~Start-up by Cynthia~

Driving home, I thought about the presentation I made to a potential client. The group included six men, three women; five gung-ho company people, two wanna-bes, two know-nothings. Nine skeptics. Nine people who could make or break me. Nine I needed.

As I was reassessing, and doubting, my effort to drum up more business, I saw a pick-up truck in front of me.

"No, it couldn't be. I haven't seen one of those in decades."

Speeding up, I got close enough to see it was the same kind of truck my father drove to take us fishing.

Suddenly, I was eight years old again. My father was starting the engine, my brother and I were sitting in the front seat with him. This truck was finicky; you had to start it just right, or else it defied you. After the third turn of the key, it sounded like it was ready to go. Instead, the cab of the truck filled with a thick, acrid smoke. We bailed, leaving the doors open to clear the air.

My father waited a few minutes and tried again. The truck started up fine.Looking at us, dad said, "See, just keep trying. It'll work."

We made it to our fishing spot. We were quiet as we watched the lines - didn't want to scare the fish away. But when dad cleaned the fish, he'd talk. That's when we learned about his childhood, his dreams, his real world, his way of getting by.Now, as I passed the pick-up truck, I didn't look at the driver. I wanted my father to be driving. One more time, I needed him to tell me, "It'll work."

***What fine work all writers did on this piece. Please read Cynthia's gorgeous piece, then continue on to the additional writers' pieces in the comments section.***

~Ivan by Dragon~

I knew Uncle Ivan's shell, a withered corn husk wired to boxes that beeped and scratched evidence of his half-life. The few words he spoke were obscene. I filed those expletives for further examination even as my mom hustled me out to the candy machine.

He hung on for a decade.

And then, knowing there is nothing a teenage boy likes better than cleaning, Mom sent me to Ivan's abandoned cabin. Angry at the loss of my summer freedom, I threw dust-covered artefacts willy-nilly onto the lawn, delighting in the sound of broken glass. Then I stopped to look.

There was a 12-inch-long hunting knife with a keen edge and a bloodstained handle. Guns, countless guns in the bathroom, the kitchen, the foyer. A wardrobe holding 6 moldy tuxedos. A box of women's underwear. Used women's underwear. Desk drawers stuffed with stock certificates, land deeds, smoldering love letters dated 50 years ago. Large diamond rings for men's hands. Pornographic German magzines. Animal bones. A full set of mechanic's wrenches. Eight identically bulky and ancient walkie-talkies. Now I excavated the past, tripping over a child's rocking horse and life-sized framed photograph of a naked woman, until I reached the motherlode, the vein of precious metal: in the bedroom, 100 notebooks, neat handwriting, a life.

Diamond mines in Africa, gold mines in Canada, opal mines in Austalia, Uranium mines in the desert. Smuggling in South America, Southeast Asia, the Middle East. Political leaders and mafia bosses, merchants and marines, professors and scientists. Women on every continent, including Antartica.

There was nothing Uncle Ivan had not seen, nothing he had not done. The sum total of all that drives a man filled the lined pages. On the filthy bare boxspring, I read until the light failed, and dreamed myself an adventurer pursued by the French Legion, the mob, a thousand woman, state secrets locked to my wrist, a fortune in gemstones sewn into my collar, until my cell phone buzzed me back into my own prosaic reality.

My mother worried on the other end. "This could take a while," I told her. The power had been cut years ago, but I found a kerosene lamp and read on.

***Such wonderful, telling, chewy details.***

~Bastard Bill Kowalski by Al E. Yus~

Long about last August that bastard Bill Kowalski moved his sorry ass in. Parked his mattress at the top of the stairs, set his TV on a couple of cinder blocks and called it home. He'd sleep through the Today Show, but wake in time for Truth or Consequences and the soaps. Then he'd nap until the cartoons came on.

He had a little kitchen set up there in the hallway; a mini-fridge with a hot plate on top. This is him chowing down to his favorite meal, Chef Boy-Ar-Dee. See that lady's leg? It's a cardboard cutout he fished out of a dumpster behind some porn shop. His idea of art.

His rent money dried up by October and we had to kick him out. I heard he's living at the Rescue Mission now. We couldn't peel the naked lady off the wall, so she's still there.

***What makes Bill a bastard? We are so curious...***

~Together by Guy Anthony de Marco~

Bob loved taking Carole to the lake. Their whole history together could be seen etched in the shoreline like rings in an ancient redwood.

Here's where they first met, arguing over who owned a particularly abundant fishing hole. His hat glinted with lures tied by his father. Her overalls rolled up to expose ballet-strengthened ankles.

This is where they drove off together, shedding Prom clothes as they chased each other across the sand; where their first fumbling lovemaking stripped away virginity. Bob proposed to Carole over by the worn flat rock jutting from the surface, their heads rising and falling rhythmically to their dogpaddling, until he slipped the ring on her finger under the surface.

She would laugh for years, claiming he duped her into marrying him. Their children would beg for the story to be retold, and they passed it on to their progeny like rings rippling out from Bob and Carole's exuberant presence in the water.

And today, Bob and Carole held hands until the sun set over the trees, staring out over the liquid book of their lives. With her final breath, he kissed his wife of sixty years and carried her out, buoyant with the help of the spirit of the lake, the water closing over the couple, welcoming them home.

Together.

***A big life in so few lines.***

~Marc Antony by Dragon~

Kira told Devon that Joni was going as Cleopatra.

"That bitch thinks she's so hot," Kira told him. "Think I'll go as a snake and bite her stupid ass."

Of course, we knew that Kira was going to go in sexy lingerie with some kind of fluffy ears and tail. But it gave me an idea anyway. I got together this great Julius Caesar costume, with laurels and everything. And when I saw Joni at the party, beautiful even under that awful wig, first thing, I called out to her.

"Your majesty," I said, and she looked me up and down and started to shimmy right there.

I might have had something too, but that punk, Devon just had to nose in. We thought he wasn't even coming. He didn't actually show up until the party was practically over, but he went all out with the costume anyway.

He came as Marc Antony.

***We love that bit about the snake. Other whimsical pieces in the comments.***

~Pink Motel by Cynthia~

"Pixies, my ass," the maid said to her reflection in the mirror.

She ripped off the sheets from the double bed and left them on the floor. She continued into the bathroom to scrub the tub, clean the toilet and empty the wastebasket that held several condom wrappers.

"At least she had the sense to use a rubber."

As the maid worked her way around the room dusting and vacuuming she wondered who was in here last night. It looked like it must have been some party - beer and vodka bottles, soda cans, pizza boxes, a white powder on the nightstand.

She just shook her head and kept on cleaning.

"Don't know why I work so hard. It's not like the people who come in here would even notice."

She put clean sheets on the bed and smoothed the thin bedspread until all the wrinkles were gone.

As she bent to pick up the dirtied sheets, she noticed a piece of paper under the bed.

On the crumpled piece of paper were the words, "Help me! I don't want to be here! Please help me!"The exclamation points all had little hearts at the bottom.

~At the Powwow by Ann Walters~

With a scattering of light in the eye the boy dances, his feathers weaving the colors of stone and corn, his head cocked in an attitude of supplication. His feet singe the ground where they touch.

Too many of the old men drink beer and shuffle from pickup to pickup comparing the size of their tires or the weight of the abandoned hopes that push their truck beds so low they threaten to scrape the road.

Some mothers busy themselves with costume changes and last-minute beadwork. Others sit on plastic chairs in the patchy grass and watch the girls with their subtle sways and hops, remembering vaguely what it feels like to flirt with only a flick of the hand.

A few old women sit in a circle, chanting softly to themselves. Whatever their words are, only they are meant to know. Behind them a baby crawls in the dirt and a pair of dogs mate quickly before chasing down stray crumbs of fry bread.

Back in the central ring, the boy bends. His fringed kilt sweeps the earth like a broom until he stops and kneels, quivering, on one knee. He would kiss the ground if he could, would love it into being with his breath, but a smattering of applause is the only answer to his prayer.

~Pilgrims by Dragon~

Papa said we was gonna be pilgrims, and I was even gonna get to cut school, but don't tell my mama. Papa says, don't tell your mama nothing, Punkin, cause your mama trying to take you away from me, that's how come she got them judges tie my hands with these restricted visitation rights.

Papa says, we're going to Graceland, Baby. You pack Suzy doll and John Bear up in your school sack and I'm gonna swing by for you Monday morning before they ring that first bell. You can have chicken nuggets and chocolate shakes all the way to Memphis.

Mama don't let me eat McDonalds much.

So I better not tell her how me and Papa's planning on being pilgrims.

~Resolution by Clarke O'Gara~

“How long does it take to feel the effects?”

He shrugged, “It’s probably worked already.” I didn’t feel any different though.

”I don’t feel any different.” I admitted. It was my friend who told me to try this guy, some weird mix off hypnosis and mind drugs to get over my ex-husband.

”Tell me about your ex-husband then.”

”He’s handsome.” I sniggered.

”What does his face look like?”

”I don’t know it’s kind of… he has…” I couldn’t grasp onto it, it was like a dream fading, where ever detail you try to focus on seems to disintegrate, the harder you try the more the details fall apart. Then the other details break up as well. His face was gone, I couldn’t picture anything.

“Shit it did work.”

~MY SUMMER OF KATIE by Diane~

That particular summer I had signed up to perform as part of the Pirates Extravaganza! show at Busch Gardens, just about 20 minutes from my parents’ house. I had a clear and selfish reason for choosing this particular summer job—Katie Winchester. Katie and I had gone through school together since kindergarten. I’d never taken particular notice of her, but then she went away to college. She slimmed down, got herself a pair of fashionably funky square-rimmed glasses, and streaked her shoulder-length blond hair with flashes of bright pink. The new Katie Winchester was first revealed to me at Mickel’s Dairy—she was enjoying a low-fat vanilla custard over Memorial Day while visiting her family.

When my buddy Matt told me she was playing the Pirate Princess all summer long I knew what I had to do. I seriously began to ponder switching my major to theater come fall. Or maybe switching colleges entirely. It would depend on how the summer ended…

~Pirogue by Dragon~

I didn't intend to travel to the edge of the world. Call it a sacrifice on the altar of love. Or call it temporary insanity. They are not mutually exclusive. They may be one and the same.

She said to me, "The man I love must be willing to travel to the ends of the earth."

And I, thoughtless, young, said, "This I am willing."

Then she said, "The man I love must be strong enough to return from the ends of the earth."

My blood ran red and hot, my arms ached to hold her, and my vocation pressed me on into the pirogue. It was a trinket she desired, a curio from the east, a meaningless nothing, and it became my all-consuming desire. I saw what no man had seen before, and fought battles with men, monsters, and myself. I proved my own strength and devotion. I satisfied my own quest. I became worthy of her.

And now, at the end of the world, I wonder, should I return? Should I deliver her heart's desire? Is she, finally, worthy of me?

~Tomorrow by Rion~

Dear D,

At gramma's house this week. Mom and Dad are doing their usual tour of their old high schools and stuff, old places where they'd barfed from too much beer or driven too fast. Gross.

Gramma's napping in the easy chair, head slumped, with the volume of Walker, Texas Ranger turned up so loud I Can't Believe she can sleep through it. I love gramma, too bad she doesn't watch any good tv.

Just decided to take a bath in the tub. A narrow one, but deep enough to cover my knees without draining water. And I put my hand, Just There, while thinking about Shane Pederson. Then I sortta started thinking about Marjorie. I actually moaned.

Diary! It felt so nice but now I'm worried that I'm a lezzie. And my hands are pruny.Maybe I'll take another bath. Tomorrow.

~Not Leaving by Cynthia~

Forty nine years ago I gave my hand to you in marriage. Now you give your hand to me in sickness.

You reach for me from the bed placed in the living room. You can no longer make it upstairs to our marriage bed so I sleep on a love seat next to you. I'm not leaving.

Our hands may be veiny, dry and a bit swollen with arthritis but they have built a good life. Our hands still fit together.

As you sleep, your pain must ease because you smile often. Every once in awhile you mutter words about our life.

When you start to awaken, your hand reaches out. I'll always be there to hold it.

***Lovely***

~DESERT ISLAND by Diane~

There had been so many jokes about it—what would you bring to a deserted island? Who would you want with you there? What food would you miss most? What cd would you play over and over again? And etc. The questions floated around the internet, across drunken nights and through friends like little pebbles bouncing their way down a river.

Emily had one thing and one thing alone. It was her copy of Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha, speckled with chicken scratchings and flashes of pink highlighter from her college days. The corners were tattered, and there was a coffee stain on the inside cover from the time she loaned it to a boy she was dating. It reminded her of late nights discussing topics in Nihilism with her study group at the Burger King down the street from her apartment.She packed it specifically in case this cruise would unexpectedly land her on a deserted island. And surprisingly, here she was, feeling fully prepared for the journey ahead.

***Multi-layered and thoughtful.***