Archive for the ‘Authors’ Category
There and Back Again
Friday, July 16th, 2010
Ana opened her eyes and sat up. The ground beneath her was spongy and damp, and the wet had seeped into the seat of her jeans and the back of her jumper. The sky hurt her eyes with its brilliant blueness, and though the sun beat down in its harshness, she half-shut her eyelids and bathed in its warmth. How long had she slept?
“Ow,” said a voice next to her.
She turned, and sitting there was a man wearing her father’s face and her father’s clothes, but was not, could not possibly have been her father, because her father had been dead since she was three. But there he sat, rubbing the back of his head and squinting in the sun.
“Daddy?”
“Hey, monkey. You okay?”
“What? But how?”
“You brought me back, remember? Your sacrifice to the Green Empress. I didn’t mean to keep it, but it appears I didn’t have much choice.”
“But that was a dream. Right?”
“No, sweetie, it happened, all of it.”
Her father suddenly reached over and squeezed Ana in one of his bear hugs, and though she was too startled at first to reciprocate, she breathed in the low smells of his deodorant and shampoo and perspiration, and something in her let go. She grasped him tightly and didn’t even try to stop the tears from flowing.
“Thanks, monkey,” he said softly. “I’ll never forget this.”
“So what happened to the rest of them? The Turtle and the two Misters and the white rabbit?”
“I don’t know. They’re still there, in the world under. Maybe we’ll see them again someday, but not, I hope, for a while.”
Ana’s father stood, his knees cracking loudly, and he helped Ana to her feet. Daughter and father grinned knowingly at each other, and then they proceeded out of the mangrove swamp to find her mother and give her the surprise of her life.
Previously:
01: Mini Buddha Jump Over the Wall
02: The World, Under
03: Androcles Again
04: Look Into My Eyes, You’re Under
05: Shiftless, Hopeless
06: Cricetinae’s Paroxysm
07: Wind and Harmony
08: Dragons at Dawn
09: Goodnight Nobody
Don’t Let the Door Hit You
Thursday, July 15th, 2010
“How was your first day?” says the woman standing in front of him. She’s 50 or so. Middle management. Uncomfortable and avoiding his gaze. He can’t remember her name. Peggy? Pinky? Something with a P.
“Just like every other day,” he says. He shrugs.
She smiles a bit too widely, as if trying to mask her disdain for him – the lowly mailroom clerk – but doing a shitty job. That’s fine, he thinks. She’ll be here herself one day. You can only stay comfortably in the middle for so long. Falling is easiest.
Patty? he thinks. Maybe Polly?
He can’t really remember anyone’s name anymore, even the ones he’s worked with for decades. The long descent from chief executive to mailroom clerk is all he’s got left. The blurry remnants of an enthusiastic start, a somewhat satisfying career, an occasional breakdown. Something in the back of his mind nags at him, tells him things aren’t supposed to be this way. Something’s backward.
But what’s the point of questioning when you’re on your way out?
“Just leaving,” he says. “Getting ready to go.”
“Well,” she says. “This is goodbye, then.”
She waits, as if for a cue that she’s allowed to go. As if she has to ask his permission.
“So long, Pankaja,” he says. Her smile drops away. For a moment it seems as if she may start crying, but then she spins and rushes out the door. Maybe, he thinks, he wasn’t supposed to remember anything after all.
“First day,” he mutters, the words lonely and barely audible. “Or is it the last?” He can’t remember.
The former president cleans off his desk, empties the trash, turns off the mail room lights, and exits.
Everything fades quickly from memory.