Flash Fiction Exchange - Walking After Midnight

This year, each month Lisa and I are going to write stories based on a Patsy Cline song title. Both our mothers loved Patsy Cline - and so do Lisa and I. There are, I think, 127 song titles to choose from but we're starting with this one - picked by Lisa and one of my favourite Patsy Cline songs. We're hoping that the titles - and the stories - will convince some of you to try a little taste of Patsy!

Kate

Walking After Midnight

She couldn't stop.

Daniella knew it wasn't safe - she wasn't safe - but each night for the past six months she'd woken up just after midnight and returning to sleep had been impossible. She'd tried everything. Pills, alcohol, meditation, music, TV - none of them worked.

She fell asleep with her head on the keyboard after lunch, fought her way through the evenings trying to stay awake until at least eleven, but even when she did manage it, she still woke up as if the earth's spinning past midnight  was her alarm clock.

After a month, Daniella felt like a zombie.

She started walking. She began by stepping out onto her oh-so-familiar street and sprinting around the block, figuring nothing would happen in her neighborhood. But it wasn't enough. She came home, went to bed and stared at the ceiling until the sun came up.

She mapped out a longer yet still safe route - around her block, over to Main Street and down to the police station, then reversed it to get home. That took about an hour at a brisk pace. Still not enough to allow her to sleep. And though she seemed to be able to get an hour or two of sleep during the day, it wasn't enough to last her through the sleepless nights.

The only time she felt good was walking. So she walked more. After a few weeks she felt safe on her extended route and made it longer. She did the route twice, then three times, then got bored with it. She added a few blocks in at each end and did that. Another few weeks and she was bored again.

Now she walked from midnight until six every morning, quartering the town. She felt great and she looked great - she'd lost weight, she'd firmed up, her skin looked pearly and sleek. Her hair lightened to an almost platinum blonde and her nails grew more quickly than she could trim them. During those six hours, Daniella felt like a new woman. Ten years younger and a thousand times more attractive.

She started to enjoy herself and contemplated applying for jobs on the graveyard shift. She got as far as updating her resume and then stopped because if she got the job she'd have to stop walking. But because she felt better each day and the lack of sleep bothered her less and less, she kept her day job and the walking.

Daniella got accustomed to being stopped by cops. It didn't happen every night, but near enough, and as the months moved past, she started telling them the things she'd noticed in her transit of the town. The lights on when they should have been off. The loud music. The sobbing. The shadowy figures lurking in parking lots. Pretty soon the cops started looking for her because she saw things they didn't.

Three times she received rewards for information leading to an arrest. After the third time, Don Sutton, the cop she saw most often, asked her to drop by to meet the Chief. "I'll pick you up at noon," he said. "Lunch, just you and me," he said and she nodded. Walking had made her more clear-headed and far more open to possibiliities. Don Sutton was a possibility she relished.

The Chief wanted to put her on the payroll. Daniella thought about it. What did she have to lose?

She was addicted to the night and she was becoming addicted to Don Sutton, who was on permanent graveyard. She had nothing to lose and everything to gain so she said yes to the Chief, yes to Don Sutton, and yes to walking.

But only after midnight.

Flash Fiction Exchange - November Rain

Here's Lisa's take on November Rain and I'm with this completely - I can hardly wait for the rain to return and chase away the cold.

She wakes to the sound of water tapping on the roof, dripping from the eaves. She flips back the covers, pads barefoot across the chilly floor and presses her hand to the wet window.

The guy at the general store says there hasn’t been a drop of rain since late May, and she believes him. She returns from her morning walks each day with her boots caked in layers of the forest’s dying floor. Like the redwoods surrounding the cabin, she feels parched. Like them, she’s been waiting for the first storm to wipe the dirt away.

She’s almost out of time; her stay here is nearly over. She came looking for sanctuary, for healing and inspiration. She came when the façade of her perfect life crumbled and she realized that she hadn’t just lost her way, she’d lost herself.

This place holds happy memories for her. Childhood summers, family holidays. But memories aren’t what she needs, even the good ones. She’s spent the last two months choking on them, all those pieces of the past swirling in the forest dust.

Who am I?

Visiting the past didn’t answer the question. It just showed her over and over how she’d been taught to behave, to conform, to look discreetly past anything she wasn’t meant to see, and to never, ever upset the status quo. She sees so clearly now that her failures were only failures of imagination. That she’s the only one entitled to be disappointed by her choices. But she’s not. Because every one of them led her here, to this moment.

She doesn’t know how or why, but she’s sure it’s exactly where she needs to be.

The future is wide open, a chasm of possibilities vast enough to be frightening. She has to take it step by step, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day. She has to feel her way to the next right thing – the next job, the next apartment, the next relationship – the way she felt her way back down the narrow path to the cabin on the day that dense fog rolled in. She remembers how it coated the world, drenching everything in the smell of mud. It was so thick she couldn’t see her boots beneath her, couldn’t see the hand she stretched out in front of her. She had to slow down, surrender to the sense of temporary blindness, and trust her feet.

She trusts them now, too. Lets them lead her out of the bedroom and down the dark hall. The glittering embers of last night’s fire beckon part of her to the hearth, but it’s the timid part, the part that clings to comfort even when she knows it’s false, so – for the first time in her life - she ignores it. Pushes open the door. Steps onto the rain-slicked porch and raises her face to the inky sky, drinking it all in. Letting it all go.

Surrendering to the sense of temporary blindness.

Trusting.

The sky hears her unspoken prayer and answers with a vibrant rumble. The gentle rain becomes a deluge, a down-pour, sluicing her in clarity. In hope. In daring.

The laugh surprises her, bubbling up out of nowhere. She takes the first four stairs at a run, then she leaps. Into the darkness, into the storm. Into the adventure.

Muddy water splashes her bare legs as she lands. Opening her arms wide enough to hold the sky, she begins to dance.

Lisa DiDio

Flash Fiction Exchange - November Rain

We decided to use song titles these next couple of months - but they had to have the month in the title. There are a whole lot of December songs, not so many November - but, in the case of November Rain, it seems pretty appropriate here in Vancouver, because it's raining and raining and raining some more.

Here's my version of November Rain - Lisa's will run on November 24.

Enjoy.
Kate

I look like a clown.

The November rain turns my carefully straightened auburn hair to a fuzzy ball of Little Orphan Annie curls and my tanned skin to fish white. I shouldn’t wear flaming red lipstick in November, but I can’t help myself. And I shouldn’t wear my wellies, either, but I do. I’m encouraged to be eccentric but I don’t trust that encouragement.

It’s hard work keeping up my image as a dancer, especially when my body wasn’t built – or trained - to be one. My creators built me Ford tough, they just never expected I’d end up on a world where toughness – at least toughness of my sort – wasn’t required. And I never expected to be abandoned here.

But I’ve fallen in love with this world and with ballet and I’ll do whatever it takes to stay here mostly because they truly don’t care if my hair springs out or if I wear my wellies. They’re just delighted to have a woman who has the strength of a man, the body of a cheetah, the face of an angel and the endurance of a Clydesdale.

But I work hard at looking as much like a woman as I can because, on my own world, I’m neither. I look at those stick thin ballerinas and I want, more than anything else, to be just like them. I know I could starve myself to death and still never have their beautiful bodies but I keep trying, turning on my stealth mode so I can follow them, see what they do when they’re not in the studio.

I’ve learned a lot from following these women. I’ve learned about drugs and alcohol. About men and sex. Bulimia and anorexia nervosa. And I’ve learned about death, something unique to humans.

This November, in the rain, I’m going to experience every one of these. And I’ll end with death. I can hardly wait.

Flash Fiction Exchange - Jiggy Bits, Part 2

You're gonna love Lisa's take on this month's title - Jiggly Bits. Here it is. Enjoy.

It’s October 31, and I’m suspended in a cage from the ceiling. Whirling lights catch on my silver-sequined bra and thong as I writhe and gyrate to the bumping base. It must be blinding to the men below but they stare anyway, their greedy eyes fixed on my jiggly bits.


They say Halloween brings out the freaks. If that’s true, it’s Halloween every day of the year in this place. The Flying Carpet is a crazy ride into your darkest, wildest fantasies. The owner, Saeed, promises something to whet any appetite, and from what I’ve seen, he takes that oath seriously.

That’s one of the reasons I love him, one of the things that keeps me coming back year after year. It’s a fine little agreement we’ve struck; I show up every Halloween and grant him three wishes (most of which involve dollar signs, because sex is just his business but gambling’s his vice) and he gives me my head. I can have whatever – whomever – I want, free for the taking.

It’s a smorgasbord in here. A bevy of beautiful dancers, a hoard of lost, lonely men, and oh, that tasty new bartender. He’s so eye-popping he makes me drool.

Tonight, though, I need a challenge. The game has gotten too easy; the conquests are over far too fast. I want a man who will wrestle me for control, who won’t give in without a fight. I want Saeed’s head bouncer, Rico. Saeed won’t be happy, but a deal is a deal. By the time I show up here next October, he’ll have forgiven me. And he’ll have gambled away most of the money he wished for, so he’ll need my services more than revenge.

As the cage drops toward the stage, I catch Rico’s eye. He knows who I really am, and he doesn’t like me. But he still wants me – still wants these long smooth limbs, this silky skin, these perfect curves. I fix my attention on him, ignoring the howls and whistles as I strut from the cage and grab hold of the pole, waiting for my song to begin.

“This one’s for you,” I mouth and point at Rico, smiling when he takes a step back. He’s never felt the full force of my power before, and it catches him off guard.

Everything about me catches him off guard. My heat, my taste, the way I make him feel when we’re finally alone, locked behind Saeed’s office door. Like he’s the best I’ve ever had, the most delicious thing on earth.

And he is. For about fifteen minutes.

I check myself in the mirror by the door. Pull a compact out of my handbag and powder my nose, run a comb through my mussed curls. Grinning at my reflection, I raise one long, red fingernail and slide it between my teeth to remove the offending evidence. I flick my hand, splattering the glass with gristle. That’s the problem with the well-built, muscular types. They’re a bit on the tough side.

Lady GaGa’s voice pumps down the hall, a siren song calling me out to play. I slide on some scarlet lipstick and head for the door, casting one last look at the headless body on the floor. Such a disappointment, I think. Rico wasn’t much of a fight after all.

Oh, well. It’s Halloween, the night’s still young, and ghouls just wanna have fun.

Flash Fiction Exchange - Jiggly Bits

Here's the second month of the flash fiction exchange - my take on a title Lisa and I came up with over the summer. Her version will arrive on the last Wednesday of the month. Enjoy.

Jiggly Bits

The sky was falling. I wasn’t imagining it. Not in hard hail stone chunks or in vicious pounding rain, but in pink jiggly bits that reminded me of those gummy worms my next door neighbor’s kid loved so much. I hate worms.

I grew up around bugs – hard not to when you grow up on a farm – but worms? My three older brothers would dig them up for fishing and, once they knew how much they grossed me out, they’d often show up in my shoes or even occasionally in my bed. There’s nothing worse than worms.

I tried not to touch them, tried to walk around them as they fell but eventually I lost my balance and ran right into one, and then another.

And then I was fighting them off.

The first one splatted and stuck on my face and I screamed. Another. Then another. They poured down around me in a veritable storm of pink ick. I should have a better description than that but it was all I could think of. Worms . Ick.

And they smelled like shit. That wasn’t a metaphor, that was exactly the aroma that surrounded me.

I’ve been in serious storms. Anyone who grew up on the great plains knew what to do in a storm – hunker down and wait it out.

But that wasn’t an option here.

Once the jiggly bits hit the ground – or me - they didn’t turn into piles of dead pink worms. No such luck. They began to wiggle and, as I was the only person lucky enough to be coming home at midnight , they wiggled right at me. On me. Around me.

I ran, slipping and sliding on the jiggly bits, trying desperately not to fall into the pink worms piling up on the sidewalk and in the gutters. I knew I’d never make it down the hill to my house so I headed for Uncle Greg’s.

Just one more house. I could make it. I had to make it. Vomit burned the back of my throat, my chest throbbed with pain, my arms and legs had turned to jelly.

I turned off the sidewalk onto the path and my feet came out from underneath me, my face slammed into the jiggly bits and I breathed one in. It wiggled down my throat. Totally gross.

And then it wasn’t.

Kate

Urban Buffalo

The second Urban Buffalo story - Lisa DiDio's take on it. Enjoy. And don't forget to check in next month for the Flash Fiction Exchange - the second and final Wednesdays of October.

Her life has become a series of unexpected detours; today is no different. She’s on her bicycle, headed for her night shift at the funky little 24-hour diner in the outer Richmond when a barrier of orange cones sends her shooting off on a side street, away from the safe familiarity of her normal route.

She should be used to it by now. Hell, she should relish it. If life hadn’t pushed her out of the box, she’d still be stuck in there. Living in the middle of the country with her high school sweetheart, who hasn’t been sweet for a long, long time. Teaching fourth grade at the elementary school she grew up in, seven blocks from her parents’ house. Waking up each morning and quietly, efficiently doing all the things everyone else thinks she should - with a smile on your face and every hair in place.

Her mother’s favorite homily chirps in her memory, making her glad she can’t afford a cellular bill. There’s a payphone near the corner of Stanyon and Haight. She uses it for her weekly call home, waiting until dusk when the street gets busy, noisy and interesting. It makes it easier to tune out when the harping starts. Mom doesn’t understand, she never will. She says Michael – and their marriage – seemed perfectly workable. But perfectly workable isn’t enough for her anymore. Maybe it never was.

The road snakes her through a part of Golden Gate Park she’s never seen. She’s been living here eleven months, riding her bike through this cultivated wilderness almost every day. The ancient three-speed cruiser she picked up at a thrift store gets her everywhere she needs to go, although some of the hills are a bitch. But there’s something about getting to the top on her own steam that thrills her. For the first time in thirty-six years, she’s in control of her life - if working two jobs and renting a cramped room in a bohemian boarding house counts as in control.

Next month, her lease is up. She has to decide whether or not to renew it – and whether or not she should stay here at all. There aren’t any permanent jobs for teachers right now, and substituting is a pain in the butt. She makes more working nights at the diner, but smelling like fried eggs doesn’t do much for her self-esteem. It doesn’t seem to put off Ivan, though. The cute, twenty-something Ukrainian bartender comes in for breakfast every morning after he closes up shop across the street. He’s been asking her out for weeks; he’s nothing if not persistent.

She’d love to say yes, but thinks she shouldn’t. Ivan is too young, too bold and too exotic for a mousy Midwesterner like her. He’s an artist – a sculptor – and when she saw his work at a local gallery, she nearly died of wanting. It’s beautiful, soulful…and unabashedly sexy. Just like its maker.

She’s so busy daydreaming about his glacier blue eyes that she doesn’t notice the broken bottle in the road. Her front tire hits its jagged edge and the bike skids sideways, taking her down to the asphalt with it. Some asshole in a Prius honks and dodges around her, not bothering to stop and see if she’s okay. For the first time in her life, she raises her middle finger at another human being, and wow. It feels great.

She limps to the side of the road, braces her bike against the fence bordering a weedy meadow, and bends down to check her bleeding shins. Her last pair of nylons is toast and there’s a grease skid on her pepto-pink polyester dress. She’s going to be late for work and Al hates tardiness. If he fires her, she won’t be able to make rent this month.

If he fires her, the decision will be out of her hands. She’ll be back under her parents’ roof sleeping in her childhood bed within a week. Maybe that’s a good thing. She doesn’t really fit in here. She’s made a few friends - people who don’t judge her for leaving a workable marriage or roll their eyes disdainfully when she talks about applying for the graduate program in creative writing at San Francisco State. But still. She’s the proverbial fish out of water. It’s probably best if she gives in and goes back to the Midwestern plains where she belongs.

There’s an abrupt snort behind her. It sounds like God is laughing.

Turning, she finds herself staring into the dark, liquid eyes of a buffalo. A buffalo, for pete’s sake. In Golden Gate Park. And it isn’t alone, either. There’s a herd of bison ranging through the small meadow, resting in the shade, munching the stubbly grass. Looking like they’re perfectly at home here in the middle of a sprawling, urban park. They don’t care that they’re utterly incongruous, don’t mind not fitting in. They’ve made peace with their right to be, made this strange and wonderful place their home.

The bull gives another snort. His chin dips then lifts. She swears he’s nodding in agreement, and a hot rush of hope leaves her knees weak and her eyes damp.

Someone honks at her again, though this time the sound feels different. It’s hello, not get out of the road. She knows that dented white pickup, knows the tall, blonde Ukrainian behind the wheel.

“Hey, Faith,” Ivan says. “Going my way?”

Yes, she thinks. Oh, hell yes.

Lisa DiDio

Flash fiction exchange

Once a month, my friend and fellow writer, Lisa DiDio, and I will be doing a flash fiction exchange on our blogs. It will be a piece of fiction based on the same title - we'll both post both stories - one on the 2nd and the other on the 4th Wednesday of the month. This is the first story of the series.

Urban Buffalo Redux (Kate's story)

They manifest, as if by magic, out of the fog. The overnight rain has turned their heavy bodies into chandeliers, sparkling droplets reflecting the sun that suddenly bursts through the grey mist.

I slam on the brakes, missing the lead animal by less than a foot. He – obviously and fully a male and just as obviously the leader – turns his head toward the car, his eyes not angry at our near collision, but dark and solemn, as if he is sizing me up. I respond by rolling down my window, turning the car off and waiting.

If you knew me, you would be surprised – no, shocked – by my lack of fear. My friends have called me Fraidy-cat for so long that it’s all anyone calls me anymore. I think they’ve forgotten my real name.

Catherine Margaret James. Once Cat for short, now Fraidy-cat to all.

But I’m not scared this morning, I’m fascinated, maybe even hypnotized. It’s the eyes. He looks at me as if he knows me, knows me better than any of my friends or family, better than I know myself. And he looks at me as if he’s interested in me, maybe even proud of me for standing my ground.

At least that’s what I tell myself. It’s what I want to believe.

Because I need to make a connection with this creature, this intensely male creature, because there’s something between us, something more than a human-animal encounter. It feels as if we’re connecting on some cosmic level.

And if I think my friends would be shocked by my lack of fear, I shiver in delight when I think of how astonished they would be at my use of the word cosmic. They would tell you that Fraidy-cat is the most non-spiritual person any of them know, that I don’t believe in Mother Nature, in God, in Allah or even in the generic higher power endorsed by twelve step programs.

They would tell you that the only things I believe in are those I can see and feel and touch. They believe that, not because I am a scientist (I am the farthest thing from it), but because I have the soul of a scientist – for me, if it can’t be quantified, it isn’t real.

I have five senses, they insist, and that’s it. Sight. Hearing. Touch. Taste. Smell. And so I don’t love. Can’t love.

Up until this morning, I would have agreed with them.

But looking up past his bulky body to his weighty head and into his beautiful brown eyes, all my reservations about the unseen and the unknown are vanquished. I see in those eyes the man I have always wanted to meet.

We stare at each other for endless moments while I contemplate a revised future. I imagine a story line that becomes part of a series of novels that began with Dracula and Frankenstein, tales where non-human creatures are loved by all-too-human women.

But in our story, the ending will be different.

The creature will not have to be killed, the love will be forever and will live outside the pages of a book. Ours will be the epic love story I have always – unknown even to myself – craved.

It isn’t until he vanishes – like magic – back into the fog that I do what I should have done in the first place. I get out of the car and I sit on the hood.

I wait.