The Drain

One of the few things that I remember about my first childhood home, which my family had lived in until I was eight, is the shower drain. The grate covering the drain wasn’t screwed in, so it simply rested in the indentation of the drain hole. Every now and then I would accidently kick it out of place while showering, exposing the softball-size drain below. The uncovered drain became a dark abyss in the middle of the shower and when I would look down into it a dull throb would kick in my stomach, a slow torturous feeling, like being jabbed maliciously and repeatedly with the nub of a broom handle. Every time the depth and darkness of the drain was exposed I would have the same overwhelming fear-a snake. I had intense, paralyzing images of a snake slithering up from the drain, slowly and broodingly coiling its never-ending body around my legs, caressing every inch of my skin with its pipe grime laden underbelly, wrapping itself tighter and tighter around me, until it was tickling my chin with its thin, lisping tongue. I would go down in history as the young girl who died in the shower by a snake attack, all while my mother was washing dishes in the next room. To think! The misery of it all! I would use my toes to grasp the drain grate and drag it back into place as quickly as possible, to block the dreaded snake from emerging from the darkness, to return all back to its proper place, to put life back in order.  The unknown, the dark, it all seemed to converge into all the dismal possibilities of the world or rather, at that time, probably just the dismal possibilities of my young life.

Coincidence

I happened by your street last night, just as you were going out the door. I wanted to say hello but you seemed in such a hurry so I followed you instead, thinking that perhaps I’d catch you when you came to your destination.

It was an unfamiliar part of town–at least to me–so I parked several cars behind you. I waited a moment too long and you were out and up the stairs of an address I just scribbled down. A short while later you came out and a girl was a step or so behind you. Odd, you both got in your car.

You went to Antonio’s Real Italian Restaurant. Isn’t that funny–you and I went there all the time. I guess you must have really liked it there and hadn’t lied. I thought about going in and having dinner too, then I’d get a chance to talk to you and meet your friend. But honestly, I wasn’t very hungry.

She looked quite tipsy, your friend; was it the sauvignon? Or did you have the burgundy we always had with the lasagna? I deliberated and then decided that I shouldn’t approach you both just then. I’m sure she would have just been too embarrassed.

I waited for a long time when you dropped her off. Then I woke up in the morning and your car was gone. I would have liked to say hello and ask you if you miss me.

 

Susan Gibb, recently both recipient of the 8th Glass Woman Prize and a Pushcart nomination, writes one blog on literature analysis and another on hypermedia writing and reading. Her poetry, fiction, and digital art have been published in many fine zines. Her work is included in the “Valentine Day Massacre” chapbook (Cervana Barva Press). She wrote 100 hypertext stories in Summer, 2009, 100 flash fictions in Summer, 2010 and in 2011 she’s teamed up with an artist and writes one flash piece each day. Her work has been linked as a resource in Creative Writing courses in several fine universities.

Reflection

A man got up from bed, went to his bathroom, and looked at himself in the mirror. He saw people come in full circle and detach themselves.  He saw a person use another’s authority for their own gain. He heard that its better that people should be described by their actions then their actions be described by those people. He learned he had a voice that could be felt by others. He realized that he isn’t the only siren that could be listened to. He met an enemy’s ally and made them a friend. He looked himself in the mirror and realized he was a monster. He began to listen to more sirens one ringing strongly while another hummed lower. The louder siren speaks of a place of fire where bad people live and good people visit. While the man speaks of an animal who doesn’t exist. He finds an angel who speaks of Milos and the man creates a sound of earth, but the louder siren speaks harder with a sound of retaliation, and after the loud siren creates a boom into the man’s ear, the man begins to see things differently not because of the boom but because of praise after. The man starts to see Messiahs being praised while saviors are being forgotten. The man starts to see people drown themselves on each other but no one flooding themselves on him. The man starts to hear people tell him his own flaws of being a monster. The man begins to be ignored by people who don’t want to hear his own voice. The man’s siren begins to not be listened to and feel worthless. The man’s enemy of his enemy becomes his enemy instead of his friend. The man starts to become nothing and his siren will soon wither and die. And along with the siren the man will die also, he begins to scream at himself in the mirror with what siren the man has left and his reflection shatters before he could realize that it doesn’t matter how many people love his voice but as long as one person holds the voice dear to themselves then no man or monster can be worthless. I then wake up and find myself broken, in the beginning of the circle, in “Ruin.”

The Angels Want Jimmy’s Head

The angels want Jimmy’s head.

Jimmy runs. Jimmy runs scared. Jimmy runs to church. God help me, please! Dark church, black-as-coal church, black-as-pits-of hell church. Can’t see. God help me, please! Can’t see Christ, cross, nails, thorns, painted blood on hands, feet…can’t see. God help me, please!

On altar, tiny light over picture of lamb. Lamb of God, lamb chops, lamb stew, Easter lamb rises from dead and runs…Jimmy runs.

The angels want Jimmy’s head.

-Slow down, Jimmy, Where you going? It’s Flower. Jimmy likes Flower. Flower’s OK.
-The angels want my head.
-Sure, Jimmy, sure they do, Flower says. Slow down. Talk to me, Jimmy. Flower likes Jimmy.
-Gotta get the fuck outa here. The angels want my head!

Jimmy runs. Flower runs after Jimmy. Ambulance runs after Flower. Angels run after ambulance. The angels want Jimmy’s head.

God, help me, please!

Jimmy’s in lockdown Ward. Isolation Room.
Jimmy hears wings. Jimmy feels wings on head. Angel wings.
Jimmy screams, screams.
Nurse gives Jimmy shot in ass.

Help me, please! Jimmy’s crying. Help me, please! The angels want my head!

The Devil looks at Jimmy’s head.
The Devil looks at Jimmy.

The Devil smiles.

Shirley

Shirley tells me that she once owned a horse that won the Kentucky Derby.

She says she had a doe living inside her house for two years until her husband said she had to let it go.

She says that after the deer peed on her throw rug she spanked it and it never messed in the house again.

Shirley says that her dog, Little One, is a beagle and that her five other dogs hate

Little One because she gets to lay on the davenport.

Shirley says she owns 19 sets of dishes and had to count each plate and bowl after her house had been broken into last year.

The thief had taken only guns, she says, 300 guns.

After her husband’s surgery, Shirley tries to kiss the heart surgeon on the mouth.

I sit next to Shirley in a hospital waiting room while doctors scrape from my wife’s womb our third attempt at parenthood.

Who can cry when a 70-year old woman is leaning in, spinning tales, yanking sleeves?

When Shirley says that she won three million dollars in a Coke bottle cap game but that she forgot her wallet at home and asks me to buy her two lunches in the cafeteria, I say sure.

There will be time for crying later.

A Conversation

by Nathan Schiller

Conversation Between Two Young White Men
Waiting for Food in Murray’s Bagels in the West Village, Manhattan,
New York, New York, U.S.A., 1 P.M., YR 2007

 

“So my buddy from law school, this one who

dropped out, he’s out in L.A. and started dating this girl.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, she’s like a porn star.”

“Yeah?”

“Like she’s in porn.”

“You mean, like, legitimately in porn?”

“Right, she does videos and stuff.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah. I don’t know if she’s, like, a star-“

“Starlet.”

“Or starlet, or she’s up-and-coming, or what, but apparently it’s pretty serious.”

“That’s pretty crazy.”

“And it’s like, this guy, he’s this Jewish guy from New Jersey, real smart, book-smart like crazy, but he didn’t really feel the whole ‘law-school-thing’ so he just went out there and now he’s dating this girl. I mean he’s pretty good looking you know.”

“Must be pretty crazy to know your girl’s doing that. Is he cool with it?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know? Isn’t that like the most number-one question you’d be asking him.”

“It just kind of never really came up. Like, I didn’t want to be all, ‘So do you go to her shoots and check out these guys she’s banging or what?’ you know?”

“No yeah that’s true.”

“Right.”

“But still I’d want to have some inside sort of info about the situation.”

“I know, I probably should have asked him. But he did say something interesting.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, that she actually wasn’t that good in bed.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. But I’m thinking it’s this kind of expectation thing where he thought she was going to just like seriously rip him apart or have some magical powers you know and he goes in there with that mentality and then it’s like if she’s just come from a morning of having sex with strangers how is she gonna be able to rev herself up for the like mundane aspect of just normal sex with her boyfriend when her boyfriend is thinking he’s about to have like freak sex with his girlfriend. It’s just not gonna happen like that is what I was thinking.”

“Right. Exactly.”

“And the whole time he’s telling me this, I’m thinking, like, who is this girl. Like, where did she come from, how did she get into all that.”

“I’d be most interested in like how she would date normal people. Like, did he just go up to her in a bar and start hitting on her. And when she said, ‘So, I’m in the adult film industry,’ if that’s how she phrased it, what did he think, because there are like fifty things you could be thinking, and somehow one of them leads you to dating this girl. I’m making presumptions.”

“No, you’re totally on.”

“So you asked him about this.”

“. . .”

“You didn’t?”

“Well, not exactly.”

“Why not?”

“It just didn’t come up.”

“So lemme get this straight. You’ve got a friend who’s dating a girl who acts in/performs in/participates in/belongs to the ‘adult film industry’ and all you know is that. Like you’re not even interested in his inner soul type of reaction to it. They’re like a different breed, man.”

“I am, but it just didn’t come up.”

“Yeah, well, that’s crazy, anyway.”

“Yeah.”

“So anyway, one of my teachers had us doing this whole thing about footnotes, and I usually hate all that crap, because, c’mon, you know, but so he gives us all this David Foster Wallace stuff, and, you know, it’s actually pretty good.”

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