Vows

My experimentation with poetry continues. For better or worse. You've heard me say this before: first draft...let me know what you think!

I am a freak, she said.

I have thirteen tattoos,

A stud through my eyebrow,

And a pierced lower lip.

My hair is dyed black,

And my clothing is goth.

I don't care that people stare at me.

I am a freak.

I am a freak, he said.

I have a regular haircut

And I wear neckties from Walmart.

My eyes are blue,

And my shoes are brown.

I read the newspaper

Over coffee every morning.

I am a freak.

I wasn't always like this, she said.

I used to be so plain

And normal,

That nobody saw me.

Nobody knew I existed.

I didn't like being invisible,

So I changed.

I wasn't always like this.

I wasn't always like this, he said.

I was a bad kid.

My parents had little patience for me,

So they tried to

Whip me into shape.

And by that I mean whip me.

I wasn't always like this.

I was alone, she said.

My transformation from invisible

To freak left me

More isolated than before.

The safety pin threaded through my cheek

Reminded me that I was destined

To be alone and judged.

Then I met you.

I was alone, he said.

I became so bored with my life

That it hurt to breathe knowing

That I would never be anything

More exciting

Than a regular haircut

And the morning paper.

Then I met you.

I now pronounce you

Husband and wife, the minister said.

You may kiss the bride.

He with the regular haircut

Kissed she with thirteen tattoos.

And they were married.

I now pronounce you

Husband and wife.

A Mysterious Love Note, 14 Years Later... Did You Write It?

Sometimes reality can be just as intriguing, endearing and captivating as fiction (perhaps far more than my modest attempts at fiction here). So take a look at this love note that I found tucked inside a used book that I bought a couple years ago. I bought the book through a used book dealer on Amazon, then put it on a shelf. Just this week I grabbed it to flip though it, and this little oddity fluttered out.

At first I thought, “Wow, 1998, that’s been in there for quite a while.” I almost tossed it, but then decided to mark my page with it. Later that evening, I re-read it and came to recognize just how profound this is. What kind of a story does it tell? It looks like a woman’s handwriting, so we’ll call the author a “she.”

She wrote it out, with response boxes asking the subject of her affection to declare his love for her, and marry her (noting that "maybe" is not an option). She dated it, and even wished her beloved a nice day, complete with smiley face. But…but…but it doesn’t appear that she delivered it! Or maybe she did deliver it, and he never replied (the cad!), tucking it into a book and forgetting about it, maybe forgetting about her, too.

Let’s speculate…perhaps he didn’t respond on paper because he rushed to her and enveloped her in a passionate embrace and slipped a ring on her finger. How long were they engaged? Did they recently have their twelfth or thirteenth wedding anniversary? Do they have a sons and/or daughters…a million-dollar family all thanks to a silly little love note?

Or maybe it just wasn’t meant to be. She wrote her feelings out on a piece of scratch pad from Imdur, a drug used to prevent chest pain…from a broken heart. Was it a match made a few miles south of heaven? Or perhaps it was just a flight of imagination, while her mind wandered to thoughts of marrying People Magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive from 1998, Harrison Ford (yes, I Googled it).

Who knows? Well at least one person knows. She’s out there (we even have a cryptic scrawl of what appears to be her initials). And I think the power of the internet can aid us in tracking her down and finding out the next chapter of her story! Did you write this? No? Well, maybe someone in your Facebook friends list did, or perhaps someone deep in your email address book. Pass this along to everyone you know. Send it to all corners of America by Twitter, Facebook, email, heck you can even send it out snail mail if you like to kick it old school!

Step forward, Ms. Imdur Love Note…we want to hear your story! And know that whatever happened with the intended recipient of your note, well, we love you!

Baptism

First draft of a new story. Tell me what you think! Oh, and for all of my artist friends out there, I want to better illustrate this, instead of using this lame piece of photography from the internet. So Patrick, Mary, Heidi, all my artist droogies...have at it!



The pools of rain water grew fat and deep.

It ran off the slopes of the yard and

Dug channels in the yard’s hard dirt

And it’s sparse bent grass.

Her yard was never pretty,

Just a place for a house to sit,

With inconvenient pitches and patches

Where only chickweed would grow.

She kept it there instead of yanking it,

Because at least it was green.

Now she stood at a back window,

Watching torrents of rain pummel her world

And threaten the meager life

She cobbled together.

Barely visible from her window’s angle,

She caught a glimpse of one of the channels

Widening and deepening

Into a formidable crevasse.

Panicked, she kicked off her sandals

And ran through her back door,

Into the tumult that her god was dropping on her.

Immediately drenched,

As if the water had come from within,

She approached the crevasse

But realized there wasn’t a thing she could do about it.

She crouched and put her hand in the brown water

To test its depth, only to be scared witless

By the head of a bright yellow snake

Emerging from the crevasse.

Her quaking legs pistoned her backward,

And she landed on her backside.

Her eyes teared, her nose ran,

And she felt the hot sting of urine

Running down the inside of her thighs.

Her body’s fluids mixed with the madding rain

And seeped into the marshy earth.

Her journey back to the door was

A frantic, winding lope,

Failing to miss pools of water that she sank into

Fully up to her ankles.

Looking back for a moment in peripheral vision,

She saw the snake’s hellish eyes trained directly on her

Before it sunk back into its crevasse.

Bile rose to her throat and she had to gag it up,

Convulsing from her core.

While the paisley silk sun dress usually fell to the floor

In a wafting whisper, this time

She had to peel it off from the top down,

Heavy with rain and caked with mud.

She left it, along with her underthings,

In a pile outside her back door.

She squeezed out her hair as best she could

Before tramping back into her house.

A warm shower…more water…

Couldn’t calm her.

So she lay crosswise on her bed,

Begging for some form of unconsciousness

To steal her from this torrential limbo.

Sleep managed to take her,

But only in fits and jerks,

And snorts of oily water that seeped from her lungs.

She awakened by a bar of sunlight,

Creeping past her shade,

What seemed like a lifetime later.

Still unclothed, she pulled on just rubber boots

In case she came face-to-slimy-face

With her snake again.

She’d need a stick, or a rake…

Something to parry a viper’s lunge.

She exited her back door.

The rain had ceased.

Warmth from the morning sun had enveloped her

And her quickly-dilated pupils kept her from seeing

The morning-after fall-out.

Slowly, though, she focused,

To see the entirety of her yard washed away.

The crevasse widened, it seemed,

So broadly that it poured itself into an unseen beyond.

Left in its wake was a garden.

Paving stones weaving in and out of

The natural slopes of the fresh turf,

Glistening English Ivy wrapped around beds of Day Lilies,

Borders of Forsythia and Oat Grass trimming

Small fields of tomato vines.

The air that filled her nose was sweet with Honeysuckle

And her very soul was nourished by the energy

That radiated from every pretty place that yearned

For a new Geranium or Begonia.

She was entirely bewildered by what

Befell her in the night’s torrent

That she didn’t know what to question…or why.

Her paisley silk sun dress hung on a clothes line

That ran from nowhere to anywhere,

And her underthings were folded

In the grass below it.

She had no intention of redressing,

But she smiled as a breeze filled the dress

With a giddy, gauzy ghost.

The breeze, though, wasn’t merely wind

But the backflow of air from a hawk’s wings.

The spectral bird carried in its mouth the dead snake,

An impotent phallus no longer capable of penetrating her fears.

Safe again to pull off her rubber boots,

She stood in her new Eden,

Breathing deeply and sweetly now that

The crusty layer of foul earth had been

Washed away like a scab in the shower,

Revealing fresh, pink flesh,

Baptized by the frightful torrent

But blessed by the new life put before her

By a mysterious universe that

Knew it was time to end her pain.

The Ghost With One Ear: A Tale By Two Writers

The following ghost story was written with my nine-year-old daughter Camille. I wrote the first scene (regular type-face) and she wrote the second scene (italicized)...and we alternated back and forth. I hope you enjoy the way our story evolved organically and turned into a fun and funny story-telling exercise. 

Before Monday morning, Liza loved school. Now, well, she can barely tolerate getting on the bus in the morning. It all started when she opened her desk, and saw it. It's not like it was something that jumped up and bit her, or even scared her. But it was so horrible that she nearly broke down in tears. She mustered up all of her strength to keep from breaking down at school, and at three o'clock she ran to the bus. The agonizing bus ride home seemed so long that she wanted to pull her hair out! Finally, she got home. She burst through the door, threw her book bag in a corner, and bolted up the stairs to her bedroom. 

Her mother started to say, "Hi honey, how was your..." but Liza's bedroom door slammed. The next thing her mother heard was a stifled scream into Liza's pillow. Her mom rushed to the bedroom and opened the door, and nearly screamed herself when she saw the look on Liza's face.

Well, I guess you are wondering what was in Liza's desk. Don't worry, that will be soon!

"Liza, why do you have that horrible look on your face?! Liza handed her mom an envelope, that just by the texture Liza's mom new just exactly what it was. "Oh-no! You're school report card!" Liza could barely even think about all the D's and big fat F's on her report card last year. Oh-no, this year was going to be worse! Because Liza has the strictest, meanest, absolutely horrible teacher! 

"Okay, I guess we better open it."

Liza's teacher, Ms. Bodyodour, was an absolute horror. She had red-rimmed eyes, crooked yellow teeth, and dried green boogers flew from her nose every time she yelled at the kids...which was every minute of every hour of every day. She also had sweat stains in her armpits, fingernails that were eaten away by fungus, and, yeah, a humpback. 

Anyway, Liza's mom pulled the report card from its envelope, and even the faint whisper of paper-against-paper ran up Liza's backbone like a howler monkey. While all of the dog-gone grades were disturbing to Liza's mother, she was even more concerned by a little hand-written note from Ms. Bodyodour at the bottom of the report card. 

It said, "Liza says she can see ghosts, and that's stupid, stupid, stupid!" 

Liza's mom touched her daughter on the shoulder, and Liza lifted her teary face from her pillow. "Liza honey, we need to talk about this."

So of course, Liza and her mother had to have a talk about this ghost issue. "Liza, why would you tell such a lie like that?” 

"Mom, it's not a lie. I can see ghosts," said Liza desperately. 

“Okay, if you can see ghosts why would you tell Ms. Bodyodour instead of me?" her mom asked.

"I didn't. I passed a note during math to my friend saying I can see ghosts…and I got caught." 

"And she read it?" 

"Yes."

“Okay, prove it." 

“How do I prove it?" 

"Is it true that there is ghosts in every attic?" 

"Oh, yes. That is one of the only myths about ghosts that is true," explained Liza. 

“Come to the attic with me." 

“But still how do I prove it?" 

"Is there any possible way for me to see them too?" 

"Oh! Yes, there is a stone with a hole and you look through it (just like in Spiderwick...they got that from me!)." 

"Great. Grab the stone and let’s go," said Liza’s mom.

Liza and her mom ascended the creaky stairs to the attic, and the youngster started to whisper, "Vincent, Viiiiiiiincennnnnt...come out, come out where ever you are." 

Mom looked at Liza and asked, "Vincent?" 

"Yeah, the ghost of Vincent Van Gogh lives in our attic," Liza said matter-of-factly. Mom closed her eyes and sighed, trying to remember the name of the child psychologist she met at a Christmas party last year. But when she opened her eyes, she had the biggest surprise of her life (even bigger than when her husband got hair plugs and a little red Corvette). 

It turns out she doesn't need a looking stone to see ghosts, and that Liza's ability was inherited through her! Liza and her mom were descendants of a long line of ghost-whisperers. And there stood the ghost of Vincent Van Gogh, in their attic. Mom was dumb-struck. 

Liza said, "Hi Vinnie, how are you today?" 

Vincent said drearily, "Just fair, Liza. Just fair. This hole in my head where my ear used to be hurts like a bugger. What was I thinking? And they don't let me paint in the afterlife. They say my paintings suck, and are derivative of Renoir, and that I should learn how to sing and dance instead. Can you imagine, my work derivative of that French hack's cartoons?" 

Liza looked at her mom and said, "He gets like this." Mom, understandably, had to sit down. "Vinnie," Liza said, "I have a job for you. I need you to haunt my teacher, Ms. Bodyodour." 

Mom stood back up so quickly that her head spun, and protested, "What? No! Liza..." But then she thought more about it. "Hmm, yeah, ok, I guess that is a good idea!"

"Anyway, Vincent. Say hello to my mother!" 

"Oh. Well I didn't know we would be having a...visitor," he said. 

"Oh silly Vincent! It's okay. She's nice!" 

"Just making sure." 

Liza's mother thought this would be a good time to start talking for herself. "So. Vincent, how long have you lived in my house?" 

"Oh, I have lived here ever since I died." 

"What do you mean? After you died you couldn't have got up and walked here!" 

"No, I was here when I died," Vincent explained. 

"But I thought you lived in France and died there as well!” Liza’s mother exclaimed.

"Oh that’s just an old myth. I was right here in this very attic." 

"Tell us about it," said Liza.

"Oh if I must,” said Vincent. “Okay, listen up."

So Vincent told the long and somewhat boring tale of his death, as he continued to tilt to the right because of his missing ear. But the point was, as he prattled on, that Liza and her mom could indeed see ghosts! 

"Mom," said Liza. "I've decided that we need to use this ability that we have to do good. We have to make the world a better place, for ghosts and live humans alike! We can bring the two worlds together and see to it that no ghost ever goes hungry again!"

Liza's mom stuttered, "Uh, Liza honey, well, what do ghosts eat?"

Both Liza and Vincent looked at her in utter disbelief, then they turned and looked at each other and burst into laughter.

"C'mon Mom! It was just an expression! You know, a literary reference. Jeez Mom, read a book, why don't you!" 

She and Vincent laughed some more, and then they happened to see Mom glaring at them without too much in the way of humor. Liza then shared her plan with her mother and Vincent: "Ok, here's what we need to do. We dispatch all ghosts according to their personalities. If they're mean ghosts, then we turn them loose to haunt bad people. If they're happy ghosts, then we pair them up with sad people. If they're friendly, we give them to lonely people. You getting this, Mom?"

"Yeah, I get it," said Liza's mother. "It's kind of like giving ghosts jobs in the living world, to improve life for those of us who are still here, right?"

"Precisely!" shouted Liza and Vincent together.

So the first thing they thought of, of course, was Ms. Bodyodour. She is a bad person, so they decided to give her a bad ghost! Liza said haunting her would be a perfect way to start their project, so they went to work.

The next morning Liza’s mom let her stay home from school so they could begin their task. They went to the attic and plotted a plan with Vincent, then they went to Liza’s school and found Ms. Bodyodour’s classroom window. It was on the bottom floor so it was easy to look in. Liza grabbed hold of the blue window pane and peeked inside. Yep. That was Ms. Bodyodour teaching (ahem, terrorizing) all of her good friends. But just then, a thought struck Liza. 

“Vincent, We’re here but we don’t have a bad ghost to throw in the window!”

“Oh, yes, I almost forgot. One moment,” Vincent said. And poof! Vincent was gone.

Liza looked in the classroom and every child was filing out because the bell rang. Suddenly, Vincent appeared again, but this time with another ghost. “This is the particular fella you’re looking for to do this task.” Vincent said.

“Well. Ms. Bodyodour is alone, we have an evil ghost, so I believe we are officially in business!” Liza exclaimed.

With that declaration, Vincent whispered into the ear (this fella had both of his ears) of Attila the Hun, and Tilly (as his friends called him, though he had no friends) took off to spook Ms. Bodyodour right out of her knickers! Tilly raised his mace high above his spectral head and threatened to clunk Ms. Bodyodour right on the noggin with it, but she ran. That horrible teacher ran and ran and ran! She bolted out of the classroom, out of the school, out of the town, out of the state, out of the country, leaving just her putrid stench behind! She would never be heard from again.

“A job well done,” Liza shouted with glee, high-fiving Vincent and Tilly. “Now, let’s put the rest of the troops to work, shall we?”

At Liza’s prompt, and under her considerably well-respected leadership, she and Vincent deployed the ghosts of Charlie Chaplin, Dwight Eisenhower, Jack the Ripper, Dr. Seuss, Typhoid Mary, Ernest Hemingway, Billy the Kid, Jack LaLane, Elvis Presley, Lucille Ball, and hundreds (no, thousands!) more, to whip the human race into shape. It was a plan that created world peace and generated love and harmony among all humans who deserved it. For those who didn’t deserve it, well, they were rounded up and sent to New Zealand to fight it out among themselves in a penal colony.

“Hey,” asked Vincent, “who shall we haunt with the ghost of Charlie Sheen?”

“Um, Vinnie,” said Liza, “Charlie Sheen is still alive.”

“Oh yeah…it’s just his career that’s dead!” exclaimed Vincent, and the two of them laughed so hard that even the ghost of Genghis Khan cracked a smile.

The Absence of Water

I just submitted this to a poetry contest. Asked my friend Russ if it's any good, or if I just flushed the $10 entry fee down the hopper. She said she likes it. How about you? Open to comments!
---------------------------

It burns.

The dust.

It burns when you suck it into your lungs.

Even now, this early in the morning when most of the world is still doused in dew,

the dust in these parts is so thick it’s like inhaling smoke still hot from a flame.

My brothers told me these days would be hard,

but they didn’t tell me about the burn.

The oxygen in your system vapor-locks the blood pushing through your heart.

So many times you just want it to explode.

Your heart, I mean.

You just want it over, instead of doing this.

There’s no past. No future here.

Just now – and now burns.

I’m beginning to question the value of my life.

And I’m so young.

That scares me.

Sandu?

Constant motion. Constant noise. For hours.

Every pound of the hoof rails through your spine,

and it doesn’t stop when it hurts.

The drive beats on.

You look for reason,

you hope there’s logic that’s beyond your grasp,

you want meaning to justify the burn.

You trust that your thoughts of dying are not in vain.

Is it all just dust, motion, noise and burn?

I don’t see her.

I don’t see her. Sandu?

I can’t see through the dust, but I’m sure she’s not there.

I miss her. I need her with me.

We drove the plains together for so long that we became one.

Our eyes met at precise moments,

we cut at perfect angles to each other,

when one needed to slow down we instinctively pulled back together.

Another thing my brothers didn’t tell me about.

When I was driving with her I felt the entirety of the plains

as my joints pistoned forward,

and in the tarry nights without her

I became a crust without its sustaining blood.

No…no, she’s not with me today.

I remember.

Sandu spilled.

There was a rock, maybe a divot, a tiny crevasse

in the plain floor that catches a hoof at just the wrong pitch.

She went down.

You could barely hear the scream above the roar of the drive,

but it was there.

It was the kind of scream you heard with your mind

as you watched the spill.

And the pop.

The ankle.

Forward momentum upon a stationary hoof makes a pop

like a ghostwood tree that snaps during a wind storm.

There were lots of people tending to her.

She was badly hurt.

Sandu’s eyes were glazed over and rimmed with dust.

Shock. She was in shock. We were all in shock.

Yet the drive had to continue.

There was no turning back.

We pounded through the plains after Sandu spilled,

and now we drive without her.

Life boils down to the absence of water during a drive,

and nothing else matters.

I miss her, but my throat aches for water

and my muscles flex so dryly that they could tear.

I need her, but my mind swims to the illusion

that water is just ahead and that if I could drive on further,

I will soon drink.

I love her, but at the end of a drive,

even my love for Sandu falls victim to the absence of water.

Another pop.

We pushed on,

leaving space between us and the rock, the divot, the crevasse.

Sandu isn’t riding any more.

Water. How much further?

We hammered forward, with one of our own down.

The images are hazy.

It seems like so long ago.

So dehydrated that the pop sounded hollow and dust-choked.

A pause. Then we drive on. Leaving space.

Wait. I remember.

I remember another pop.

We drove after Sandu spilled,

and then a second pop.

Not quite like a ghostwood tree this time.

More like a crack of lightning,

reporting an echo that rolled through the plains

in infinite unfilled concavity.

I never saw Sandu again.

Just a rock. A divot? Likely a crevasse,

and my Sandu is gone.

Water.

The dust burns when you suck it into your lungs.

The Next Plateau

I thought maybe this would be a good one to dig out of the archives to share on Thanksgiving.

Janice stopped scaling the mountainside and pounded her lanyard into the ice wall. The nylon rope running through its loop tightened as she rested her weight on it. Lisa, about three yards below, wondered why Janice stopped, and dug her spikes into the mountainside for support.

“What gives,” Lisa shouted up to Janice.

“I’m not sure,” Janice responded. “There’s something in the ice. I’m trying to dig it out. It looks like a…oh my god, Lisa. This can’t be. It’s impossible!”

“What? What is it?” hollered a panicky Lisa.

“It’s a cell phone!” Janice shouted.

“A cell phone?”

“Did I stutter? Yes, a cell phone!”

“Hey,” said Lisa, “don’t get bitchy. I’m just wondering why that’s so impossible!”

“What’s impossible is that the damned thing is ringing!”

Janice picked away at the ice with her tools, and excised the phone like it was a tooth in the face of the mountain. She removed her glove and gingerly pressed the only button on the phone. Carefully, as if the phone was preparing to stun her with a deadly laser, she put it to her ear.

A male voice said: “Can you hear me now?”

“What?” asked Janice. “Is this a joke?”

“No,” said the voice, laughing. “Sorry, it’s just that the phone has been ringing for more than a year, waiting for someone to pick it up, and I’ve been dying to say that! Pretty funny, I thought.”

Silence from Janice. Her furrowed brow worried Lisa, but they both just stopped and listened.

“Yeah, ok, so it wasn’t that funny,” said the voice. “Anyway, here’s the deal: As the finder of the phone, you get to climb up to the next plateau and meet me, and I shall impart my great wisdom upon thee.”

“Upon thee?”

“Upon thou?” the voice asked.

Janice shook her head, as if to clear the voice from her tympanic membrane, but it persisted.

“Just get up here, and I’ll explain. I assume you’re not alone.”

“No, my partner Lisa is here. The next plateau?”

“You see the ledge that juts out over the hollow on your left? Scale that ledge and I’ll be waiting for you on top.”

“What kind of a sick…” Janice started to say, but then the phone went dead. She explained it all to Lisa, but that just served to scare them. Lisa pulled her flare gun from her pack, and strapped it to her leg for easy access. She figured at least she could light up the guy’s chest if he turns out to be a mass murderer or a pervert or something. She saw that in a movie once.

They climbed. It wasn’t an easy ledge to scale, but they were motivated. Above the ledge was indeed a vast plateau, uncharted, by the way, on their mountain map.

“I’m in here,” called a distant voice, coming from a cave in the ice wall.

The two women clutched each other’s hands and walked forward together. As they approached the mouth of the cave, Janice stammered: “Helloooo?”

“I’m right here!” the voice exclaimed, with a touch of aggravation. Janice and Lisa were startled and jumped in unison. They saw a little person sitting cross-legged, enshrouded in a fur-lined parka. Just his nose, red and runny, poked out from the hood.

“We are Janice and Lisa,” said Janice, as if she was introducing herself to a stranger who didn’t speak our language. “What shall we call you?”

“Name’s Ed.”

“Ed?”

“Did I stutter?” Ed asked, and the women wondered how he…oh, forget it. “What’dya expect me to say…Yoda?”

“No…” Lisa said timidly.

“It’s actually Eduardo Montoya Fernandez Espinoza. I’m Irish.”

Again, silence. The two women just stared at Ed, and then at each other, hoping there was some kind of logical explanation to all of this.

“Well, I can see you’re thrilled to meet me. Here’s how this is gonna work: I impart my wisdom upon thee…you. I’ve been on this assignment for almost 13 months waiting for a climber to find my phone. Then, see, after I impart my wisdom, you go and live full, rich lives, and my Boss lets me go home.”

“Where’s your home? Who’s your boss?” Janice asked hesitantly.

“See, I can’t tell you that. Just my wisdom.”

Janice and Lisa waited with great anticipation. They were past fear, and now were in the throes of life-affirming excitement.

“Ok, here it is…my wisdom…” Ed said.

“Oh, for the love of Mike, what is it already!” Janice exclaimed.

“You’re right,” Ed said to Lisa, “she is bitchy. Here it is…” a pause that was pregnant enough to be two weeks overdue filled the air.

“Just be,” said Ed.

“Just be?” the women said together.

“Just be,” Ed repeated.

“That’s it? That’s your wisdom?” Janice asked. “Just be? And that’s going to get us full, rich lives?”

“What did you expect,” Ed defended, “to drink hot cocoa from the Cup of Christ? Maybe you should go climb mountains in Tibet so you can get the Dali Friggin’ Lama himself! Yes! My wisdom is just be!”

“You listen to me, you little snot-nosed monkey man!” shouted Janice, obviously ready to uphold her right to real wisdom and a full, rich life. “We came up this mountain for exercise, plain and simple, but then you appear out of nowhere and you tell us you’ve been here for 13 months waiting for someone to pick up your cell phone buried in the ice and then we followed your instructions not knowing if you were going to murder us or something, so Lisa took out her flare gun, which, by the way is loaded Mr. Just Be! And then you tell us you can go home when you impart your wisdom upon thee…thou…us!”

Ed looked at Lisa while Janice raved on, and said out of the corner of his mouth, “Powerful lungs.”

“…and I want to know who you work for, and I want your employee ID number, and…” Janice came to a stop, realizing that she lost control somewhere back at “snot-nosed monkey man.” She calmed herself down, and Lisa grasped her hand in consolation. Ed was packing up his gear, clearly ready to leave this assignment and go to wherever he called home.

Then he spoke: “Look, it’s really very simple. You both have kids, right? Yeah, thought so. What are you thinking about when you’re with them?”

Lisa responded first, “About how much I love them, and...” Then she put her head down and shook it slowly. “No, I think about how much work is waiting for me at the office.”

Janice said, “And I guess I think about laundry.”

“That’s what I thought,” said Ed, very pleased with himself. “From now on, just be. You’ll live full, rich lives now. Ta-da!”

“Hey, wait,” said Janice, as Ed was leaving the cave. “Why?”

“Why?” repeated Ed.

“Yeah, why?”

Ed paused, then said, “You know that bungee-jumping trip you’re taking next month? Well, a colleague of mine will tell you why. But for now…”

All three of them said it together: “Just be.”

Ed left the cave with his gear on his back. The women didn’t even bother to watch him go, because somewhere in their spirits they knew there would be no traces left of Ed.

“I wonder what’ll happen when we go sky diving next spring,” said Janice, pensively to herself as she pondered the profound nature of Ed’s wisdom.

“Yes, I can hear you now,” she whispered.

The Two Mrs. Chamberlains

A few years ago I founded a small story-tellers’ group, whereby I distributed a monthly picture to my fellow writers, and we all crocheted three-page short stories based on the contents of the pictures. Well, remember when this picture of possibly the most abbreviated wedding dress in history made its way around the ‘net? Certainly, some grand little stories were written that month! Here is mine.

The two women in Rudy Chamberlain’s life made him miserable. Both his mother and his fiancé held firm to his limbs, and pulled in opposite directions every minute of every day. His mother Tess hen-pecked him. And his fiancée Missy whipped him. He could take each of them individually and claim at least a fraction of his life as recoverable. But together, Tess and Missy were a deadly combination to the once vital and virile Rudy.

Graduating from law school at the top of his class landed Rudy a position at one of the most ferocious firms in the city, and he pulled down six figures his first year out. He was captain of the crew team, and contemplated an Olympic run, but he met Missy at the firm and he decided to pursue her instead. Rudy was typically a thigh man, but he couldn’t keep his eyes off her busty luggage. After six months of very intense dating, he proposed. She accepted immediately, more for the unlimited financial potential his future held than for whatever he may have offered from his mind, his heart, his handsome cheekbones, or his pants.

But Rudy made a big mistake. He asked Missy to be his bride before even introducing her to his mother. And thus began instant acrimony between the two women. Tess erected a fabulous offensive attack on Missy’s character, with all of the militant acumen of a seasoned general. Everything from Missy’s heritage to her skin tone was fair game for Tess’s assault. It was impressively relentless, and Rudy was feeling more acid build up in his esophagus toward these two women than he ever did from any enemy in the courtroom.

Missy had her own war chest to offer up. Certainly, however, she was dwarfed in the looming shadow of the master tactician Tess, mostly because Tess had genetics on her side. Being Rudy’s mother gave her a lifelong advantage over a mere mortal who wanted to marry him for his money. But Missy had one thing. Actually, she had two things, and even other women had been in awe of them since junior high school.

Thus, Missy’s closest friend, a clothing designer for an off-Broadway theater, created what came to be fabled in legend as The Dress. The veil was absolutely beautiful. The rest of it was just mean. Most importantly, upon debuting The Dress on her wedding day, Missy’s ammo was amply ignited and immediately launched – sailing through the stares and gasps and sudden surges of southbound blood-flow – hitting Tess directly between the eyes.

The elder Mrs. Chamberlain, on the day of her only son’s nuptials, was left lacerated and mangled by the direct hit imposed by her formidable new daughter-in-law. By the time the reception started, following a farcical round of pictures taken by a very grateful wedding photographer who thought only of what gentle blessings this would impart upon his portfolio, Tess was beet-red with anger. Her own reflection in the restroom mirror, staring back at her with a throbbing vein in her temple, inspired her next maneuver. Tess absolutely hated beets, but knew that she had to eat them if she was going to get away with her plan. They sat in front of her dinner plate in a little bowl perfectly suited for espionage. Tess unassumingly procured her third husband’s bowl of beets, her sister’s bowl of beets, and then asked the waiter for yet another serving. Her bowl overflowed with the bright red veggies, and the juice oozed from its edge.

Rudy watched this oddity happening just beyond the dinner plate of his Best Man Joel, who was Rudy’s childhood friend, and now a physician. And Rudy knew the target of the soon-to-be projectile beets was The Dress. More specifically, Tess would aim directly at Missy’s voluminous mammaries.

Joel looked at Rudy out of the corner of his eye and placed his finger on the side of his nose, the high sign that Rudy’s own little plan was in motion, too.

To throw off any onlookers, Tess choked down a couple of the beets from her arsenal, trying to act natural but failing miserably. Ironically, Rudy witnessed, Missy was eating her beets at the same time.

Tess stood up, and reached out her left hand to pick up her bowl, but she withdrew. Something welled up insider her. It was the beets, and they were coming back up at a very rapid pace. Tess bolted for the restroom. A mild stir was generated from the residents of the head table who watched Tess’s hasty exit. But a much more uproarious reaction erupted when Missy made a dash for the restroom, right on the spiked heels of her arch-nemesis.

The two Mrs. Chamberlains knelt down in bathroom stalls regurgitating their beets. Tess also saw her sea bass amid the bright red pool, and got a sniff of her evening Cosmopolitan. Missy, however, had the chicken, which reemerged with a dinner roll and a cheeky chardonnay. Side-by-side they knelt, hugging porcelain and commiserating with each other, becoming fast friends, just like two imprisoned soldiers from opposite sides of a war, with a new common enemy. Every time they thought they were finished, more and more came up. They cried together, and they held hands under the stalls’ dividing wall, as the party continued in the ballroom.

Word drifted out to the reception that the bride and the groom’s mother were engaged in dual technicolor yawns together. Rudy just listened to the chatter, with the slightest grin on his face, while under the table he carefully handed the small bottle of ipecac back to Joel. Rudy’s battlefield was the courtroom, where wits were a much more effective weapon than tits. And beets were merely a tool on the way to grander victories. He felt the clamp around his manhood suddenly loosen, and Rudy could breathe again. He got up and danced very closely with the Maid of Honor. This was his day.