And that's it!

Done with the one-page stories! Hope you enjoyed them readers slash Jake and my mom! :D

The Final Case

Paul stared at the book. This was an anomaly. He knew this case. He knew why this woman had killed herself and he knew that there was nothing more to be done or said, nothing more to be investigated. But he felt this nagging at the back of his mind, and he couldn't help but think that this book had something to do with it. 

Paul was a detective. He was good at what he did. He had seen cases like this before. This one seemed no different from the others. Woman: Cathy Jordan, killed herself by a gun to the head, a recently purchased Walther P99. Interesting choice. Reason; presumably because of the car accident four years ago which she caused, and which took the life of the only other person in the car: her twin brother Christopher Jordan. 

This was not unprecedented. People killed themselves all the time, especially people who had lost someone recently, and even more so those who had caused the death of that someone. And yet he could not stop thinking about this book, his own personal anomaly. 

He looked around. He was standing outside on the driveway of Ms. Jordan's home, and there were several people gathered. A young cop came up to him (was it Cole?) with witness statements, all saying that the neighbors simply heard a gunshot. Nothing more. There was a boy walking away with his parents, a couple driving in their car (Carl's Custards painted on the side of the vehicle, as well as a telephone number, address and "We Do It Best!").  A woman in jogging attire and a man he recognized as a teacher from his sons' school, standing with his arms around his wife. All these people, and no one knew anything that could possibly be helpful to him. He went back inside. 

The woman, Cathy, had shot herself in bed, the TV still on with the volume turned up. There were receipts on the counter in the kitchen, one of which was for the gun, bought with cash three weeks ago. There were no dishes in the sink and the house was relatively clean. Nothing out of the ordinary. But still this book... 

The book Paul held in his hand was titled "Oh, The Places You'll Go," by Dr. Seuss. Any other detective would assume that someone had given this to Cathy for a graduation present, but Paul thought slightly differently. His last name was Seuss. He could not help but wonder if this was actually the scene of a homicide, that the murderer killed Cathy and knew that Paul would be the detective on the case. And for some reason, the name Chris Jordan seemed familiar to him. He could not remember ever having met someone named Chris Jordan. Still...

That night, on that case, was the night Paul Seuss decided he was done. Over the next few months he took on fewer and fewer cases. He knew, by that one book, he was getting too paranoid. A normal suicide was always just that. The presence of a book by an author who shared his name did not make it a homicide, and there was simply no reason to think that it wasn't just the years of death and destruction wearing on his conscience which made him so suspicious. He had to stop. 

So he did. He went home and worked on paper work for the police department on his own time. He took care of his mother, and talked to his brothers and sisters. He made love to his wife and gave extra cash to his son, and he began to lead a relatively happy life. 

And in twenty years, when his brother would ask him if he remembered a man named Christopher Jordan, and his ever having mentioned him, he would say no. He would go home, and he would take out a Dr. Seuss book titled "Oh, The Places You'll Go," and in the darkness of the basement of his suburban home, he would repeat, no. For Sealy's sake, he did not remember that man. 

The Delivery Man

Dr. Seuss may be a legend in the world of children's authors, but Sealy Seuss is a legendary delivery man, and in the adult world that is considered a much higher honor. Sealy Seuss is handsome. He has been delivering packages to satisfied customers for over twenty-five years, and age has only made him more beautiful. Sealy Seuss is smart. He isn't book smart per se, but he knows the way the world works, and he knows how to keep his customers happy, even if their packages aren't on time. Sealy Seuss is also responsible, and so he gets packages delivered on time. Sealy is likable and funny and very good at his job. 

But Sealy isn't complete. He will never be complete. He has a wife whom he loves and a daughter he adores. He has a house and a car and a dog. He has sentimentally valued objects scattered throughout his home. But he does not have the one thing he will spend the rest of his life wondering about. He does not have closure. 

Sealy has a secret. He is a homosexual, and in the world of delivery men, that is not exactly something a person can talk about. Sealy not only has this secret, and has not only kept it from everyone important in his life; he kept from the one person with whom he thought he could share it. And now, it's four years too late. 

Sealy, five years ago, met Christopher Jordan. Chris was a delivery man like Sealy, and he was nearly as good as Sealy as well. They could talk for hours about their customers, their wives, their hobbies and joys in life. They were great friends. 

And Sealy loved Chris like he had never loved anyone in his entire life. Not his overwhelming parents or his beautiful wife. Not his daughter, who he loved more than words could express. Sealy loved Christopher in a new and wonderful way, and in a way that he would never get to share with Chris. 

Four years ago, Chris died in a car accident. He just, one day, didn't come to work. The manager told Sealy in secret the reason, and Sealy, keeping his own secret, reacted as a man had to. He kept working, and he left his emotions behind him. 

Sealy never really discovered exactly how much he could love a person until he loved and lost the most important man in his life. He is still the best delivery man out there. He gets packages to their destinations, on time and in perfect conditions. But ironically, now that he has no more temptation, he is finding it harder than ever to keep his secret. He comes home from work and looks at his wife and he wants to tell her. He knows it would ruin their lives and their love, but he wants so much to be complete. He wants the closure he will never get. 

Sealy does his job and supports his family. He talks to his siblings, especially his brother Paul, who is proud of him. He is a good man. 

But the man who is not complete cannot fully be a man. At night, he spends a few minutes thinking about what his life could have been if Chris had not died. The life he makes up could never have really happened, but sometimes he thinks he believes the little white lie that everything would have been perfect if it weren't for that car and its driver. The details were never really made clear to Sealy. It was an accident. A fatal, life-changing, accident. 

Sealy is not a man who believes in revenge. He is a man who believes in people. But for four years, his secret and his loss have been building up in his mind. For four years, he has been dying on the inside, and he soul has been in unrest. Sealy doesn't know if he'll ever be complete, but he's going to try to make himself happier, one giant leap at a time.

The Lover

Christine watched her husband get ready for work. She loved watching him. He would pause once, every morning, forgetting his keys or his jacket. And she would always know what it was he was looking for. She just knew. She knew him so well, and loved him above everything and everyone else. 

Other women loved watching him too. Other women tried to do much more than just watch him. He was handsome, and kind; funny too. Other women could not seem to keep their hands off of him. 

But she didn't mind. She knew that Gary was hers, and she his. They loved each other as much as two spouses could love each other. And that was really all that Christine was about. Love. 

Christine believed in luck. She believed in fortunes and palm-readers, tarot card predictions and lucky numbers. Hers was 43. And she saw patterns in the prophecies told to her, saw things that were lost upon the smaller details. She saw big pictures outlined by the vague predictions whispered at her. 

Christine had an obsession with ordering products over the internet. Every few months, she would go on a spree, ordering things from every site, getting every unnecessary necessity. She new the names of half the delivery men in the city; Chris Jordan, Daryl Coleman, Sealy Seuss, etc. 

She knew their names because she's loved all of them. She was not adulterous. She had not made love to any man but that was her husband. She had never physically fucked another man after her marriage vows were spoken. But Christine touched Chris's hand, or bent low in front of Daryl, tempting herself and them. Nothing ever happened, no words or fluids were ever exchanged, but thought of possibility excited Christine. The knowledge that she could have these men, if only for ten minutes, was a needed thrill in her otherwise boring day. 

She didn't consider herself unfaithful. After all, she was only dreaming. Dreams were for the dreamer, and nobody else needed to know about them. 

Christine tended to dream vividly, and frequently. She liked dreaming. She'd given up on several goals when she married her husband, and she liked remembering. It didn't make her sad or nostalgic, quite the opposite. To have given up so much for the sake of her husband and her marriage made her proud of herself. She knew it made her a better wife than most. It certainly made up for her dreaming. 

When her husband came home from his teaching job, all was forgotten. During the day, she cooked, she cleaned, she read magazines and went on errands. 

Christine didn't know it, but she was an incredibly boring person. Her husband saw something in her that most people never saw in anybody, and she could not have told you what that was because she didn't know herself. She had friends, but they were the kind of friends who talked about interesting things so much that they did not notice how boring she was. She was a typical female; she obeyed fashions trends, read gossip magazines, talked about her bodily insecurities and  knew how to cook and clean. That was about all she had going for her. 

But for some reason, every day when her husband came home from work, he looked at her like she was new and bright and beautiful, more so than any other person in the world. And that was why he'd married her, and that was why he loved her still. For a reason she did not know, for a reason he could not put into words. They just loved each other. He more so than she, but it was love all the same. 

only two left! 

The Teacher and the Police Man

(sorry about the long delay)

Julie stared out of her car windshield, watching the road disappear underneath her 1992 Toyota. There were few cars on the road at this hour of the morning. Every day she drove, about twenty minutes one way to the school where she worked as a teacher, watching the sun rise. 

Her schedule was set, her routine nothing more than that. Every day she was look out of the window as she passed over the river and watch the sun effect the water, making thick clouds in the spring. She always meant to take a picture, but she never really had the time.

Julie Slotson did a lot of thinking on her way to school every day. She thought about the fact that she still did not have a husband. This thought scared her a little bit. She was nearing that terrifying age of thirty, and no one had presented themselves as suitors. She never really understood why. She was pretty, nice, and funny on her good days. She trusted the right man would come along eventually, and she mostly left it all in God's hands. 

She thought about her students. The nice but quiet ones like Kyle Clay, always playing his games. The sociable but smart ones like Emanuela Gordon. The loud and frustrating ones, and all the little clicks in between. She thought about how funny it was that a group of friends consisted of so many different types of students. 

She thought about Gary, the wrestling coach and history teacher. She shouldn't be thinking of Gary, because he was married, but she did it anyway. He had nice hair, and a nice smile, and he spoke intelligently. 

Julie thought about a lot and she worked through the day and by night she barely remembered any of the thoughts she had had in the early hours of the morning. 

She often left the school late, tying up the various loose ends of the day. One night she was delayed later than usual and was caught behind a row of police cars blaring their way to some unknown disaster. Julie loved police cars. They were annoying and loud but she loved watching them pass, listening to their desperate cries as they sped away into the night. Trying to save people who probably didn't deserve to be saved, but they tried all the same. 

Her next-door neighbor was a cop. Younger than she was, and very cute. They smiled at each other every time they went out to get their newspapers in the morning. He had a dimple in his right cheek that appeared every single time he smiled. She loved looking at him, but she wasn't sure she'd ever love more than that. 

The night she saw all those police, something seemed to click in Julie's head, and the next morning she walked over after picking up her paper and said hello. The two of them had a lovely conversation. His name was Cole. He liked teachers almost as much as Julie liked cops, and they agreed to go on a date. 

That saturday they went to eat at a nice restaurant, and afterwards Cole took her to an ice-cream shop called "Carl's Custards." She ate some of the best ice-cream she'd had in years. 

There was a moment, and in later years she would never be able to recall exactly when it was, that she thought she could spend the rest of her life with this man. He watched her like she was new, and beautiful, and she couldn't remember anybody else looking at her that way. 

Julie's life mostly went on in the same way after that. She and Cole went on dates and still got their newspapers at the same time every morning. There was something in the atmosphere now, though, that charged that morning ritual. The air was static and the looks exchanged between the two lovers were filled with something more than longing. 

Eventually, there was only one newspaper to get, delivered to one house. But that was further off, and until then, they would get their papers separately. 

The Game Boy

Kyle stared down at his DS, his thumbs clicking away as he concentrated on winning his game. His small room was littered with games, of any and all kinds. Kyle was a gamer, king of many worlds and warrior of the masses. 

He was young and mostly happy. His older sister Callie didn't make too much fun of him, and his parents didn't make him eat too many vegetables. He thought about things on his bus rides to and from school, and stared up at the homeless men living in the city. He had a cat named Scruff, and he liked watching her play with paper-clips and dead bugs and dust. He watched the Scifi channel religiously and wanted to be like a character named Mal in a space show. 

Kyle did play his games far too often, but nobody ever really told him to stop, and so he never did. 

He never really followed trends among his peers. His teachers knew he was smart, but most did not like him very much because he was always playing games, or thinking about games. There was one teacher, a Ms. Slotson, who always smiled at him because she never cared much about the popular, talkative children. He liked her best out of all his teachers. 

Not that Kyle ever really cared much about school. He mostly liked being alone, and he was never much of a learner. He went on walks, quite often when his parents weren't home, and sometimes he even left his games at home. He would just walk and sit under trees, on swings. 

On one of his walks, Kyle watched as the sun began setting and thought he would stay out longer than he was allowed. His parents would be annoyed, but he never stayed out often, so he knew they would not mind too much. He just wanted to stay. 

There weren't many bugs out that night, though it was the beginning of bug season. Kyle watched as people walked by with their kids and their dogs, both seemingly treated in the same way, as far as he could tell. A car passed, a lady in casual business attire inside, and Kyle finally decided he was getting bored. He hadn't brought his games out with him that night and was coming up with a whole lot of nothing to do. 

On his way home, he stopped to pick up a newspaper and move it closer to its' house. There was a moment when he realized something deep, and he would never remember it until years later because the second after he realized it, he heard a gunshot. 

Kyle knew it was a gunshot because his father had taken him to a shooting range once, a few months ago, for bonding time. They had used an old rifle that belonged to his grandfather. They had paper targets that had a person's head printed on them, and he saw that outlined human as he heard the gunshot echoing through the neighborhood. 

He stood still as he heard people coming out their houses, listening to their 9-1-1 calls and their questions. His parents showed up eventually, and he just stood there, holding the newspaper and trying to remember that deep thought he'd discovered. The police came, and they kept people back, and Kyle's parents took him home. 

For months afterwards, Kyle wouldn't touch a game that had guns in it. It wasn't that he was profoundly or psychologically moved by the experience, he just didn't really understand. He thought about things like why people shot guns, what the exact purpose of a gun was, and he really didn't get it. He didn't get why they had been created in the first place. He saw what they did to people, ending their lives and their thoughts, even the deep thoughts that could change the way of things, and he didn't understand why anybody would want to end something like that. He never forgot that night, but he started playing games again anyway. 

Vanilla Bean Ice-Cream

There are approximately four hundred twenty-six flavors of ice-cream in the world. Many of these are entirely unknown to Americans. Carl, however, has tasted every flavor he has ever chanced upon. Carl is an ice-cream king. 

Carl owns an ice-cream shop, unsurprisingly, and he thoroughly enjoys his life as an ice-cream connoisseur and provider. His shop is named: Carl's Custards, and children and adults alike come from all over the city and state to taste his fabulous ice-creams and frozen custards. He had flavors like "mushroom-pecan," and "bacon" in his store. Every month he put on special a flavor from around the world. Carl went to ice-cream conventions. 

He loved other things besides ice-cream, of course. Most of these did not love him back quite in the same way, but Carl had always been a little over-dramatic. He loved the woman who worked as a cashier in the store across the street from his: Lisa. She reminded of Vanilla Bean ice-cream. He loved his fourteen regulars, like Callie, the twelve year-old obese girl who lived down the street, and John, the recently divorced and suddenly much happier man that came in every day after lunch for the same thing. The two of them reminded him of mint-pistasio and cherry-chocolate ice-creams, respectively. 

He loved his small but quiet, old dog named Abu. Abu reminded him of that bacon ice-cream, lovable, but a little strange. He loved his town house with the blue door and the neighbors who partied into the small hours of the night and never invited him to drink with him. He was older than they were, anyway. Carl loved his full name: Carl Macy Jones. He loved his parents and he loved his siblings. 

Carl loved just about everything but himself. He reminded himself of lobster ice-cream, one flavor with which he never was really satisfied. He was about 100 pounds overweight, which he hated about himself; he had few friends, and fewer best friends, and he had never really loved another human being romantically who requited his love. He loved Lisa, but she barely realized that he existed. 

The lovable ice-cream man decided, one day, to hold an ice-cream-fest. He would invite everyone who worked in the businesses on his block, his regulars, and anyone else who would buy a ticket. Free ice-cream samples, prizes and gift-certificates! Carl printed up several hundred fliers to spread around his city block and went door to door, imploring several businesses to tape them up in their windows. 

He walked down the street, passing an old, smiling, homeless man with worn out shoes. He handed out fliers to passersby, some happy to receive the small slips of colored paper, most others anxious and annoyed, hurrying to get on with their lives, uninterrupted by fat men with fliers. 

He handed the flier to a lady who became, the moment he looked at her, Lisa. She stopped walking and smiled. 

"I do love your ice-cream, Carl. Thank you." 

He stared at her for a moment and smiled back, nearly dropping his fliers. 

"Will you come? To the..." he asked, his eyes searching for a deeper answer. 

"Absolutely. I can't wait," she responded, happily. 

The rest of the day was a bit of a daze for Carl. The rest of the week, really. And she did show up, staying for most of the day in the shop, eating small samples and smiling at people, and at Carl. His vanilla-bean girl, knowing his name. 

I've decided to post a new one of these every time I finish the next one after it. So yeah. 

The Running Girl

There are not many people in this world whose lives revolve entirely around something other than themselves. Only those who have found their soul-mates or such things really experience this kind of life. Lynn Fletcher's life revolved, like most peoples' lives, around herself. She did not like the word soul-mate because it sounded too final, like destiny, which was also a word she despised. She had decided a long time ago that she would decide what would happen in her life, and nobody had any say about it. 

Lynn did everything for herself. She jogged around the city, 4.23 miles, every other day. She did this because she liked looking at herself and reminding herself that she was, in fact, prettier than many if not all of her friends. She also liked to have men stare at her when she wore her expensive, fashionable, and rather skimpy clothes. She thoroughly enjoyed being able to say that she was in shape and healthy. 

Lynn worked at a job her father had secured for her. She made enough money to live in a nice apartment and buy nice things, and she never gave anyone but her direct family birthday presents. She much preferred receiving gifts over giving them, but she wanted to seem like a good person to her family at least. She always gave Christmas presents that seemed expensive but were actually cheap. But she always gave Christmas presents. 

Lynn had a system. She also had a husband, but her system took priority the majority of the time because it was a system that decided who she could trust and who she could not. If a person she met and who became a regular part of her life had not given her a present by the end of the first year she had met them, she did not trust them. (Her husband had given her a rather expensive gift which allowed her enough trust to eventually marry him.) 

One day when jogging, Lynn saw her husbands' car pass her on the road. She wondered what he could possibly be doing driving home in the middle of the day. This was the first sign for Lynn that her system might need to be redesigned. She ignored it, ran the rest of her jog and went home. She arrived to find several boxes of her husbands things packed, sitting innocently in the hallway. Her husband was at the table, signing papers. 

No hello. No I'm home. Just...

"I want a divorce." 

Lynn, dripping in a bit more sweat than she typically excreted on her run, turned to the bathroom for the shower. 

"Stop, Lynn. I'm sorry. I can't do it." 

She turned to her husband. She felt tears coming to her eyes but she did not speak. She walked to the table, signed the papers, and went to take a shower. 

There was a moment, for maybe thirty-seconds, where Lynn broke down. It happened when she sat down to eat her dinner. A marinated chicken breast coupled with milk and potatoes stared up at her from just one side of the table. Just one side. Just one fork and one knife and then it hit her. 

Her system was wrong. It didn't tell her anything about who she could trust and who she couldn't. That much was made obvious by her husbands' betrayal. She had to discover a new system, a new method. She thought about it all, long and hard. She finally decided to reevaluate every relationship she'd ever built. She had the time, now that she had no husband... 

And that's when it happened. Lynn broke. She cried and shook, her chest heaving and she cried out her fear. She dried her tears and went on another run. It felt good. 

P.S.- I've decided to post one of these every Monday, because I usually have that day off from work and it also gives me time to write. 

Gerald's Shoes

Gerald M. Cotton stared at his shoes. He did this a lot now, because there was not much else to do. His shoes were old. They were brown, but not the nice sort of brown you see in shoe commercials; they were a vomit-hued and aged brown that did not in any way flatter him. The laces were worn, frayed and discolored. They were bumpy and twisted, and he thought they must look like the inside of his head. Bumpy and twisted. The soles of his shoes were nearly worn through and so used to the shape of his feet that sometimes he forgot he was wearing any shoes at all. They didn't offer any of the warmth and comfort they used to, though, so he was quickly reminded whenever a breeze rolled by. 

There were always several moments of interest throughout Gerald's day. Four school buses passed under his bridge every school day, and in the third bus, sitting in the fifteenth row was a boy who played a portable video game, but always looked up at Gerald as the bus passed by. There was a lady who drove by in her nice car every day and had nothing in her car except her. She was always glaring. There was a twenty-something girl who jogged on the sidewalk on the other side of the road under the bridge every other day. She visibly sped up when she passed under the bridge, probably for fear of the men living on the other side. 

Gerald saw the same cars every day, the same things repeated over and over in a useless, endless routine that nearly sickened him. If he had enough food, he would have puked it up, but the little food he got needed to be kept down in his stomach. Every night, just before dark, he would walk four blocks to the soup kitchen on the corner of 4th and Jefferson. After eating his meal for the day, he would walk back. He stared at his feet, his two smallest toes on each foot poking out of his shoes through worn holes, sock-less and wrinkled and sad. 

Gerald had optimism, though. It was the uneducated optimism that children and happy people had, and Gerald was therefore not sure why he had it. But he did. He smiled at the school boy and nodded happily to anyone who looked at him from the safety of their glass, metal and rubber cocoons. He was not, however, happy. He felt like he had missed an opportunity sometime around the age of thirty and he could not ever remember what that opportunity had been. Probably something wonderful. It must have been great. He would have been a star or a rich person or an astronaut. He would have had really nice shoes. He laughed whenever he thought of just how many shoes he would have had. Dozens! Hundreds; so many shoes he would have been sick of them. 

A person could get lost in his own mind for hours, just imagining himself in another place. Gerald did this far too often. Most of the time, he thought he was in a glass house with fans blowing nice breezes at his face and a small servant giving him grapes. He rarely slept anymore, or at least not for very long periods of time. His entire life was a dream sequence, sometimes conscious, most times not. 

One day, he began walking to his daily soup kitchen meal and he turned down the wrong corner. He looked at the buildings and the cracks in the road and the fading, peeling paint in a fascination he had not felt for years. He walked and he saw the people, and they were scared of him, but he smiled and told himself that was okay. He watched lovely women prance through the streets, and saw business men watching them just like he was watching them. Gerald saw men like himself, down and ugly, nowhere to go. He motioned to them, to join him in his walk of fascination. They glared and turned away. He kept walking. He didn't stop. He stared at his shoes and he walked until he could walk no more, and he felt a little bit happier. 

The Un-incredible and Slightly Boring Life of Cathy Jordan.

It is a fast paced world in which Cathy Jordan lives, and she lives for every new day. Thoughts are too slow to be useful, instinct is key. Dates pass and assignments are doled out and accomplished in record times. The world revolves around the work Cathy Jordan does. 

Every morning, Cathy Jordan wakes up to a very normal and well-known alarm clock beeping, puts on her pair of store-brand gray slippers with the hole in the left sole, and goes to the bathroom. On the way to the toilet, she passes a desk on which sits a clutter of papers and bills, but also a pen in a small cup that reminds her of her brother who had passed away four years ago. 

Cathy Jordan arrives at her workplace just before nine in the morning, nearly every morning, and she performs her duties adequately. Every morning, just as she comes to the coffee room, her coworkers fall into a scared and annoyed silence, and one person usually says, simply, "Hello, Cathy." And Cathy Jordan responds, "Hello, (coworkers name)," leaves after her morning cup of coffee is in hand, and begins to work. She types things on old computer screens and watches for memos about meetings and changes in the rules. 

If there is ever a problem in the office, she takes care of the trouble-maker before any higher power ever can, because she is efficient in the art of helping when it is not her place to help. She takes the person into a separate room, explains to them the problem with their particular behavior, and smiles at the office manager on her way back to her desk as she leaves the helpless trouble-maker behind. They stare at the window between the office and the separate room and wish they had never come to work with such an excruciatingly horrid person as Cathy Jordan. More often than not, the problem is fixed, though it is rarely because the particular trouble-maker quit, most did not have the opportunity to do so. 

Cathy Jordan never considers beginning to work at another job because she has a desk with a window near the water cooler and the restrooms. She also has all her pictures of family members she never speaks to and friends she never calls on her desk in strategic places so that she cannot really see them very well, but other people can and will maybe believe that she has many loved ones. Every time somebody passes her desk, she secretly hopes they will stop for just a moment and ask about the picture of the blond child or the brunette man and his happy wife. Nobody ever asks but Cathy never allows herself to be distracted enough by that fact that it affects her work-flow. She is a very focused woman. 

Every night, Cathy Jordan walks to her average, useful car in the company parking lot, her heels clicking on the painted concrete. She drives home and passes several bridges with homeless men living beneath them in impoverished, starving comfort, and she pretends not to notice them, nor the stop sign at a corner that nobody ever drives down but her. 

She drives home and fixes herself a dinner with cheaper, off-brand products and never eats fresh fruit, only canned, and she flips through channels on her average sized TV. She decides on the same show every single time, even though she misses the first ten minutes while she tries to pretend that she could decide on a different show if she wanted to. She likes to keep her options open. 

As she goes to bed, she passes by that same cluttered desk and stares for a moment at the pen in the cup and then she walks through the door. She arranges her gray slippers next to her bed, pulls back the covers, and spends the next half hour crying with a pain that cannot be helped by medication because she would never admit to anyone that she wants to die. In the morning, the tears will have dried and Cathy Jordan will begin again. 

JFYI- there will be more of these stories coming. I'm working on a one-page story book. Enjoy! 

I Would Walk Some Number of Miles

The trip from my hometown to my college town is a long one when driving all alone. It takes more than two and a half hours and, for a girl who's never driven that far on her own before, is extremely tedious. There were too few starry bright spots throughout the trip.

There was one, however, that sticks to my mind incessantly, though I drove here almost two weeks ago. It happened during the final leg of the journey, and I was sorely tempted to turn around and take a picture, but I didn't. I will resort to describing it through the medium of feeble words. 

First, the sky. The sky was dark. A purply, blue color, the color of an immense storm from which you cannot escape. The way the world would look always if we lived in the sea. The color of the night sky lit up by spotlights. It was huge, clouds high in the atmosphere, and towering, crawling toward the highway menacingly. A kind of storm you knew would have low thunder and the kind of lightning that is shrouded by others clouds, so you never see the line of light, only the clouds lit up subsequently. The sky takes up most of the world, here. 

Next, the land. This is farmland Missouri. Smalls hills of course grasses and tall, barley-colored stalks of something not quite wheat. It is mid-winter and the world is windy and bleak. The wind on the plains is harsh and ever-lasting, nothing to stop it or slow it down. The grass sways violently, then gently, beautiful no matter what. 

And there in the midst of all that is a large, old, gray sewer pipe, spilling out near the road. The water in its basin is still and not any specific color. The wind does not reach it because the land dips here and cups the water in a cache of soft earth and solid concrete. The grass is green. 

And there are birds. Not more than thirty, if my memory is correct. White, small (at least from where I was looking), and frenzied. They dove gracefully into the water, pecking at some small, uncatchable specimen there, taking turns of two or three at a time. They seemed to be dancing on the air, letting their bodies plummet toward the earth and arching back up in cursive motions. They were smooth and fluid, wonderfully living. If standing closer, one might have seem the fevered way in which they fought for whatever was down there in the water, but from a distance, in a silent car, the scene is beautiful beyond measure. 

And then it was past. And I thought about turning around. But what picture can do that justice? None that I could take. I drove on. 

Whether the Weather is Normal or Not

Leaves swirling. Rustling, the rattling of bones or dead flora. Curling limbs of thin, paper skin. Leaves swirling.
Sky purple. Colors bleeding into one another, a painter's paradise. The world a snow globe of cloud and sunset. Sky purple.
Wind crying. A kind of animal, primal, lovely sound, whispering in the ears of people. Plastic bags rolling in parking lots. Wind crying.
Air cool. Jacket weather that is appreciated only by those who have recently dealt with extreme's of heat or cold. Air cool.
Halloween weather. This is how I would describe it. Creepy and hauntingly beautiful. Variations in the day, strange images caught in the mind. That was today, and today is January ninth, 2009. And this... is this normal? I can't help but wonder.
I don't know much about science, or climate change, global warming. I've read a book, watched a movie, and beyond that have no interest. I do a bad job of being 'green.' I am politically conscious about a few things, but, like most people, I don't have motivation to care much beyond that. I'm a little ashamed to admit it.
There are, however, moments in my life that make me want to take action. After I finished "Field Notes from a Catastrophe" by Elizabeth Kolbert, for instance, I was ready to write letters and protest in the streets. I'm not much of a risk taker, however, and I let these feelings pass most times without much change in routine. I am slowly beginning to take more action, now. I see the world and its idiosyncrasies and I realize that things are changing, that things are wrong. I recycle more and more, and I think about this problem, and I try to think of what I can do.
And I think that must be normal. People cannot be expected to change so drastically and so suddenly as all the scientists are saying we must. The world, and by that I mean the human population within, must be given leeway time. This, of course, leaves for procrastination in humans unwilling to let go of old traditions, and really, there will be cycles beginning there that will not go well for the earth.
I watch the purple sky, leaves swirling at my feet, wind crying in my ears, air cool on my skin. I know something needs to be done to help our world and ourselves. I just don't know what it is, exactly. For now, I can try to appreciate the beauty in my life, and slowly integrate the new ways of the world into my old routines.

On Death and Holidays

Emotional Range. That shock and sadness when you recognize the reality of the situation. The headache you get from crying so much that your sinuses swell as though you're three days sick. The denial and denial and denial you feel. The way you expect to see them as you walk around the corner, in their usual spot, and happy. 

This December and two days into January, two people close to me have died. My mom's best friend, my aunt, my second-mother, Lauren. My dog, my puppy, my Buddy. Death is not something to which I am accustomed. Pets have died before. Dogs and cats, and usually that's okay. People are something different. People you do not expect to die at fifty. People you do not expect to die. 

And Lauren was healthy. Bike-riding, wine-tasting, cooking, laughing, loving Lauren. Bright colors and dreams Lauren. Animals and pictures Lauren. Caring mother and cursing friend Lauren. She was alive. Healthy and alive. 

And then she wasn't. And that was unexpected. For me, the process was surreal. I was gone, at college, when she went to the hospital. I was gone when she died. I was gone when her kids cried and needed more comfort than anyone could give. I was gone when her mother tried to believe in a miracle that everyone knew would never come. It was all described to me, in phone calls and emails. Everything real, everything not. 

I came home, with a bit of first-semester-of-college-finished glow, but mostly wet-eyed and in denial. Still. I was incapable of believing it had happened. For me, it hadn't. I wasn't sure what to do about that. The only bit of closure I could grasp was at the service they held for her. Friends and family, slideshows and speeches, and a goddamn ton of tears. 

Sometime after that, I went to their house. Tim and Lauren. The couple. That was how they were referred to; Tim and Lauren. 'We're going to Tim and Lauren's house.' Now, just Tim. 'We're going to Tim's house.' Whenever my mom said it like that, I was screaming on the inside. Wishing she could still say that second, precious name. Wishing we could hold on to that past. Knowing that we couldn't. It was Tim's house now. Tim and the kids and a few remaining memories. Ashes and sand and brightly colored bangles. 

...

It was different when Buddy died. The second I saw him, home from college over Thanksgiving break and again for Christmas, I knew the end was coming. It was expected. And that's easier, and harder. 

Easier because you can try to mentally prepare yourself, harder because that is impossible to do. Easier because the denial comes beforehand, harder because it still comes afterward. 

That denial. Tough feeling to understand. As though any feeling is easy. Denial that he's stopped breathing, even as he's in your arms. Denial that his eyes don't see you and his ears are not moving of their own, happy accord. Denial that he can't feel your tears, that he won't get up in a moment or two and lick them from your face. 

Realization. The moment when you walk around the corner from the kitchen to the living room and you expect to see him there. And he's not. And, of course, you know why, but... why not? Where is he? My puppy. 

We always called him that. Puppy. He never was a puppy with us, we got him two years into his life. But he was young, and wonderful, and happy. Mr. Buddy. He was alive. Soft and reddish-gold and handsome. Constantly ignoring the constant affection of Nina, one of our cats. She loved him. 

My holiday season. 

Good gifts, family time, friends with problems of their own. Death and sorrow, joy and laughter. Lots of emotional range.