dreadcrumbs

Microstory Monday

My Window To The World

I stumble to the floor beside the small window in my living room, dizzy from the rotten cabbage smell of natural gas. I pound the glass with my hands. There are people outside, two of them.
“Help,” I call, trying to muster the breath to yell. “Help!”
They ignore me completely.
My hands cast about for something, anything, that I can use to break the glass, and find my High School debate plaque on the floor where I had been polishing it.
A third person joins the duo outside, a man, and he says something I can't quite make out, and they all start to laugh.
I hammer the plaque against the window and see the glass crack. The people in the window suddenly freeze, and I stare as a parade of words begins rolling suddenly up from the bottom of the window. I'm still staring when my damaged window sparks just a bit, and the gas is set afire.

Friday Fives

The Top Five Things People Should Never Have to Eat Off Of

5. A Bum (Both Kinds)
4. The Bathroom Floor
3. A Roofing Shingle
2. Something else's tongue
1. Used bandages

Not that I know from personal experience or anything.

They Want To Eat Us

My sister-in-law was visiting us yesterday evening, and she brought along her little maltese beastie to play with us. My son loves the dog, and while I do think it is an Insane Thing, I generally enjoy its company.

Anyway, we're all sitting around socializing (I know, try to suspend your disbelief) when the dog comes up and starts licking my shin. I'm in shorts, so it is, in fact, licking my flesh.

Now most of you who have spent any time with dogs know that this sort of thing is fairly normal, and is usually just their way of saying hello, so I just gave it a pat on the head and ignored it. But then, see, the licking became obsessive. I pushed the dog away, and it came right back.

It was at this point that I examined my leg to see if I had honey or milk or kibble smeared on it. I didn't, but I was reminded that, for one reason or another, I have two scabbed wounds on my right shin. How I got them isn't really important. They are small, about a quarter of an inch in diameter, and scratching off the scabs produces more blood seepage than you might think. I had, in fact, staunched such seepage an hour earlier.

Or I thought I had.

I was bleeding again, a little, and that was what the dog was after. My blood. This animal was feeding on me.

Not that I'm threatened by an 8 ounce predator, but still. There's something unsettling about anything drinking your blood from an open wound. And now it's got a taste for blood.

I mentioned this to my wife later, and she said, "You know, there are those stories about household dogs who taste some blood and then are discovered to have eaten the family baby."

...so you see, it's not just me that's this way.

Microstory Monday

Turning the Tables
"Acid is the only way," I said. "That zombie will get out of the basement sooner or later, and we already know guns won't work."
"Well if you've got a vat of acid handy, I'd be happy to hear about it," Jill muttered.
"We've got what we need right here," I said, walking into the kitchen.
"Right where?" Kelly said, following me into the kitchen.
"Inside us," I said, rifling through a drawer.
"Inside...?" Sabrina started, stopping as I held up the silverware.
"Everyone take a fork," I said. "We've got a lot of meat to eat."

Friday Fives

The Five Most Common Personal Stories I Tell To Frighten Off Potential Acquaintences

5. "Beat The Bus"
4. "20 Foot Fall onto Barbed Wire"
3. "The Taste of Electricity"
2. "Rage Vs. Plate Glass"
1. "Deep of Night + Diarrhea + Ants = Terror"

All painfully true.

Those people in the parking lot

There are five people gathered around the open trunk of a car in my workplace parking lot. I can see them from my window. They're all fairly well-dressed, business casual types. I'd peg them as middle management. I don't think I know any of them, though even with my fancy new glasses I'd be hard pressed to identify facial features at this distance.

I can't make out what is in the boot (for our friends friend acquaintance in the UK) in question, but one of the people, who I'll call The Facilitator, keeps pointing at something in there and then gesturing to the others with a kind of open-handed "do you get it now?" movement.

They've been at this for at least five minutes now, and I can't for the life of me figure out what they're doing.

My first instinct is that The Facilitator is selling something. Some kind of homespun craft like bone knives or quilted bears. But nobody is buying.

And yet there they continue to stand.

Maybe they're really horrible bone knives with part of the creature whose bones are being used still attached. Not something you want to buy, but certainly worth gazing in horror at. I guess a quilted bear would inspire the same sort of response.

Hmm. Now one of the watchers is walking away and the entire group is staring at him as he leaves. Weird. I hope he didn't violate the trust of the group by abandoning their mystery trunk project in disgust. I know that sort of thing happens all the time. Now he'll likely end up duct taped to the flag pole at the building entrance with the word "TRAITOR" written on his chest in blood. Or lipstick. Probably lipstick. Poor guy.

Microstory Monday

A Taste For Flesh
"This is phenomenal," I say, savoring the taste of the steak. "What gives it that subtle porkchop flavor?"
"It's all in what we feed the cows," he says, shrugging.
"What are you feeding them, pigs?" I say, and start to laugh.
He looks away, saying nothing, and my laugh dies in my throat.
"Good lord," I say. "You aren't actually feeding them pigs, are you?"
"No," he says, looking down at the meat on my plate. "Not pigs."

Friday Fives

The top five explanations I give when people ask about the blood on my fingers and mud on my shoes
5. I sleepwork at an open-air meat packing plant
4. It isn't blood and mud, it's paint and clay, and I'm into midnight crafts
3. I go for early-morning strolls in open fields cloudy with fat mosquitos
2. I've been "working in my garden."
1. I compete in underground "Forefinger Brawls," where opponents battle to the ouch using only their index fingers.

The Lost Entry

Crap. I had a nice, long, very interesting exposition yesterday on why the Martial Arts school next to my lunchtime restaurant has the subtitle "Leadership Development Center," and it has vanished. I usually backup my entries in a text file, but it, too, is missing. Double crap. Perhaps it was all a just a very mundane dream.

Let us see if I can re-create the high points.

• the "United League of Self Defense Academies and Leadership Development Center" next to the Teriyaki Pit where I eat has an unwieldy and troubling name.
• I see a "lesson" taking place where the instructor was gesticulating wildly, in unhinged motivational speaker style, to his class of a father, his two daughters (4 and 6), and his son (9).
• I see the instructor haul off and punch the 9 year old in the gut. The father nods approvingly, the 4 year old looks at her brother in horror.
• I discover I am blocking the doorway to the restaurant in stunned disbelief, and enter the establishment, not seeing the rest of the scenario play out
• I muse that it might have been a fake punch, since the kid's face was a little more exaggeratedly "Whoofed" than might be real, and really, what successful business model allows the sucker-punching of nine year olds?
• Unless, of course, that was the "leadership development," and if I had been appropriately pummeled by ninjas at a young age, I might now be President. Or a Cabinet Minister. Or something.
• And I finished with a somewhat obtuse reference to "On The Waterfront," using the word "bum," since I know you guys love that word.

So there you have it. You didn't miss much.

Microstory Monday

An Unfortunate Issue
"Nasty. That's Nasty," Ben says again in the stall next to me. It's driving me crazy. I know it's only his second day on the milking machines, but if I have to hear it again, I'll...
"Nasty!"
I shut down my animal and walk over to his station, ready to give him a piece of my mind.
"Look Ben, I'm getting really..." I begin, and when he straightens up, he plucks a bottle off his milker and shows me the stuff floating inside.
"I think my cow is sick," he says.
"Nasty," I say.