The Burnt Girl

If only she hadn't said anything.

"I don't know why they say such things.  My goodness.  No one has ever died like that, here."  She twisted to look over her shoulder, stare at the brick farmhouse.  We stood in the thick shade, the afternoon heavy with summer.  The sun bounced hotspots off the top floor windows.  I watched her jowled loose-neck profile and felt the flood of memories she could actually see as she stared at my house.  "When we lived here, I was just a girl, and the trees were not so tall to block the house from the road. Ooh!  My father'd have a fit if he saw how the trees grew up in the field.  We'd sit on the porch.  Watch the cars.  Bet you can't do that now," she smiled, tenderness soft in the creases, gray hair wispy in the late day heat.
     "Nope.  But...you can hear them."
     The denial reminded her of where she'd left off.
     "So don't believe them, honey."  I still had no idea what she meant but I guessed it was coming in the next breath.  Her pale eyes found the stiff grass as she said, "No one ever fell in the fireplace and burned up.  We was the only kids that ever lived here," the old woman told me, "and no one got burnt and there's no ... no ... you know... dead soul haunting this place.  Just crazy talk.  People get all hyped up about nothing."  She twisted to check the house again as if it had moved an inch to the right while her back was turned or was about to nod in solemn agreement.  "Just an old house."  She turned to me then and found my face if not my eyes.
    "Its ok.  I hadn't heard any ghost stories anyw-"
    "Ghosts, " she grumbled.  "Well certainly not."
     Her husband came up behind her, big-bellied and shrunk in the chest.  "Yut, takes him a good three 'ours just to mow it all himself...." and the conversation drifted to Toros and lesser lawnmowers.  A spider hung by a gossamer thread from high in the boughs coasting on the heat rising and the humidity looking for a catch to spin his web.  Later, the older couple left, rolling down my dusty lane in a crossover SUV, waving like grandparents. 
     A month later she came back with an elderly niece.  They brought a photo album and flipped gluey pages turned yellow of my house before it was my house.  Her mother's garden lined with sugar snap teepees and tall marigolds.  A love seat strangely under the only window in the kitchen.  The breezy wraparound porch a previous owner tore off and left bare.   She stayed in the kitchen, so overwhelmed by memories of her long-gone mother she'd clasp the buttons on her shirt, eyes turned glassy.  When they left she promised to visit in the spring.
    Summer caved to fall, trees dropping colored leaves like skirts.  Fall fell gracefully to winter, when tendrils of smoke sailed out of my chimney top, a wood stove cranking in the fireplace.  I'd feed the hungry flames great mouthfuls of firewood, every time feeling the shallow depth of the hearth with my eyeballs and wondering how a child could fall into the fireplace and not survive.  It wasn't deep.  The mantle slung low.  And I wouldn't revisit the rumored story until I shoved more wood in the iron stove, the thought forgotten even as I swung the door shut with a thick suede glove.
     That winter, I dreamt of smoke.  I woke up with it full in my nose.  Sat up in bed in the dark and would sniff the air like a dog.  I got up sometimes, so convinced something some where was on fire, and after checking the burners and the oven in the kitchen and then for candles left glowing in the dark, I'd swing the creaky metal door to the wood stove wide as my family slept uninterrupted upstairs.  Safe in the iron box, red embers slept in a bed of graying ash.  No fire.  No smoke.  I climbed back into bed, annoyed at my dreams.
     One night, cool with the promise of spring, moths already tapping at the windows at night like fingertips, I woke because I heard a door shut.  Feet moved like a sleepwalker.  I waited for another door, a flush of a toilet, a child of mine making their way back to bed.  I waited.  Awake, I waited.  Warm under the covers in my bed, eyes open to nothing but the outline of the closet door in the darkness, she floated down my stairs.  A girl of no more than 12.  Clothes burnt away revealing raw skin, charred and sooty, especially at her shoulders, leaving trail of scent like smoke.  She floated.  Down my stairs.  
    For days I was jumpy.  I climbed into bed at night  flinching at squirrels racing across the metal roof, squelching goosebumps at the owls calling to each other in the pine trees, squeezing my eyes shut to push the burnt girl's black and red skinned shoulders out of my mind, which only made them more vivid.  If only she hadn't said anything.  It was my imagination spinning the words she had planted there.  The cat made those footsteps.  I mentally discarded the sound of the door, shaking a defiant no against the pillow seams.  I couldn't blame the cat for that, too.
    Several nights of only my mind retrieving the image of her floating down the stairs, one hand, shiny and wet in its rawness, on the rail, careless of my eyes impossibly watching her descend, left my days groggy and hampered by the weight of sleeplessness until eventually I could lie in the dark without clenching the quilts in my fist.  After a few weeks, the thud of the cat leaping to the floor in another room sliced my eyes open but let me drift back to sleep.  A month, and the daffodils nodded at me in the rain as I slept lulled to sleep by the drum of it.
     Their pert little SUV strolled up the muddy lane after churchtime on a Sunday.  As they eased themselves out of the car we spilled out of the house.  I suppressed a smile as she made her way towards me, full of old lady eagerness, determined to step firm on the wet flagstones to get to me.  I barely knew this woman, I lived in her childhood home, she was born in the bedroom I slept in, and she reached out to me, her hands light on my elbow, tipping in to speak to me.
     "Hi -," my space invaded, my nightmare fresh at just the sight of her: the smeary roasted skin, the charred hair matted around her melted ears, the smell of smoke on this day still fresh with passing rain showers.
     In my face, close, her breath yeasty like pancake brunch, she asks, "Did you see her?"  
     I could feel the muscles in my stomach lace up, my breath still.  "See what, who?"
      She studies me, her easy grip on my elbow childlike, tugging until she lets go.  Her husband's protruding stomach comes up behind her first, followed by his man-shy Hello.
      "Welllll," he drawls.  "Survived the damn winter, didn't we all."
      She shakes her head at me, the house behind us.
       "No?"  she says.
       Both of them stare at me, for separate reasons.
       Knowing exactly what she means, "No," I tell her.  Putting to death the image of a young girl supposedly burnt and hallowed in my house, that wafted down my stairs in the middle of the night like smoke and scent and letting it go.  I wished she'd never said anything about the burnt girl, but I let her go.
  

The crows are coming for us

The June 30-Day Challenge Thing w/ Monetary Incentive

Okay...here's my challenge: write 30 stories in 30 days.
plain and simple.
Poetry and/or flash fiction of 1000 words or less (or 2 Word doc. pages, which ever comes first).

Yup, one each day for the month of June.

The winner will receive a $20 Barnes and Noble gift certificate.

Winner will be judged by:
--length of pieces in adherence to 1000-word-or-less rule (i will copy/paste it into Word to count them)
--number of works submitted. (if you submit 27 and everyone else submitted 25, theres a good (but not definite (other factors ARE considered)) chance you'll win).
--i CAN'T judge on creativity because we'll just get into a big cyclical 'art is relative' debate which i'd rather not have now.  or ever for that matter.  BUT, if all yr pieces are pretty much exactly the same w/ just a few words changed, its gonna work against you.

Honor System Rule:
if you have 30 short stories ALREADY written, please don't use 'em.  anyone can pilfer their files for old stuff.  The challenge is to WRITE 30 stories/poems in 30 days.
Jotting down ideas is okay.  just don't have it all pre-written BY June 1st.


SPECIAL WORD TO ADMINS :
 You may grant the ability to self-publish onto the blog to anyone you wish FOR THE MONTH. after that, it's out-ski with 'em...unless you really like what they have to offer, then you can make a half-hearted case to which i'd undoubtedly crack under.  OR, have them submit to you and you post.  whichevs.  I'm easy.

So, all you artsy-fartsies, sharpen yr pencils, buy a pack of black Bic fine points, put on a vat of coffee.  The literary world awaits our words!!

Onward and upward,

e

the first quasi-expository pages of something larger that i'm consistently working on and will eventually finish

Elliot Wythe-Pulk couldn’t feel anything, yet felt everything, numbly, from his intangible center up to the dark lids of his own universe.

            He wasn’t sure how long it took him to adjust to his surroundings, to figure out the actualities of what his senses told him as they slowly, almost reluctantly, switched on and laboriously sent messages to his brain, giving him the best evaluation possible, given the circumstances and information received.

            He was on his back.  That was the first thing he was privy to.  His breath came out in vapors, the warmth in a tango with the cold, floating up and disintegrating light years before they reached the stars.  The sight of his breath told him it was cold before he even felt it, and reminded him it was winter before he registered it.

            He hadn’t tried to move yet.  It seemed immediately less important than trying to simultaneously slough off the lingering dreamlike fogginess he felt and page through his current memories, looking for a stray clue as to why he was (obviously) a. outside, b. at night, c. in the winter, d. on his back e. in some (as of yet) unknown location.

            He moved his legs and arms, relieved that they functioned.  Which made him ask himself why he thought they wouldn’t.  His jacket, stiff with cold, crinkled with his movements.  In his mind, Elliot saw the picture of a man—dirty, bedraggled, not-right-in-the-head.  He didn’t know if it was the image of himself or someone else.  He put his hands to his face.  The wool gloves were cold, but not as cold as the air.  He huffed out warm air into the gloves, which spread thru the material and engulfed his face for a warm moment.  He repeated this a few times until he gathered up enuff personal initiative to sit up.

            A big ‘C’.  A gigantic capital letter ‘C’ was the first thing he saw.  It was light blue and outlined in white and it was huge.  He felt the distance between him and the majuscule C, the depth of air between him and the large chunk of rock it was painted on and the towering building, with a crux of its lights out, upon that rock.  Elliot focused on the depth between himself and the C.  Stretching out before him, a swatch of grass led to a river, on which large blooms of ice wiggled slowly downstream, barely moving, as thick veins of water coursed around them, peering up into the night.

Night?

            Elliot lifted his watch to his face.  Or, he meant to.  His watch was gone.  He looked to his left.  Trees.  Woods.  Beyond that, a bridge.  His neck was sore.  He looked to his right.  Tan-colored lines of dirt converged on one another.  He followed these lines.  They surrounded him.  He glanced down to where he was sitting and it, too, was tan dirt, which was connected to one of the corners of the square he was in.

Of course, he thought.

A baseball field.

            He sighed with accomplishment.  He started putting it all together.  Woods on a slope.  A river.  A baseball field.  He looked around with more scrutiny.  Foot paths.  Iron lampposts.  Beyond home plate, a metal cage, and beyond that, vacant bleachers and still further on, apartment buildings peeked over into the park—standing sentry, watching but not getting involved.

            The big C, he knew, stood for Columbia.  As in, University.  Good, he thought to himself, I’m still in the city.  Sporadic shushing sounds came from the bridge on his left.  The latticed metalwork gave off a hushed luminance as if it imbibed light instead of echoing it.  The clank and whine of subway brakes made their way from somewhere distant into his ears.

            Elliot’s head filled with geographic maths.  The subway must be an elevated one, he figured.  That would put him, he pondered, maybe somewhere between 125^th and 145^th?  Because, he blinked, the train comes above ground after 116^th, and goes back underground before 137^th.  Although, no, probably not.  He didn’t know of any parks around 125^th, at least on the west side of Manhattan, which is where he was assuming he was.  There was a park near 145^th, right on the river.  But hearing the train, underground as it was at 145^th, would’ve been darn near imposs—

Or!

            The train came up above ground around 200-and-something^th Street, he rationalized.  Which would place him in the Fort Tryon Park or Inwood area.  Which would ultimately place him on the Bronx-bordered upper tip of Manhattan.  Elliot looked again at the big C.  Yes, it was definitely the Bronx lurking sleepily behind the giant rock and building at this hour.

This hour.

            Elliot patted his pockets—first his jacket, then his pants.  He felt the familiar rectangular block of his cell phone.  His cold fingers dug hungrily into his pocket, both for the device and the warmth

Did I have gloves?, he asked himself, unsure.

            He stared equally as blankly at the crack in the cellphone’s darkened face as the crack was staring back at him.  He closed and reopened it a few times, pressed every button.  Still nothing.  He had to find out the time.  He had to find out where he was.  He had to figure out how he’d gotten there.

            First things first, he told himself as he stood up.  His legs were also sore.  Pins and needles shot thru his left foot.  He shook it to get the sleep out and the blood in.  The cold air blew thru him.  His limbs felt frozen, trapped in slumber.  To clear his head, he filled his lungs with a huge helping of air.  It only made him momentarily dizzy.  He put his phone back into his pants pocket, then burrowed his hands into the warmish confines of his jacket pockets.  He turned toward the apartment buildings and headed off the baseball diamond.

Wood Sage

mouths w/ nothing to say & eyes w/ nothing to look @

            The metal railing feels cold on my elbow, even though we are in the stuffy epicenter of summer.  I’m leaning back, both elbows up, wondering of I’m coming off as being too self-conscious of how I look, distanced as I am from just about everyone else while trying to give off the impression that I’m just indifferently relaxing in this low-trafficked corner of the roof.  I don’t care how I’m coming off, if I’m even coming off as anything at all.  But, I feel that if I saw me w/ my own eyes, I’d see an anti-social party-pooper flashing false grins and staring blankly out over the city.

            Although, my wooden stolidity has its own splinters of lies wedged in it.  I do care, but only up to the point where I know I’m neither anti-social nor a party-pooper.  I find it irksome—though, yet, not enough to rally against it—that I’ll be perceived as quite possibly the opposite of what I am.  Why am I grinning?  I’m content in the moment I’m in.  Why am I staring out over the city?  It intrigues.  It hums.  It hypnotizes.

            I should probably mingle more than I have been.  Earlier, I’d put minimal effort into a few conversations which I’d either excused myself from or just totally went blank in the middle of.  I didn’t even offer any obligatory uh-huhs or nods.  I just stared at mouths as words came out, most of them dropping names or  trying to convince me of the amazingness the here-&-now speaker embodied.  While someone I didn’t know and, by the mixture of the Laws of Probability and the good luck juju of crossed fingers, would never see again prattled incessantly & nauseatingly on, I’d scan the entire rooftop gathering for someone else I’d have the dubious fortune of feigning interest in.

            So, I took my drink—a scotch rocks which I still haven’t even touched and is now just an air-temperature watered-down scotch which is surprisingly creating a mist of condensation on its tumbler—to a corner of the roof where I’m currently standing, looking out over the parallels and perpendiculars of the city streets.  I have a vague knowledge of where I’m located, trying to figure out which thoroughfare down below is the ambiguous territorial line between Chelsea and Tribeca.

The deejay has been hitting my mood perfectly with his song choices.

            And I can’t seem to put a finger on what my mood actually is.  It’s not for lack of trying.  When I think I know if I’m cheerful or melancholy or bored, it gets out from under me and gets replaced by something else that doesn’t transition smoothly at all.  I feel like I’m being jostled.  My moods have hopped into bumper cars and aren’t listening to the underpaid ambivalent acne-infested teenager yelling to enjoy their ride safely.

            I can feel my cheeks wrinkle upward into the most infinitesimal of smiles.  I’m aware of my calm, regulated breathing pattern.  But I can sense a quickened pulse.  It’s not flowing thru me, not yet, but I feel it building up.  It is tightening its bootstraps, rolling up its sleeves, tucking in its shirt because it knows it is going to be called upon to act.  Soon.

            Large white outdoor Christmas-type lights are strung above the party, wound around pipes and poles and railings and antennas.  Some are burnt out.  Some reflect off the ever-shimmering surface of the water in the kiddie pool, in which is kept the soiree’s store of ice, beer, and soda.  Some give the party-goers luminescent domes, like haloes pressed down into their hair.

            There is a scuffle somewhere.  Up here.  On the roof.  My eyes dart around the goers, making everyone a phosphorescent blur, losing their defining line where skin & clothes end and the rest of existence begins.  They all look like giant glowing commas.  I can’t place the argument.  I hear shattering.  No heavy clunks, just the gentle chime of glass coming apart at newly-created seams.

            The deejay miscalculates a musical segue and I can see everyone subconsciously pick up on it.  A shift from one foot to the other.  A roll of tense shoulders.  A quick squinted glance upward into the starless night sky.

            I look across the street to what I have decided is an apartment building.  I am eye-level with one of the floors and, for the past 20 minutes or so, I’ve been keeping a sporadic eye on one window in particular.  Thru this window I can see the length of an apartment.  And pacing the length of this apartment is a man on a phone.  He walks up to the window, turns, walks to the far wall, turns, then returns to the window.  The almost half an hour I’ve been keeping track of him making this loop, his arm has been curled to the side of his head.  It reminds me of a mug handle.

            The gait of his pacing is not what I would call spry or bouncy.  He is, in fact, lumbering up and down the length or width of his apartment with a tilt to whichever side his foot falls to.  I can’t even imagine what he could be talking about for this long while pacing the same invisible path, without switching phone hands.  He’s a big guy, too.  An over-exerciser, I decide.  I my mind, I have him hurling the phone out of view, smashing the window with the double-team of his fists, leaping to the sill while pounding his chest and roaring.

            In reality, he only turns again at the window and heads back to the far wall of his pad.  In reality, I’m talking absolute nonsense to someone I don’t know…and enjoying it.  In reality, I’m the center of attention and greedy for it.  In reality, winter has fallen and I’m up here alone on the roof, shin-deep in snow.

From Skyscrapers to Silos (Intro, Revision #2)

Sunday June, 5 2005. New York City’s top 40 radio station Z100 blared from my surround sound stereo system within the walls of my spacious room in the town house that I had appropriately and most affectionately dubbed the “Brooklyn Blue Stone Estate” in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. There were clothes everywhere; I was trying to construct a cohesive Vogue worthy ensemble, which was absolutely necessary since I would be ushered through the velvet ropes of one of Manhattan’s hottest celeb hangouts: Marquee. In preparation, I danced around my room (dancing in stilettos is an art that must be practiced) sipping on a glass on Veuve Clicquot, periodically chemically bolstering my enthusiasm (i.e. confidence), excited that tonight I would be in the company of who’s who in New York’s entertainment scene. Seven miscalculated years in New York and, finally, I had it all: a high paying job at a club US Weekly Magazine had just named young Hollywood’s hottest new hangout, an amazing, over-priced place to live, a glammed up wardrobe, and a social network entitling me with VIP access and treatment at it clubs. I partied like a rock star surrounded by rock stars, unbeknownst to me that after reaching the pinnacle of that dreamlike existence I would stubbornly shake slumber mid afternoon on June 6th to reluctantly greet a cruel new world, with a champagne hangover Keith Richards would be proud of.

I woke up groggy and seriously dehydrated, with half of my two hour make up production, permanently transferred to my pillow; still fully dressed with one strappy stiletto on, my cell phone voice mail was maxed out with messages from my mother. The impact those messages would have on the course of my life was equivalent to the Mets’ left fielder, Endy Chavez, robbing Scott Rolen of a homerun, then completing the double play by throwing Jim Edmands out at first base in the sixth inning of game seven at Shea Stadium (the winner of this game would advance to the World Series). It was the intense, uneasy emotion in my mother’s sob-stricken voice as she informed me that something was wrong with Dad that kept my attention, clenched my diaphragm, restricting new breaths. Apparently, he had collapsed opening the doors to the hospital where he was to get his Monday morning dialysis treatment. His status was unclear. Still somewhat drunk and now both light-headed and jittery, my nervous system responded, fully alarmed; it countered with profuse alcohol-laden sweat and delirium, I thought…I thought I was dreaming. Why was my mother using a phrase like “status unclear”? My mind was combative, confused. MY dad…unresponsive? MY daddy…died, resuscitated, and in a coma? WHAT? After seven years of diligent faith in the unknown, I suddenly chastised my own indefinite beliefs. Up until this very specific moment, everything had been falling into place for me--this happening, did not seem possible. Quietly, ghostly apparitions began to frantically grasp at my phantomlike world as it began to dissipate.

Pacing, well, more like limping since my right foot had three and a half extra inches, I tried to comprehend what the fuck was going on. With each message I listened to, the more frantic I grew. Hysterics set in and with an expedited exhale, I collapsed right there on my beautiful hardwood floor: a true diva in distress. They don’t permit you to keep your cell phone active within the confines of the hospital’s intensive care unit, so I had absolutely no new contact with my mother outside of the voice mails, no confirmation (or explanations), nothing to contradict the gruesome scenarios playing repeatedly in my head.

When I boarded the plane out of JFK a few hours later, I had no idea if my father was dead or alive. And no amount of in flight vodka sodas could calm or at least stabilize my frenzied thoughts.

For the past seven years, I had been the sole focus of my life. My father was never a day to day necessity in my life, had not even occupied a passing thought in my day to day life. It sounds awful. But it’s true. It’s not that I didn’t love him, because I did. I idolized him (surreptitiously, of course). He was more like my secret weapon, always ready to intercept a late night phone call, redirect and reassure me, feed me his old school wisdoms. With this laid back, slightly cavalier presence, he skillfully educated me. I have been able to recite his (our) favorite poem, “Invictus” for as long as I can remember. According to my father, within each verse of this poem lay the answer to any and all of my life’s puzzles. But without him to repeatedly dissect it with me, would the words lose meaning? All of this time, I had him in my wings, at my disposal, and I was more concerned with whether to accessorize with a vintage clutch or a trendy boho bag.

An emotional wreck on the plane, selfishly whining “This is not fair”, I was consumed with guilt, tortuously playing the “what if I-coulda, shoulda mind fuck” roulette with no promise of producing a winner.

When you’ve learned to discard an upbringing in a neighborhood full of unlocked doors and have finally mastered the rubric’s cube-like puzzle of existing in a city of eight million people anonymously, you start to question the motives of anyone who looks you square in the eye. On that plane, for the first time, I truly embraced the fact that I was surrounded by strangers who didn’t want to know why I was a complete walking basket case, who avoided even looking in my immediate direction. If I had been allowed as much as tweezers on that flight, I might have been tempted to gouge out the eyes of each and every one of those carbon-copy cheery flight attendants (except when they were serving me). Welcoming my anonymity, I was almost annoyed when the lady sitting next to me took an interest and began to query. When I tried to order another drink, she ordered me milk and cookies (seriously). She had white-blonde hair full of curls that are only achieved after sitting hours in those bright pink foamy curlers. She asked the flight attendant for tissues (something this bitch neglected to offer me as I steadily and continuously cried and snotted, leaving the debris behind on my favorite stuffed animal, a puppy named Bunny). Through all of my emotional turmoil, this lovely old lady next to me continued to comfort me, even holding my hand at times. This random stranger, looking like she stepped off the set of “Golden Girls”, pried and pried and pried, not easily allowing me to brush her off as callously as the born and bred city residents had done me. Clutching Bunny, I slowly began to regain some composure, sipping what would be my last vodka on that flight (per grandma), wiping various limbs, now dripping faucets of snot. This old lady seated next to me, deprived of the most single detail of the nature of my flight that night said to me, “Now is not the time to be placing blame on yourself.”

Recently widowed, she explained, life is about moments like these. I was puffy and swollen, buzzed from the cocktails served at a high altitude, and yet, here was this angelic woman telling me that I was facing a moment that would ultimately define me and my character. There was no reason why this woman should have consoled me. She could have sat in her window seat, gazing out at night-time New York, pretending not to hear me crying, pretending not to see me slowly rocking back and forth in my seat, hunched over a soggy stuffed animal, sucking down cocktails. But she didn’t, she got involved and she redirected my fears and worries from me to my mother. She said (and I’m paraphrasing) you’re young and independent here in New York. Remember when you de-board this plane that your mother will need your support. Imagine what the past twelve hours have been like for her. This little old Miami bound lady was right. And when we landed in Burlington, Vermont, I hugged her and thanked her for reminding me about the importance of family and my place within that sacred circle. I thanked her for re-establishing a sense of clarity for me. She wished me well and said (and I quote) “Remember Sugar, clarity doesn’t mean clear liquor”.

I think back on that nosey granny and I smile; she restored my faith in happenstance on that flight. I was ready to give up; give in, relinquish my fidelity to fate, but I was seated next to her and not one of those hardened, citified people who would have gazed out of the window the entire flight.

Years later, my father is dead and I still look for the clarity in clear liquors, but as I search for personal meanings, asking questions, I hear my father’s voice. He’s still relentless in educating me; still my secret weapon, he armed me with an arsenal of information throughout my life. I venture forth still needing clarity, but I no longer ask “Why me?” because I know my father would lean back in his big blue recliner, adjust his glasses and reply, “Excuses don’t matter, results do”.