Deadly Short Stories Read online

  “Go get it, idiot,” Casey said, shoving Jeff forward into the alley.

  “Not me; I don’t like dogs,” Jeff said, burping. “More import—ugh—more importantly, they don’t like me.”

  Jeff shuffled to the alley wall and leaned against it. He closed his eyes and sighed.

  Alan stepped out of the alleyway, leaned against a storefront, and lit a cigarette.

  “I’ll do it,” Frank said, sounding exhausted.

  After a minute or so, he shouted back to the three remaining brothers:

  “Good news. The urn is cracked, but it still contains ashes!”

  He took another look in the dim light.

  “Most of them, anyway,” he muttered.

  Frank poked the ashes with a piece of wire. “Kind of wet, though,” he said to himself.

  Then he stood up and stared at the mess at his feet, not knowing what to do next.

  A siren in the distance grew louder, wailing like a jungle bird in heat. Frank had tears in his eyes. Unusual tears.

  At the mouth of the passageway, Jeff slid down the bricks of the wall slowly, until his butt hit the ground.

  He sat there in a stupor, spitting at the cracked asphalt between his legs, a final, bloody blob smacking against the tar like a slap to the face.

  Their “Runt” slid quietly away, first into a coma, and then into the big sleep. Not a Runt by nature, after all. But by disease.

  Overhead, dark clouds forming a body in repose drifted in front of a dull moon.

  Unaware of the new reality, Casey shook his head in disgust as he marched down the alley past his little brother.

  Casey crouched beside Frank and the two began to gather the last of their mother’s ashes.

  Behind them, the siren faded into the night like memories turning to dust.

  CHAPTER 12

  Last Tuesday

  Take these pants, for instance.

  They fit me like they belong to my little brother, if I had one: too tight in the waist, too loose in the butt, too short in the left leg, too long in the right. With a hole above the pocket on the north of the eastern-most cheek. You could see my rosy-red boxers right through if you were so inclined.

  Take that sky, too, too gray in the eye of it. Too yellow in the gut. My gut gurgles down so deep it’s like hearing fireworks from some far distant celebration. Rummble . . . boom . . . booommm . . . rmmmmmbllll . . .

  My eyes have sunken back into my head like marshmallow finger nobs. My nose drips all the time now like candy Red Hots squinting on a summer sidewalk outside a convenience store, but they don’t say convenient to whom, do they?

  Not to the penniless, nor to the shoplifter whose face they know by sight and smell and echolocation.

  My ears ring like a waterfall of fleas escaping a dog bath. My limbs shake like Albuquerque wannabees on a thunderclap gymnasium spring-loaded trampoline.

  This is what it means to be hungry from lightheadedness.

  I mean, lightheaded from too much hungry gnawing on your own trapped-ass foot cage in the snowy leopard land.

  I cross the street at the cross-guarded crosswalk, nursing like a nurse would nurse my bloody knuckles. But what’s the ooze? I think I lost a tooth. I don’t know when. This fight? That one? Last year?

  Tommy’s birthday gun, when he threw that orange plastic Luger at my face? Water-pistol-whipped. Not for the last time, or the first, or ever.

  Can’t remember if the feeling of my tongue against that black hole in my mouth is a new feeling or unfamiliar or if my tongue is even in the right mouth anymore.

  His hands are intertwined, palms up like a braided basket into which I drop the fruits of labor, the labor of the world, dirt of the poor earth’s salt.

  My last ten cents.

  I’m used to these crazy guys looking up at me when I drop a dime on them and giving me their crazy look like, Don’t I know you? Aren’t we cousins?

  Well, we are cousins, kissin’ no, but this one doesn’t give me the look, just keeps looking at the silver he’s collected like he’s the church. Like I’m the parishioner.

  Which I’m not going to say is not the case.

  I for some reason, too, can’t turn away from what I’m looking at, which is him looking at what he’s looking at, which is the money.

  Which I gave him.

  Which he’s now studying.

  So I study him.

  He’s got on a big dirty coat stained with sorrow. Shadowed with his forgotten past. Torn at the seams with his lost dreams. Scruffy at the cuffies from too many lost memoruffies.

  There but for the Son of God go I. Or is he the Son of God? You know how we’re tested. You know how sneaky that Son of a Gun is. Could be Him.

  Gotta keep your wits about you and never let your guard dog down.

  A disappointed dog is nobody’s friend, least of all Uncle Sam’s or Aunt Washcloth of Biscuit Bread Imaginings.

  Who says a good beating and four days without a legitimate bit of the building blocks doesn’t fuck with the way you think?

  From the Four Food Groups I’ve accepted only Sugar, Weed, Wine, and Air. It’s a pyramid even Cleopatra couldn’t climb.

  Tho’ I would bet top dollars that Marc Antony and Anthony Quinn and Marky Mark all together would give their all trying to climb that Cleopatra mound.

  Straight to the top, no looking back.

  Shit, man, I’ve got to eat or I’m going to fall off the fuckin’ food pyramid with a splat and that’s not the start of a homemade sauce; that’s the beginning of an ambulance chase.

  Which is what transpires the next minute because, loopy, hazy, walking on air, I step out into the street without looking, crossing in the middle in the middle in the middle of the street, and I’m struck now by how you never the fuck know what hit you before, during or after it hit you.

  And now I’m on the ground thinking, great, how does this fuckin’ help? as the buildings above me bend down rubbery like doctors and nurses in an emergency room. Looking at their patient on a gurney, blocking out the sun with their bricks and mortar and bombs and glass.

  Then the sun is gone black and a siren from off the moon finds my ear pressed against the blacktop littered with cigarette butts, guitar picks, chopsticks.

  Lottery tickets, fingernails, condoms, straws, ketchup packets, newspaper clippings.

  High school yearbooks, sheets filled with poetry, photos of young lovers, songs of myself, mucous to my ears.

  Rat hair, rat eyeballs, rat’s asses (I don’t give one). And me.

  The rubber buildings lift up a bit, bending back to reveal a too bright sun shining in a metal disk and there’s talk that ricochets off hard walls like spoken bullets and also a pinging signal signifying nothing, signaling doctors to go here and there.

  I’m in motion down a corridor, doors swinging and swinging above my arm is some kind of see-through bag connected to a hose that’s filled with liquid that’s either going in me or coming out.

  Coming out briefly from what was I in—a coma, a stupor, a dream?—I see the man in the mask put the hissing mask down on me and that’s all she wrote, the illiterate bitch.

  My last thought is AT LAST I’M GOING TO EAT THANK GOD (even if it’s that shit they feed you in hospitals)!

  CHAPTER 13

  The Karaoke King

  “Change always seems to take longer than you would expect,” she stated, handing me the final divorce papers.

  As I watched her walk down the steps and into her Impala, I thought, yeah well, it depends on which side of the change you’re on.

  I closed the door after she drove away and surveyed my new place. “New” to me at least, for almost two months now. My studio apartment, complete with big TV, Xbox, leather recliner—and not much else. My side of the spoils.

  My wife had met Billy at a karaoke contest back in April, he and she the final two. She almost had him with “Stand by Your Man,” her crowd pleaser, her sure-fire contest winner.

  But he counte
red with “I Can’t Stop Lovin’ You,” and that was that. She lost by a single point, but he had won her heart. Funny I didn’t notice.

  I was cheering more like her gay brother than her husband. Jumping and clapping and waving from the back of the crowd. Nursing my last daiquiri of the night (I’d already had six by that time).

  When they started to rehearse together for the couples competition, I encouraged them. I can’t carry a tune, so she and I could never be a couple. A karaoke couple, I mean. Each Wednesday and Friday night, she drove to his place to rehearse.

  Didn’t want to bother me with her squeals, was how she put it. Wait until we get it just right, and then you can hear us, she told me.

  I was so in love, I couldn’t see the forest for the wolves. So I encouraged her to go. One night, I even boxed up dinner for them two: ramen noodles, applesauce cups, root beer, and corn chips.

  The Couples Karaoke Contest at Kountry Karaoke in Warrenton was known as the place to be. Their prize—a First Place ribbon with little lights on it that blinked red, white, and blue. The most prestigious prize in the tri-county area for karaoke.

  When my wife and he finally took the stage that Friday night, they seemed to emit their own glow in their matching white sequined jumpsuits, like Elvis and Ann-Margret incarnate! They opened with “A Little Bit Country (A Little Bit Rock ‘n’ Roll)” and killed.

  There was even choreography! I had never seen such moves in a karaoke bar before. They stepped up, jumped back, spun around, and landed at the same time down on one knee, each with a hand out to us in the audience. Even though, deep down, a warning bell was dully sounding—like an alarm clock buried under a hundred pillows—I was a true fan. Applauding as loud as anyone in the building.

  For round two, the Finals Round, they had done a costume change. Now, my wife was in a pink dress with red sequins and embroidered poodles and lassos, like Dolly. It showed off her shape and I had never seen her so happy. In fact, I don’t remember ever seeing her looking so lovely, with makeup on and her hair all brushed out.

  Billy was all in black, like Johnny C, as they sang “If I Were a Carpenter.” I took that as a personal honor, being as I worked at the Home Depot, on the forklift, mostly in lumber.

  My heart warmed up like stone on a stove right then. I knew she loved me and I loved her more than a bitch loves her pups. This would be a new beginning, I could feel it, and I couldn’t wait to get her home.

  Afterwards, we all went down the road to Mick’s Roadkill to celebrate their victory—their coronation really. (Roadkill, where the ex and I met, ten years ago. Mick was my best man; he’s got the greatest sense of humor, considering he’s in a wheelchair due to the motorcycle accident).

  I stayed as late as I could. But I had to help open the store in the morning, which meant up at six a.m.

  Hard drinking and hard working put me to sleep as if I’d been whacked by a two-by-four. At six the next morning, my alarm rang for nearly four minutes before it woke me.

  It wasn’t until I padded out of the shower, leaning over the dresser, saying, “Honey, where’s my black Haggard tee?” and her not responding and me swinging around to swear, “Dammit, I said where’s my black Hagg—” that I saw her side of the bed was still made. Unslept in.

  I called around trying to find her, to see if she was all right. But after getting nowhere, I quit it and headed off to work. I couldn’t afford to lose another job.

  Each day I came home from work, more stuff was missing. First, it was just her clothes and shoes and feminine under-attire.

  Then kitchen things: pots, pans, the toaster, the blender, the George Foreman grill.

  After that, some of the smaller pieces of furniture, like the ottoman, the TV tables, the plant stands. Then the bigger pieces went.

  At last, the paintings off the walls, the throw rugs, knick-knacks. Stuff out of the bathroom and off the porch.

  Within the week, she’d moved out completely, leaving me with nothing but my clothes, my truck, and that alarm clock.

  Last month, she sold the house because the court said we had to. We split it fifty-fifty, after her expenses. I spent my share on the TV and that lounger, sure, but I also invested it. In lessons.

  You see, I’ve got a plan. I can’t sing, I know that. And I can’t dance.

  But I’m getting there. I’ve been taking singing and dancing lessons. And even that choreography stuff. For the stage.

  I bought me a sequin outfit, too, like I’d seen Billy wear that night. The way my belly pushes against the material, though, I feel more like Conway Twitty than young, good-looking Elvis, but I’m working on that problem too.

  Because I know what she likes. I know what it will take to win her back. I wish I was ready to go back to the Kountry Karaoke right now, tonight! But change always seems to take longer than you would expect.

  CHAPTER 14

  Georgina Finds Her Way

  Georgina DelRue charted her course through life using both her GPS device and Google Maps. Neither gave her accurate directions. For example, her GPS failed to warn her that her boyfriend was cheating on her. Google Maps did not foresee her layoff and subsequent descent into an extended period of self-pity.

  Yet Georgina believed in her technology, despite its occasional hiccups and flaws. The way a mother overlooks her children’s shortcomings and focuses on the areas where they shine. Such as with ballet, finger-painting, and the clarinet. Not the poor posture, lack of friends, and large elbows.

  Georgina depended on her GPS and Google Maps. After each failed relationship, she would again enter her home address as the Start and “Soul Mate” as the Destination. Then she would click “Get Directions.” Unfortunately, each time, Google Maps would take her into some unfamiliar territory.

  Following her GPS down Prince Street one day, the GPS’s female voice indicated that Georgina, by making a left, would find true love. All she found, however, was heartache, and she even had to pay for the meal (at Kelly & Ping’s).

  Another time, uptown, her GPS called out, “Make immediate right here to meet man of your dreams.” This turned out to be yet one more poorly programmed algorithm. One that will no doubt be corrected with the next release.

  Georgina had tried to get her life on track before using the laughably inaccurate Bing Maps (what was she thinking?). Even MapQuest (which one time led her into the East River—she’d never been so wet and so cold!). So now, all her hopes and dreams rested with Google and Garmin.

  With her biological clock ticking and her heart not sure how much more it could take, Georgina DelRue typed her search into Google Maps: “A real man, who loves me for who I am.” She entered the same into her GPS. Georgina compared the results.

  For once, they both pointed to the identical location: Midtown. East. The United Nations Building. Well, both sources couldn’t be wrong, not at the same time! Not about the exact same—and famous—location.

  Georgina hailed a cab and followed along on her GPS with every turn the cabbie made. The cabbie improvised a bit here and there, but for the most part it matched up well to what she expected.

  At the UN building, not knowing exactly what to do, Georgina sat down on the first bench she saw and waited. She checked her GPS to see if any additional information might be available, but there was nothing. After a couple of hours like this, and seeing groups of tourists guided into the building, Georgina decided to take the tour herself.

  She gathered with a group that formed near the ticket desk, waiting for the next tour guide to approach. When the guide finally did, that was when she knew that technology had not let her down.

  Her faith had been rewarded: He was exactly what she was looking for. He was perfect. Here stood her dream man.

  Gradually, though, as he introduced himself to the crowd, Georgina began to decipher through the haze of her infatuation some sort of “blah blah blah” about his “partner.” About his new wedding ring. About how much they loved each other. About how happy they were that la
ws had changed so they could get married at last.

  On the way out, after she departed the tour halfway through, Georgina flung the GPS into the garbage. She silently cursed Google and Garmin, the evil twins of lost souls. “Enough!” she shouted (unnoticed). “Give me a good old-fashioned road atlas and I’ll go find a man myself!”

  MORAL:

  It’s always better to make your own mistakes, than to follow someone else’s script—or in this case, turn-by-turn directions.

  CHAPTER 15

  Contemporary Minute Mysteries

  I. THE TEXT

  The scenery went by like charcoal. His eyes were zippers. He swayed as if he were on some train bound for some place. No! He was on some train bound for some place.

  The scenery continued to go by like charcoal, only gritty, tough, like a Hollywood starlet aching for a part. His eyes continued to be zippers, reflecting nothing.

  The train hopped along like a jackrabbit with a sound like a hairy hand jiggling loose change in the pocket of a tweed pair of trousers. The sun was a cavity in a toothless mouth. He saw that the scenery continued to go by like charcoal, like Siamese twins, like croutons.

  Beside him sat the woman. She wore a perfume that assaulted his nose like an alarm clock. Her eyes were painted a speculative gold, her lips a hesitant red. She withdrew from her purse a pad and a pen.

  He gazed out the window like a sea urchin as she wrote. The train whistled at a crossroads, sounding like oranges being whipped with a rubber hose. The scenery went by like numbers in a phone book, like so many broken hearts, like yesterday’s breakfast.

  She finished her note and folded it into a precise package. She hailed the conductor who took the note. (He noticed that the note had been taken. He made a note of it. His eyes continued to be zippers.)

  The conductor left. She turned her head to stare out the window. He saw her ear. It had the look of an urgent telegram. He read it. It told him nothing.