have more respect for Gina then they do for me. So I found her a job after all. But between the post dramatic penguin stress and the clause in our contracts that says that handlers can‘t date one another, the perfect girl has slipped though my fingers.”
“Cheer up, Henry.” I said. “There’s always more fish -or penguins, seals, etc. in the sea.”
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Happy One Hundredth Anniversary
This is a work of fiction. No real people, places or events were used. Copyright ã 2011 Plot Roach.
Happy One Hundredth Anniversary
By Plot Roach
“Happy anniversary, darling.” John said, handing Elaine a large manila envelope.
Elaine opened the top of the envelope and slid the sheath of papers out, studying them for a moment. “Oh screw you, John!” she yelled, throwing the papers down and stalking out of the room.
“You kept saying that all you wanted for our ten year anniversary was a divorce, so I thought you’d like it more than a day at the spa or an oversized bathrobe.” He snickered, pleased with himself.
“I DO want a divorce, but not under those conditions.”
“What? You get to leave this relationship with half the house, your personal things and your dignity. What more do you want?”
“More, for starters. I know how much we own, thanks to a little digging I’ve been doing while you were busy with your little girlfriends. I think I deserve far more than some pittance!”
“Pittance? You’re lucky I’m reasonable enough to give you anything at all!”
Elaine chose that moment to throw a picture at his head, it missed by a few inches, but only because John ducked the blow at the last second. It was interesting to note that it was their wedding photo. Where did we go wrong? He thought. “Now, Elaine… I’m getting tired of all this. Can’t we act like adults?”
“Adults? You’ve never-”
But she was cut off in mid sentence by a knock at their door. “Were you expecting someone?” John asked her.
“Only another one of your girlfriends.” Elaine said.
John looked at the monitor that showed the front door. It was a man with a briefcase. “How did he get past the front gate?” John asked.
“What does he want?”
“Only one way to find out.” John said. He opened the front door and greeted the man. He was a plain looking creature, a grey suit adorned him with plain, black shoes. You could pass him on the street and never notice him, John thought. “Can I help you?” he asked the nondescript man.
“No, Mr. Matthews. I am here to help you.”
“I don’t buy crap off of door to door solicitors, and I’m not looking to be saved by Christ, so please leave by the gate.” John said, closing the door. But the man stopped it short by putting his foot in the door jam, preventing it from closing.
“I said that I’m here to help you, Mr. Matthews.”
“John, do I need to call the police?” Elaine asked from behind him.
“Just what exactly is this about?” John asked.
“I’m from the Phoenix Commission. You two have been on our list for the past ten years. And now you finally qualify for the program.”
“Phoenix Commission?” Elaine asked.
John’s forehead wrinkled as he searched his memory of anything he had signed up for recently. Is this some kind of come-on? he asked himself. And then it sparked a memory, it was something he and Elaine had signed up for on a whim many years ago. They both thought it was a scam when they had not heard anything from the company after they had put their initial investment down. “Is this the immortality thing?”
“Yes, Mr. Matthews. It is indeed the ‘immortality thing’.”
They invited the man in, John poured them all drinks and they traded the necessary pleasantries before their grey clad visitor started in on the specifics. “As you know, the operation is no light thing to consider. It is only given to those that can afford it, and those who had proven themselves over a period of ten or more years to be more than capable to live with the consequences of such a… gift.”
“How can there be consequences to immortality?” Elaine asked.
“Try living forever, but losing everyone that you love. Friends, family, lovers…”
“So what do we have to do?”
“You already have done it, amassing a small fortune, finding someone to share in your eternity and cutting yourself off from those that would only… hold you back. The operation itself will cost roughly a third of your total finances.”
“Wait, you said I had someone to share eternity wit?”
“Why, your wife of course. This operation is never given to single people, as the stress is too much for one person to handle. We find that couples take to the transition easier and are less likely to contemplate suicide."
“Well, yes. My wife, of course… I was just wondering if there was a group of others that we joined or something.”
“No. Aside from their spouses, most who undergo the operation are solitary folk. It helps to keep things in perspective.”
"Yes, of course.” John agreed.
“So you two are ready to take the ‘big plunge’, so to speak?”
“Oh, yes” John said, reaching out to hold Elaine’s hand as she smiled and blinked back tears.
One week later, the couple was prepped for the surgery. They had a long talk the night before in their hotel room. Conversing about their fears, their hopes and their plans for divorce once the surgery was completed.
“Are you sure they won’t do something to us when we get divorced?” Elaine asked.
“How can you repossess immortality?” John asked. “Relax, this will be over before you know it. And then we’ll be off on our own.”
The couple were dressed in surgical gowns and anesthetized. A few hours later they awoke in the same room, groggy and with minds filled with a million questions. The man in the grey suit came to visit them, offering a contract three times as thick as the divorce papers that John had presented Elaine with the same day that they decided to become immortal together. They signed at each blank line presented to them. The grey man was about to leave when John finally got the nerve to ask the question that had plagued the couple ever since they had agreed to the surgery. “Now what happens if in the future Elaine and I decide to have a divorce?”
“Oh, that will not be possible, Mr. Matthews. You see, we have found that in order for the immortality surgery to function properly, one half of each device is placed in one half of each couple. You can spend a little time away from each other, anywhere form hours to maybe a day. But in order to keep from dying, you will need to be in almost constant contact with one another in order to keep the devices charged and operational. That is why we choose couples who have spent a number of years together, like the two of you have. We know that with compromise and love, you will have a happy and eternal life together.”
The man in the grey suit left and Elaine began to cry. Through the haze in his mind, John wondered vaguely what the traditional gift would for a one hundredth year anniversary.
Happy One Hundredth Anniversary
By Plot Roach
“Happy anniversary, darling.” John said, handing Elaine a large manila envelope.
Elaine opened the top of the envelope and slid the sheath of papers out, studying them for a moment. “Oh screw you, John!” she yelled, throwing the papers down and stalking out of the room.
“You kept saying that all you wanted for our ten year anniversary was a divorce, so I thought you’d like it more than a day at the spa or an oversized bathrobe.” He snickered, pleased with himself.
“I DO want a divorce, but not under those conditions.”
“What? You get to leave this relationship with half the house, your personal things and your dignity. What more do you want?”
“More, for starters. I know how much we own, thanks to a little digging I’ve been doing while you were busy with your little girlfriends. I think I deserve far more than some pittance!”
“Pittance? You’re lucky I’m reasonable enough to give you anything at all!”
Elaine chose that moment to throw a picture at his head, it missed by a few inches, but only because John ducked the blow at the last second. It was interesting to note that it was their wedding photo. Where did we go wrong? He thought. “Now, Elaine… I’m getting tired of all this. Can’t we act like adults?”
“Adults? You’ve never-”
But she was cut off in mid sentence by a knock at their door. “Were you expecting someone?” John asked her.
“Only another one of your girlfriends.” Elaine said.
John looked at the monitor that showed the front door. It was a man with a briefcase. “How did he get past the front gate?” John asked.
“What does he want?”
“Only one way to find out.” John said. He opened the front door and greeted the man. He was a plain looking creature, a grey suit adorned him with plain, black shoes. You could pass him on the street and never notice him, John thought. “Can I help you?” he asked the nondescript man.
“No, Mr. Matthews. I am here to help you.”
“I don’t buy crap off of door to door solicitors, and I’m not looking to be saved by Christ, so please leave by the gate.” John said, closing the door. But the man stopped it short by putting his foot in the door jam, preventing it from closing.
“I said that I’m here to help you, Mr. Matthews.”
“John, do I need to call the police?” Elaine asked from behind him.
“Just what exactly is this about?” John asked.
“I’m from the Phoenix Commission. You two have been on our list for the past ten years. And now you finally qualify for the program.”
“Phoenix Commission?” Elaine asked.
John’s forehead wrinkled as he searched his memory of anything he had signed up for recently. Is this some kind of come-on? he asked himself. And then it sparked a memory, it was something he and Elaine had signed up for on a whim many years ago. They both thought it was a scam when they had not heard anything from the company after they had put their initial investment down. “Is this the immortality thing?”
“Yes, Mr. Matthews. It is indeed the ‘immortality thing’.”
They invited the man in, John poured them all drinks and they traded the necessary pleasantries before their grey clad visitor started in on the specifics. “As you know, the operation is no light thing to consider. It is only given to those that can afford it, and those who had proven themselves over a period of ten or more years to be more than capable to live with the consequences of such a… gift.”
“How can there be consequences to immortality?” Elaine asked.
“Try living forever, but losing everyone that you love. Friends, family, lovers…”
“So what do we have to do?”
“You already have done it, amassing a small fortune, finding someone to share in your eternity and cutting yourself off from those that would only… hold you back. The operation itself will cost roughly a third of your total finances.”
“Wait, you said I had someone to share eternity wit?”
“Why, your wife of course. This operation is never given to single people, as the stress is too much for one person to handle. We find that couples take to the transition easier and are less likely to contemplate suicide."
“Well, yes. My wife, of course… I was just wondering if there was a group of others that we joined or something.”
“No. Aside from their spouses, most who undergo the operation are solitary folk. It helps to keep things in perspective.”
"Yes, of course.” John agreed.
“So you two are ready to take the ‘big plunge’, so to speak?”
“Oh, yes” John said, reaching out to hold Elaine’s hand as she smiled and blinked back tears.
One week later, the couple was prepped for the surgery. They had a long talk the night before in their hotel room. Conversing about their fears, their hopes and their plans for divorce once the surgery was completed.
“Are you sure they won’t do something to us when we get divorced?” Elaine asked.
“How can you repossess immortality?” John asked. “Relax, this will be over before you know it. And then we’ll be off on our own.”
The couple were dressed in surgical gowns and anesthetized. A few hours later they awoke in the same room, groggy and with minds filled with a million questions. The man in the grey suit came to visit them, offering a contract three times as thick as the divorce papers that John had presented Elaine with the same day that they decided to become immortal together. They signed at each blank line presented to them. The grey man was about to leave when John finally got the nerve to ask the question that had plagued the couple ever since they had agreed to the surgery. “Now what happens if in the future Elaine and I decide to have a divorce?”
“Oh, that will not be possible, Mr. Matthews. You see, we have found that in order for the immortality surgery to function properly, one half of each device is placed in one half of each couple. You can spend a little time away from each other, anywhere form hours to maybe a day. But in order to keep from dying, you will need to be in almost constant contact with one another in order to keep the devices charged and operational. That is why we choose couples who have spent a number of years together, like the two of you have. We know that with compromise and love, you will have a happy and eternal life together.”
The man in the grey suit left and Elaine began to cry. Through the haze in his mind, John wondered vaguely what the traditional gift would for a one hundredth year anniversary.
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