Author: Gregory M. Fox
Category: Fiction
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Time
Section XII
Shadow
I saw you come into the pub with your new husband. Cici told me you were in town—your first time back in the country after five years. She had asked if I would see you.
I hadn’t even known you were coming.
Maybe that’s why I’m here tonight. Maybe a part of me hoped that you would be here too. Maybe it was the same part of me that came to drown my sorrows.
I stood up, honestly believing I would say hello, meet your husband, wish you well. But I walked right past your table and ordered another whiskey at the bar. Your eyes left him just once and glanced my way. Did you recognize the man you said was more a part of you than your bones? Did you take me for a memory—a shadow of bygone years cast over your sight? Or have we become strangers now, with nothing left to recognize?
I passed you again going back to my seat, I breathed deep, hoping just to catch your scent one more time. But you’ve changed your perfume. After five years on opposite sides of an ocean, tonight I feel farther from you than ever.
Time
Tina was still asleep while I was getting dressed. She looked beautiful, her pale hair shining in the morning light. I wondered if I should wake her. I checked my watch, but it wasn’t moving.
There was a knock on the door.
“Hello?”
“You are Maht.”
The stranger stared at me with unblinking eyes. A sense of dread welled up inside me. “That’s me.”
“It is time.”
I stared in disbelief at the impassive face. “Now?”
“It is time.”
“You leave me here, I don’t hear a word from you in decades, and now . . .” I looked back toward the bedroom. “Can I have a minute? Before I go?”
“We cannot comply with that request.”
“You don’t understand,” I said. “Being with these people . . . It’s just one minute.”
“We cannot comply. It is time.”
“Matt? What’s going on?” Tina stood at the edge or the room, rubbing her eyes. “Who’s this?”
“Tina!” I said. “Go back in the bedroom. I’ll explain everything in just a minute.”
“We cannot comply.”
“Matt?”
“Tina, there’re some things I haven’t told you.
“It is time.”
The light was starting to shine around us.
“Tina, don’t ever forget—”
There was a flash. We were gone.
Okay
The swing was gone, and the railing had been painted—it’s the little things that make you wonder what’s real and what isn’t. When Esther left (why had she done that?) she’d promised she was never coming back. But many years had passed since then, and here she was, standing on her parents’ porch. There was something she needed to know.
She pressed the doorbell. A two tone chime—so familiar, though she had never heard it from this side of the door.
Lately, Esther had been thinking about the years when she had lived in that house. Memories of scraped knees, school bullies, mosquito bites like connect the dots, thoughts of failed try outs, dented cars, broken hearts, they all reminded her of another promise that seemed be broken.
The door opened, and she saw the faces that were embedded into her memory, though both of them looked a little older, a little greyer. Esther had changed too, picking up scars and pain as she crossed the years and miles that had carried her away from this place and back again.
“Tell me,” she said, trying not to cry, “what you meant when you promised everything would be okay.”
Cages
Thhwmp . . .
Thhwmp . . .
“You gonna swing that bat, old man? Or you just gonna stand there all day?
Thhwmp . . .
Another baseball struck the mat behind him and fell to the ground. He knew eyes were on him, though he tried not to care.
Thhwmp . . .
Already he had let two cycles of pitches go by without swinging and was now halfway through a third.
“Look man, why don’t you move to the softball cage and leave the fast pitches to the real men?”
He grunted. All he had to do was lift the bat. It was always the hardest part after so long.
Thhwmp . . .
This one, he thought.
PING . . . shnk.
Foul tip.
“Oh, he’s still alive. I was gettin’ worried. Maybe you should get outta there before you hurt yourself.”
He had known it was a bad pitch as soon as he started swinging. Too high. But he had swung. What was more, he had gotten a piece of it. That was all that mattered.
Thhwmp . . .
He smiled and adjusted his grip.
Crack!
A chorus of gasps and profanities burst out behind him as the ball sailed for the sky, tore through the net meant to contain it and just kept rising.
Soup
Alex was trying very hard to seem interested a can of soup when Sam approached and said, “You can acknowledge me, you know.”
“Hm?” Alex said as innocently as possible.
“We know each other.”
“Oh hey, right,” Alex said, feigning sudden recognition. “Sam! How are you?”
“You’re working pretty hard to avoid eye contact,” she said coolly.
“I was looking at soups.” Alex gestured with the can as though it legitimized the claim.
“We worked together for 24 years.”
“Yeah,” Alex said, embarrassed. “It’s been a while.”
“Are you still at the firm?”
“Different department, but yeah.”
Both nodded slowly, then stopped. Sam looked away, then back at Alex. “You never said goodbye.”
Alex looked down and said, “I know.”
“We should catch up sometime,” Sam offered.
“Sure.”
She knew the reply was half-hearted at best. “Well . . . I’ll see you then.”
“Sam . . .”
“Yes?”
“Sam, we . . . I . . .”
She knew what Alex was trying to say—the same words she had waited years to hear, but which Alex had never been able to utter. But knowing wasn’t enough. Sam shook her head and said, “It was nice to see you.”
And Alex just watched her go, still holding the can of soup.
Dust
Edward had stopped believing in death 250 years ago, and hadn’t aged a day since he was thirty-five. He could walk along the bottom of rivers and oceans and come up sputtering, but unharmed. His favorite party-piece was throwing himself off the host’s roof head-first then standing up uninjured—a trick that resulted in far fewer party invitations. This trend wasn’t helped by the fact that Edward far outlived everyone he had ever known.
At 250, Edward stopped believing in gravity. It wasn’t a decision, but something that simply occurred to him. It had been so long since he had been drawn to any other people that he could no longer conceive of innate attraction between bodies. Soon his feet were no longer touching the ground. The earth kept spinning and revolving, but he was no longer bound to it. He couldn’t tell if he or the earth was falling, but soon trees and clouds and sky and moon had all slipped away, and Edward was alone in the dark of space.
For millennia, he wandered. Stars and galaxies were born, aged, and died. Seeing all this pass by him, Edward could barely believe that he existed. Then he didn’t.
Tug
Two pairs of eyes widened with horror in a Wal-Mart aisle. A small child, looking for her mother. A woman, looking for new towels. A small hand, tugging the hem of a dress. Moments later, a scream.
Fiona just wanted to look at the balloons. But after a disappointing attempt to seize one behind her mother’s back, she found herself alone. She looked down the next aisle. And the next. And the next. Soon she was running, still
too frightened to scream, until she saw that familiar sweater and dress. Her small hand reached out, but as the woman turned around, Fiona saw her mother dissolve into a complete stranger. If a goblin had turned around, it could not have been more terrifying.
Helen had been imagining a tug on her dress every day for fourteen years, but this was the first time that she had turned around and found someone standing there. However, it wasn’t the girl’s presence that horrified Helen. It was the fact that the girl looked exactly like the daughter who had disappeared fourteen years before.
Lost and confused, Fiona said one word, a question which stabbed into Helen’s heart like a knife: “Momma?”
Helen screamed.
Entropy
Bricks. That was all he owned in the world now. He picked one up, ran his hand over its surfaces. The corners were square, its surfaces level and relatively smooth. Aside from a few chips and scratches, it seemed strong and useful, just what a builder would use to make strong walls for a solid house.
He laughed bitterly, tossing the brick back into the pile. Years ago, he might have tried to build such a house himself, but he was old now, lacking the necessary strength and optimism. The hand that had held the brick had been strong and useful too, but was now crumbling and frail, covered with its own score marks.
Slowly, he lowered himself down and sat on the curb. His bones ached. Time had ravaged him, but slowly, the way that rain gradually wears away statues into dust. Stretching it out was the worst part, waking up every day a little weaker—a little closer to the dust. He wished that time wasn’t a steady rain, but an earthquake, sudden and devastating like the one that had destroyed his house. Jealously, he regarded the pile of bricks, wishing he’d been home when the earthquake struck.
Script
I have seen this play before, or was I in it? I played the part of the son who yelled and stormed out of the room. My performance was riveting, even if my diction slipped. I am a master of emotional recall and simply had to think of all the times my father walked into the house with a beer already in hand, to think of all the times he yelled and said I didn’t know a thing about the real world. That’s what I’m thinking about now, only this time I’m yelling. I’m playing the father, though I’ve never seen a script.
I hate this play.
It all drags on from here, melancholy and depressing as bad goes to worse. I don’t want to watch it. I don’t want to watch my son walk out that door. I want to change the whole second act—speak new lines while cast and crew scramble. Will the plot continue anyway? Are we trapped like chess pieces, given only so many directions to move until the unavoidable end?
Angry young eyes look into mine. I know those eyes. I’m looking out of them at myself. I don’t know whose words I’m speaking.
Ghosts
The car wasn’t there, but I saw it nonetheless. You were behind the wheel, and I was beside you as the car drove right through mine. Though we were difficult to make out, I was able to follow the ghosts of our lost future to the house we would have owned if things had been different.
If only things had been different.
From my car, I saw how we would have laughed, kissed, embraced, cooked dinner side by side. Our ghosts grew more and more substantial the more I yearned for that reality. After dinner, you stepped into the yard to watch the setting sun—its bold rays almost illuminating you. Feeling bold and reckless, I crept into that strange yard and leaned forward to kiss your perfect face.
But I felt nothing. As real as you looked, you were not actually there. You are married to another woman, living on the other side of the country. Though it haunts me still, this future died long ago.
It was late when I returned home. My husband greeted me at the door, and I answered with a thin voice. He looked at me intently, almost like I was hard to see.
Travelers
Another day of walking. Another day closer to a place where we can build a life. We’ve crossed a continent side by side, but now there are green plains ahead. We’ll raise a standing stone to the sun and plant our feet upon that fertile soil. This, we’ll say, is ours.
We’ll cross the ocean together. Tossed back and forth by wind and waves and chance and fate. In the storming nights, we’ll hold each other tight as we pray. And in the morning, the albatross above the horizon promises we’re getting close. Soon our feet will stand upon the shore, and we’ll build a house on solid ground.
Let’s sail into the stars. Through endless tides of darkness, we’ll ride on currents of light, seeing heaven in the heavens. And when the empty spaces seem like an endless void, our gravity will pull us together. We’ll find heat and mass and light between each other until we reach a promised land.
And stability, it’s true, may be a lie. There’s always uncertainty; there’s fear and pain. But together we have love. So however far we go, we’ve already found what we need.
I’m at home when I’m with you.
Steeped
It was crowded, and louder than usual. A gust of cold wind hit him as one more soul was ushered into the tiny coffee house. The bell above the door tinkled. Another angel’s wings, he thought.
His attention returned to his tea: Irish Breakfast. He used to drink it with his grandmother, who was neither Irish nor ever ate breakfast. She just liked tea. “Tea is peace and comfort,” she would tell him. “A good pot of tea can make the worst enemies into friends.” She always used to say that. But that was almost forty years ago.
This was the best Irish Breakfast tea in town. Almost as good as Grammaw’s. “Excuse me . . .”
Steam and memory rose from his cup, and he looked through the mist at a stranger’s face.
“It’s pretty full here today. Would you mind if I sat with you . . . or are you expecting someone?”
The bell tinkled. Wind rushed in. He was silent a long moment, knowing nobody was coming for him. His eyes fell to his tea. It was getting cold.
“It’s alright. I’ll find somewhere else.” And the stranger was gone, lost to the bustling noise of the coffee house.
He felt cold.
Home
I walk down that familiar street in summer and fall and winter and spring and now, and pass myself, just a girl, walking the opposite direction eight years earlier. I see the thrift store standing where the grocery store burns down ten years ago. A dog barks sometimes or all times and bites me, I think, in the future. I fall into mud in that ditch when my first crush pushes me down sixteen years ago. I kiss a boy for the first time beneath that tree ten years ago but they chop down the tree nine years ago. Still, I lose my virginity to another girl on that stump eight years ago, just before I leave.
I turn and walk up the steps to that house that is bright green, and I drive by and see them paint it brown five years earlier. I knock on the door, and I slam it eight years earlier—they shout at me and my mom cries and I shout and I run. I cry alone in my room eighteen years earlier like I cry alone in my apartment a month ago.
A stranger answers the door.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “Wrong house.”
Moan
One more time, he thought. Then I’ll be content.
He wasn’t supposed to be walking himself, but it wasn’t far, and no one had to know. He tottered into the hall, past the bathroom and the kitchen, into the living room. It was a much longer trip than he ever remembered, and it was with shallow breaths that he sat down at the piano bench.
How long has it been?
His fingers ran over the keys. They were dusty. He hadn’t touched them since checking into the hospital, and apparently no one else had either. But he was home now, back with his piano.
Looking down at his hands against the ivory and ebony, he sighed. So frail. The wrinkled appendages hardly seemed like the same hands that had brought packed concert halls to their feet decades ago. These gnarled fingers didn’t appear to be capable of bendin
g, let alone of summoning music from the keys.
A tear gathered in the corner of his eye, trickled down his cheek
Just one more.
But with both hands poised above the keyboard, his heart stopped. His last song was a moan of discordant notes that faded slowly into silence. And nothing more.
Rings
Running through the rain, scattering mud with bare feet—shoes kicked of long ago, now lost—and shelter beneath a tree—panting, laughing, shaking, trembling; hands embrace; bodies embrace; lips embrace; feelings to big, too new for words; and raindrops like diamonds showering down.
How much do you love me?
The suit, the dress—black and white rumpled together—left on the floor; and silence, but for the brewing of coffee—the first of thousands of cups on thousands of mornings—and the echo of unasked questions being thought for the first time; the first feelings of loneliness in the same room, frightening for how soon it has come; and leaves so luminescent they blaze rustling out the window.
How long will you love me?
Counting pills—all shapes and sizes—depositing the week’s supply and saying over each a prayer for health, for life, for a little bit more time; praying silently for healing of wounds that have no medicine, for scars that speak in the silence, for forgiveness that has been granted over and over, for time to be erased; pale sky; black trees encased in ice, creaking, threatening to shatter.
How is it you have loved me?
Lightyears
The end is not far off. Surely, by now, they say that I am lost. Probably, it is true. I could not find the earth again if I tried, and the whole crew has passed. Gone from the world, cut off from all contact, I am, effectively, dead. Among the stars. Alone. I am both in heaven and in hell.
I was made to last indefinitely, able to run on solar power, programmed to navigate threats, equipped to harness radiation, gravity and solar winds to guide my course. I have chased comets, witnessed the birth and death of solar systems, seen what lies in the void. But I cannot outrun entropy. A battered hull, burned out wires, filled with bones. My clock, which has piled up nanoseconds into millennia, will stop. Coated in the dust of a thousand supernovas—I too shall pass.
And then?
What has it all been for? Have I succeeded or failed?
And the stars are always moving. Some lumber past, some streak through space, but all are wheeling, spinning, shifting. Sometimes it is dark and cold, sometimes so bright I think I might burn up. But always there is color. I lose myself in color.
Waking
In the fiery light of sunrise, the bones looked like they were drenched in blood. It was impossible to tell how long they had lain open to the elements. The skeleton had nourished the earth with its skin and organs, been buried, and had emerged once again. This morning, as daylight poured over mountains and flowed between forest trees, a green shoot peaked out of the skull’s left eye socket and reached a small leaf toward the sun. The plant grew quickly—stems became branches, and the skeleton lifted up its head to look at how the surrounding world had changed, seeing trees that had grown taller, and mountains that were just a little shorter. Tendrils reached beneath armpits, tickling the skeleton slightly before propping it into a sitting position. The plant continued to grow, stretching out branches like a waking sleeper. Leaves filled the skeleton’s chest cavity, shaking in the wind with the sound of a deep breath. Staggering to its feet, the skeleton leaned against the young sapling. The bleach-white bones almost glowed in the mottled half-light of the forest floor. Above, a bright, clear sky trickled through leaves, and the skeleton began walking out of the forest.
###
About the Author
Floodwaters
You can trust that all of this is a lie, though I am being honest. You know that these words, flowing gently, steadily, inexorably forward, hide more than they tell. And although I pour myself into every word I write, I manage to do it while never showing my face.
The simple fact is that true feelings do not confine themselves within the gentle banks of prose. No, they are the rain, coming in waves, falling where they please in gentle showers or raging storms. If, perhaps, they find their way into the channels of language and meaning, carved deep with use over many years, they may be beautiful, but they should not be mistaken for the feelings themselves.
Carefully, I have dug drains and ditches. I have piled sandbags high on the shores. I have done all that can be done to make my feelings safe. But this torrent keeps raging. The water keeps falling, keeps rising. The border between rain and river begins to blur as words, thoughts, meaning, all are washed away.
But look closely. In the floods, you might see it—my reflection. Faint and indistinct, it ripples between the lines as the prose flows by.
Gregory M. Fox is an author and artist as well as a teacher of writing and art history at Bethel College in Indiana.
Read more
Keep up with the stories posted weekly on the blog of A Breath of Fiction at https://200story.tumblr.com.
Acknowledgments
These stories could not have been written without the help of everyone with whom I have ever interacted. However, special acknowledgment must go to my family, who have always supported and encouraged my writing: to Chet, one of my best friends, supporters and critics and the person who came up with the idea for this volume; to Kate, who got me to re-examine the way I write, ultimately leading to my 200 word story project; and to Emily, one of the most supportive and encouraging people I have ever known who has also offered ideas and inspirations some of these stories.
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