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

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 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 >>

And We Are All Mortal

A couple months back, the NPR program Weekend All Things Considered ran a fiction-writing contest, asking for short works centered on a US President (real or fictional; author's choice). This was my contribution.

“I was reading the other day, thing about World War One.” Bobby finishes pouring the scotch into two glasses. “When the war broke out, it says, Prince von Bulow turned to the German Chancellor and said, ‘How did this all happen?’ The Chancellor could only shake his head and say, ‘If we only knew…’”

The President doesn’t take his eyes off the photos spread on his desk, not even to look at the glass of scotch his brother sets at his elbow. “They knew,” he says.

Each step drives the next, possibilities fall away. The noose tightens. And he can’t see how any of it could have gone otherwise. The impotent frustration of that German Chancellor is all too real to him right now. “They didn’t like it. But they had to know.”

Bobby leans over the President’s shoulder at the photos. “Not looking so much like a football field now.”

“Looking more like missile sites every day.”

“But the blockade is holding.”

“For now.” The President takes a swig of his drink. “With the Russian ships goading us the way they have been … only a matter of time.”

“So how did this all happen?”

“No,” the President says. “The question is, how do we stop it?”

When the whole thing started, one general had summed it up quite succinctly saying, “You’re in a pretty bad fix, Mister President.” The President had shot back with, “You’re in it with me.” A good laugh line, and it eased the tension for a bit, but it was a lie. Ultimately the decisions, the responsibility, the worldwide repercussions, are his alone.

“Damn it, Bobby, how do we stop it?”

“Tried praying?”

“What do you think I’ve been doing?”

“Well. You know what they say, ‘Whenever God closes a door, He always opens a window.’”

“That’s lovely,” the President grumbles.

“Just trying to help.”

“You want to help?”

“Sure.”

“Find me that damn window.”

A knock at the door. A State Department aide steps in with a stack of paper.

“Mister President … a communication, sir. From Russia. Chairman Krushchev.”

“About time.” The President takes the pages. He reads each page to the end, flips it aside with careful deliberation.

“What’s he got to say?”

The President holds up a finger for silence. It takes a few more minutes to finish reading. He collects the pages, squares the edges against the top of his desk, and hands them to his brother.

“He suggests that we should both stop pulling at this knot of war we’ve tied ourselves into.”

“Good idea. We shoulda thought of that.”

“Krushchev says if we pledge not to try another invasion of Cuba …”

“Like we’d want a repeat of that ...”

“…if we pledge not to invade Cuba, he will pull the missiles.”

“Just like that?”

“Under UN supervision, they’ll get rid of everything.”

“If we promise not to invade.”

The President’s nausea subsides, just a bit. He allows himself a moment of optimism, the first he’s felt in over a week.

“I think we could do that,” he says.

 “Can we trust him?”

“Can we afford not to?”

“It would give us a way out,” Bobby admits.

“When God closes a door, Krushchev opens the window,” the President says with a grin. “Somebody’s got a keen sense of humor.”