A Short Story Published

The online literary magazine WritingRaw.com has published my short story, The Virgin in the Window.

You can check it out here: http://writingraw.com/Fiction.html#Becoming%20to%20Beheld

Some Holiday Blogging

The Flynn Center is our local performing arts venue in Burlington. They put on many great shows throughout the year, and as an occasional contributor to their blog I'm able to see some of their shows for free (in exchange for blogging about the shows I see, of course.)

Most recently we saw the music group Sweet Honey in the Rock. My two posts for the show are on the blog now: one before the show:
http://www.flynncenter.org/blog/2014/12/sweet-honey-rock-sings-world/

And one after:
http://www.flynncenter.org/blog/2014/12/darkness-light-sweet-honey-rock/

Kairos

A bit of short fiction for Holy Thursday.

 I’m not really one of those hard-core Catholics. I don’t get into self-flagellation or anything; I don’t even raise a fist to my chest during the penitential rites. But I am on the parish council and I’m involved in various ministries, so I try to put in the facetime as often as I can.

This year has been especially difficult, and the people at church have kept me grounded. So I really kind of did want to be at that evening mass for Holy Thursday. It’s the kick-off for the Triduum – it starts the countdown to Easter and commemorates the night Jesus was abandoned by all his disciples. So if you’re at all prone to feeling guilty about missing a mass, this is the Big One.

But I’m lucky to have a job right now. I’d been laid off last summer, and nobody wants to hire a forty-seven year-old ex-middle-manager. So I’m here, watching the booth of a near-empty parking-garage, and counting it as a blessing.

My friend Claire is texting me from the church, giving me a play-by-play of the Mass. Singing the Kyrie. The choir is killing it! she texts. Or, My boys are really into the part where we all shout, ‘crucify him!’ Should I be worried? And later, Father Tom is washing my feet, immediately followed by, He says ‘hi’.

Claire and I met through the divorced-Catholics support group (my wife and I split up when we lost the house after I lost the job … I said it was a difficult year), and we quickly became the best of friends. Not in the way most people assume – neither of us is ready for that just yet. And it’s complicated by the whole Catholic thing, and by the “setting a good example for her adolescent boys” thing. Right now we’re just taking it one day at a time.

At eleven, Claire texts me that she’s going to bed. Can you not stay awake with me just one hour? I tease her. I’ve stayed with you three, she responds. That’s her last text for the night. At midnight I close up the garage and head for home.

“Home” at the moment is a dreary little efficiency at the edge of a questionable part of town. But when you’re unemployed for six months, you take what you can get. The streets are deserted, traffic lights set to blinking red at intersections, as I make the fifteen-minute walk.

Two blocks from home I see something – a shapeless, man-sized lump in the middle of a dead-end street. I keep an eye on it as I walk past, and notice that it is moving. As I watch it starts to look like a man struggling to pick himself up off the ground.

I come closer. The man is dirty and weathered, obviously homeless. Maybe he’s drunk or on drugs, maybe he’s sick or disabled. I don’t know how to tell the difference.

I help him to his feet. He can barely stand upright. I wonder what the hell I’m supposed to do with him.

Up the street there’s a shelter. Usually I’ll take the long way around, or cross the street when I have to pass the building. But tonight I haul my companion right up to the door. It’s slow going because he can barely stand and is just a lot of dead weight on my shoulder. For some reason it never occurs to me to just leave him on the sidewalk.

The shelter looks like any other old tenement building. The door is locked, and my knocking doesn’t do any good. The guy, whom I’ve left slumped on the front steps, begins to shake violently.

I grab him, try to calm him, try to stop his flailing, just try to do something, I don’t even know what. I shout and pound on the door. Someone up the street opens their window and yells at me to shut the fuck up.

A large, hairy, young guy opens a side door and looks at us. He asks me, “is he okay?” and I have no answer. The young guy takes the man from me and leads him inside. I go home.

I pour myself a glass of wine and try to relax. Before I turn in, I send a text to Claire. Spent some time with Jesus after all. Turns out, he’s awfully demanding.

Four Doctors: Chapter 7

Takeshi Watanabe stood quietly at the TARDIS door, looking out at the blasted wasteland that just moments ago had been his hometown of Hiroshima, Japan. Rose stood by, wanting to say something but no words seemed appropriate to the moment. The Doctor glowered over the console, poking at buttons and frowning at readings. Finally he straightened up and strode briskly toward the door.

“Right. Let’s go,” he said to Rose.

“Where?”
 
“I’ve got a lock on the time-corridor. We’re going to check it out.”

“Doctor…” Rose gestured at Mr. Watanabe and at the scene beyond. “Shouldn’t we just leave well enough alone?”

“Someone who doesn’t belong here is already involving themselves in this. I’ve seen it happen countless times before, and it never ends well. Not unless I make it end well.”

He walked to the door, pausing at Takeshi’s shoulder. The two men stood a moment in silence, looking at the devastation. The Doctor put a hand gently on Takeshi’s arm. “Too much war,” he said. Takeshi nodded and followed numbly behind Rose and the Doctor.

They passed in silence through the crumbled burning ruins. Here and there a survivor would emerge to stagger away, or to wail pitifully over loved ones buried in the rubble -- or perhaps reduced to ashes in the street and a shadow burned into the wall. Many had been scarred, burned, some were barely recognizably human any more. If indeed there were such a thing as Hell, Rose thought, it couldn’t be worse than this.

She found that she had to keep reminding herself of the reality of the scene around her. This wasn’t a quick jaunt thousands of years to a distant future. It was only moments ago, in real-time, that this desolation had been a vibrant and active city. Too much time-travel, she supposed, could have a kind of numbing effect. She only had to look to Takeshi, to his reaction to the ruins that had been his home, to feel again the reality of it all.

And, just perhaps, to understand a little better why the Doctor wanted her tagging along on his travels.
The steady stream of survivors grew as they moved away from ground zero.

“Where are we going?” Rose asked.

The Doctor pointed several blocks up, at a stand of bamboo and trees that seemed to have been mostly spared.

“Asano Park,” Takeshi muttered to himself.

Rose looked around at the growing crowd around them. Many were already approaching the park, taking shelter within the greenery. “They’re all going there,” she observed.

The Doctor nodded. “Most of the survivors of the Hiroshima bombing end up there.”

“Right where someone put this time-corridor thing,” Rose completed his thought. He nodded grimly.

“There’s something very not right going on here,” he said.

< Chapter 8

Chapter 6 >

Chapter 1 >> 

Four Doctors: Chapter 6

“Doctor, are you sure we’ve even moved?” As far as Donna could tell, the rocky wasteland around them looked a lot like the rocky wasteland they had just left behind.

“Mmmm?” The Doctor was staring out past the horizon, lost in thought. “We’ve moved. That was Skaro. This is Gallifrey.”

“So is there a reason why half the planets we visit look like Beachfield Quarry in Sussex?”

“Hmm? Of course there is,” the Doctor said, then fell into a moody silence.

“Right,” Donna said. “That’s helpful. Thanks.”

“Sorry,” the Doctor replied, shaking off his mood. “Industrial civilizations throughout the universe may develop in an infinite number of different ways, but the devastation it leaves on their native ecosystem looks the same everywhere.”

“So we left that first place, Whadayacall…”

“Skaro,” the Doctor said. “Home planet of the Daleks.”

“Those metal things we saw back there?”

“Yes, those metal things that invaded your own planet not too long ago.”

“Did they?” Donna asked. “When was that?”

“It was right before you appeared on my TARDIS the first time. Surely you remember…?”

“Yah,” Donna replied. “Surely you remember I had a wedding to plan back then? Alien invasions were not a big concern of mine.”

“Clearly not,” the Doctor said. “So we’ve gone from Skaro…”

“Home planet of the Daklites, right.”

“Daleks,” the Doctor snapped. “The single most ruthless war machines in the known universe. And we’ve come here to my own home planet of Gallifrey…”

“Hang on now,” Donna said. “You told me your planet was destroyed.”

“Well it was,” the Doctor said.

“And it was time-locked, or something, so you could never go back.”

“It was,” the Doctor said.

“So how can we be there now?”

“That,” the Doctor replied, “is what I’d like to figure out.”

He pulled the gadgety device out of his coat pocket and began taking more readings. “That time corridor we blundered into seems to be transporting something from the Thall City of Skaro, where we were before …” He adjusted some dials and took a few more readings. “… to somewhere just over that rise over there.”

Donna had tuned out the Doctor’s speech and was surveying the scenery around them. 
“So I imagine it looked better before the big war, then?”

“No,” the Doctor said. “It always looked like this. My people call this the Wastelands.”

“Oh, there’s originality for you.”

“We’re scientists, not poets.”

“Obviously. Do you suppose anyone lives out around here?” Donna asked, looking around at the myriad caves in the surrounding rockface.

“Oh, quite a lot. We call them the Outsiders.”

“Of course you do.”

“But they’re not our concern right now,” the Doctor said, returning his attention to his gadgety device. “We’re far more concerned with who’s responsible for this time-corridor. And the Outsiders just don’t have the technology, the wherewithal, or, quite frankly, the interest.”

“No, I don’t suppose they would,” Donna quipped, but found the Doctor too engrossed in his readings to take notice of her acerbic wit. “So,” she went on, “I’ll just nip about and see what’s what, then.”

“Sure, fine,” the Doctor said absently.

“Maybe see what the natives are up to.”

“Jolly good. Enjoy yourself.”

Which left Donna with nothing better to do than to follow through on her bluff, even though the Doctor’s complete and utter failure to notice rather dampened the appeal.

Climbing to the top of the rise behind them, looking out over the barren landscape below, she saw an odd and oddly familiar blue box in the valley below. She turned back to look the way she had come – the Doctor was still engrossed in his work, and the TARDIS stood a few meters beyond, right where they had left it. She considered calling out to get the Doctor’s attention, then decided not to bother him. She set out down the hillside to investigate the duplicate TARDIS on her own.

< Chapter 7

Chapter 5 >

Chapter 1 >>

Four Doctors, Chapter 5

“Right. So. Let’s just review what we know, shall we?” The Doctor put on his best professorial airs, which still, he felt, didn’t quite fit this youthful and gangly new physique.

“Well I know nothing,” Rory offered. “Amy?”

“Nothing,” she agreed. “That about covers it.”

“Right,” Rory went on. “So really it’s more about you reminding us that you’re the only one here who really knows what’s going on.”

“Don’t be cheeky,” the Doctor said. “I may not look it, but I’m a lot older than you are, or were, before you became an Auton and spent two-thousand years … well never mind that right now, that’s not what’s important.”

He adjusted the overhead viewscreen. A vast network of time-corridors appeared as faintly glowing lines, all crisscrossed and radiating from a central point.

“Looks like a spider web,” Amy observed.

“Yes,” said the Doctor. “It is very much like a spider web. A spider web buried just below the topsoil, if you will, of spacetime. So an underground spider web … something like a trapdoor spider’s web, except nothing like that, really. It’s more like a cosmic system of gopher-holes. And we’re the big lumbering buffalo who’s gone and trod in the gopher-hole and got stuck, and swept away in the currents … you know, metaphors are rubbish for trying to explain a thing.”

“So what you’re saying,” Rory broke in, “is that it’s a lot of tunnels through spacetime, the TARDIS went and stumbled into it, and got swept off-course by it all.”

“That’s… well, yes.”

 The Doctor leaned in close to Amy and, in a loud stage-whisper, added, “I like this boy, Amelia. He’s definitely a keeper.”

“But what’s it all for?” Rory asked.

“Ah, well there’s the question.” The Doctor returned to studying the readouts on the console. “Unidirectional vortices… a very limited functionality… mostly works like a great big cosmic vacuum cleaner, sucking up stuff from all these endpoints and dropping it all here.” He finished with a finger planted at the center of the web on the screen.

“So what’s there?” Amy asked.

“Yes, exactly! What is there, and what does it want with all this out here, and why does it want so much of it, and what exactly does it intend to do with it all?”

“Again with the questions we can’t answer,” said Rory to Amy. “You notice how he does that?”

“Oh, I’ve noticed,” said Amy. “And now he’ll dazzle us with answers we can’t really understand.”

Not quite yet,” the Doctor said. “First I need … if the Old Girl would be kind enough … to locate the when and the where for all these temporal points, and …” He was interrupted by a few petulant bleeps from the console. “I did ask nicely,” he shot back, and was answered by an indignant squonk. “Well then pretty-please. With sugar. And a dollop of honey too, if you like.”

Rory leaned in to Amy and asked, “Does he always talk to the equipment that way?”

“Like an old married couple,” Amy replied.

After a few more knob-twists, button-pokes, and bleeps and bloops, the Doctor straightened up and gave the console an affectionate pat.

“Thank you, Dear. Right,” he continued, turning to face the Ponds, “looks like someone is targeting all the worst, the most devastating, most brutally awful acts of war from throughout space and time, taking things from there and collecting them …” he squinted again at some readings, “… at some central point which does not actually register … not sure how they get in past the time-lock, though… someplace not within normal spacetime … or even within any of the standard varieties of abnormal spacetime, apparently.”

“Which means what, exactly?” Rory prompted.

“You know, my people had an old proverb; ‘All temporal vortices lead to Gallifrey.’ Which, come to think of it, doesn’t seem all that proverbial.”

“It probably loses something in translation,” Amy quipped.

“Not really,” the Doctor said. “My people were never very poetic.”

“Right, question,” Rory broke in. “I’m awfully curious about the ‘leads to Gallifrey’ part of all that.”

“Yes. Well. It looks like the only way we’ll get any real answers here is to break through the time-lock and visit my old home-planet to see what sort of new and unpleasant developments are now being infiltrated into the Last Great Time-War.”

“I was afraid you’d say that,” Rory muttered.

< Chapter 6

Four Doctors: Chapter 4 >

Chapter 1 >>

Four Doctors: Chapter 4

Darkness. The world, the universe, all is total darkness. Except, one wonders if darkness can even exist if light is … 

            <Pawn to E4.  Your response?>

            <Knight to C6.>

… if light is what? A distant memory? A half-remembered rumor? A myth?

            <Knight to F3.  Your response?>

            <Pawn to E5.>

There are flashes, impressions of a world made up of images and material objects. Of days spent in shops or out of doors …

            <Bishop to B5.  Your response?>

            <Knight to F6.>

… and always a chessboard. Yes, the game was once played on a board, with pieces, with physical objects…

            <Bishop to A4.  Your response?>

            <Pawn to A6.>

… not simply the constant dry stream of information it has become …

            <King castles.  Your response?>

            <Bishop to E7.>

He remembers sitting in the park and enjoying a friendly game of chess with whomever happened by.  He wouldn’t even have minded losing …

            <Rook to E1.  Your response?>

            <King castles.>

…wouldn’t have minded losing once in a while.  Except, of course, he never did.  It was rare enough that he was ever truly challenged.

            <Bishop to B3.  Your response?>

            <Pawn to B5.>

There was that one fellow … not very friendly.  Odd-looking, too … something in his eyes … something not natural …

            <Pawn to C3.  Your response?>

            <Pawn to D6.>

This odd stranger, with the lifeless eyes … he sits down without so much as a how-do-you-do and starts a game …

            <Pawn to H3.  Your response?>

            <Knight to A5.>

… no chit-chat, just goes at his game like his whole life depends on it

            <Bishop to C2.  Your response?>

            <Pawn to C5.>

The stranger is good, he’ll give him that.  They play to a stalemate.  And for the first time, the stranger cracks a smile.

            <Pawn to D4.  Your response?>

            <Queen to C7.>

Not much of a smile, but it’s the first sign of humanity he’s shown.

The stranger stands, looks down at him. 

“You’ll do nicely,” the stranger says.

            <Knight to D2.  Your response?>

            <C pawn captures D4.>

It is his last memory of the place … of the life he once had…

            <C pawn captures D4.  Your response?>

            <E pawn captures D4.>

…or was it just a dream?

< Four Doctors: Chapter 5

Four Doctors: Chapter 3 > 

Four Doctors: Chapter 1 >>