Handle Me With Care: An Idea of Where You Might Be (Comprised of Three Drabbles)

Suspension

She is vehemently redeemed. For what? She cannot explain. There is a salamander sitting on her window sill, soaking up sun like a tiny, phosphorescent sponge. When she was eighty, there was a time when she wouldn’t have poked at him with the brightly colored edge of her fingernail. Now she is less tolerant. She flicks him over the ledge, peeks over the side and watches him fly toward the bushes, tail flagellating about; eyes, she is certain, protruding out of his head with heightened concern. Free fall, that was what it was. And what was this feeling? Completely asinine.

Grafting

In the west the sky turns purple, a bruise tied round with scarves of white clouds that help dull the ache of it, the car picks up momentum and his foot just can’t lift from the gas pedal. He takes a second to glance over at the woman sitting beside him. The g-force sends her tense , shattered against the seat. Her face shows nothing as they spiral out in the middle of anywhere. He opposes gravity, turns to her as they hit 90 and barrel off the ledge.

“I am… so sorry.”

Somewhere, in the black, a tea kettle whistles.

Thumbelina in a Matchbox

Ironically, it’s not very cold in here… maybe I’m numb. The thing sealed itself, and I’m not sure how to get out. I’ve tried flailing, but there isn’t enough space to build any kind of opposing force to the inside wall. I’m wearing pink satin pumps and a bridesmaid’s dress, so when I kick at the lid, my heel snaps off and I can feel the shock vibrate up my leg into the taffeta. The air is stale and I can smell my own perfume, it is grotesque. On the lid of the box, refrigerator magnets read “This End Up”.

Mice In The Walls

Clicking. It’s the mice again, Josie is sure of it. Dancing on her toes she seizes a small cast iron pan from its rack above the cutting board. She bangs the thing heavily against the sink where, beneath, the mice skitter back and forth . They make more clicking noises as they scritch and patter, nosing their tiny snouts into places where they don’t belong. She’d put out poison, nestled in a tempting way between the “KaBoom!” kitchen cleanser and a hunk of aged gouda (mice liked cheese, right?) which was, by way of their ignorance, becoming moldy. She’d placed sticky traps under the pipes, lacing the edges with crackerjack crumbs, and yet nothing. The mice kept to themselves.

At present, Josie taps the pan against the tile of the sink, hoping to send shockwaves below. The cast iron pan is almost too heavy for her. Almost. She hears them pause a moment, waiting. She hits it again, flat-side. The sound reverberates throughout the kitchen. She pictures the disgusting little things wide eyed and terrified. She pictures their ugly little fur coats standing on end, their wiry tales curled up in fright. She bangs it again, this time so hard that one of the tiles, sea foam green and glossy, flies off the sink and clatters to the floor. She raises it to try again once more, listening to the frantic scratching as the mice run for cover, when the sound of the telephone interrupts her thoughts. She sets the pan down on the counter, eyeing the screened cupboard under the sink with a wary gaze, and answers the phone.

She has an older model phone, a dirty off-white color. It has one of those coiled cords that gets tangled and knotted when it’s hung up on the wall. Josie likes to talk and twirl it around her fingers like they used to do in the movies before phones stopped having cords. Her phone rings sharply, incessant. While most phones today play Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 4, she’s never felt the need to have anything but a piercing alert. She calls herself old-school. She picks the receiver up on the fifth ring, balancing it between her cheek and shoulder.

“Lo?” She says, and kneels to pick up the piece of tile that has broken off the sink. She still watches the grated cavity underneath it suspiciously.

“Josie.” Its Martin. His voice is good. Like yogurt. Soft, special.

“Hey, Martin.” She says, and seats herself on the cold floor of the kitchen, Indian-style. She winds the cord demurely with one hand and with the other examines the piece of tile.

“What are you up to, babe?” Martin is happy today. She can picture him reclining on his couch, watching day-time television, getting ready for his shift at Fed/Ex-Kinkos. He ships packages there, and wears a crisp white shirt and slacks with a shiny name tag. She often thinks un-holy thoughts about him in that crisp white shirt. Her stomach give a tug just as her mind wanders to it. She runs her tongue over her lips.

“Oh, cleaning… The mice are back under the sink.” She mentions this as a point of interest, plain and simple. If she thought he judged her because of the wayward rodents in her tidy little apartment she would have spared him the information. She didn’t because he didn’t. plain and simple.

There is a pause over the phone. “Babe, have you taken your Thorazine today?”

Thorazine. “That’s a generic name you know, Martin”

“Your chlorpromazine then”

She shakes her head, knowing full well he can’t detect her response. She hates when he asks that, was this why he called, to check up on her? “No” she says, adding edge to her voice to tell him that it irritates her the way he babies her. Josie’s mildly schizophrenic. They tell her you can’t be mildly schizophrenic, only are or are you are not schizophrenic. She feels she’d not ready to make that assertion yet.

Martin sighs into the phone. Whether or not he bothers her about her disorder. edit, minds her disorder. edit, slight disorder, after this many years of being together Josie is ready to make the claim that they do love each other. Therefore, she will remain patient. Turning the tile over in her had she slices her finger along the edge, making a small cut.

“Martin, I’m okay.” She sucks on her finger to staunch the tiny bead of blood on the tip. “I think I need some help re-caulking the sink”

“Josie, honey, go take your meds.”

She eyes the underbelly of the sink with mild apprehension. “Okay, but im telling you, these rats are remising.”

“I thought you said they were mice?”

“Tomato, tomah-toe”

Another sigh, another exhalation of breath. Martin’s thinking. He says: “babe, go take your meds. I’ll come by tonight after work, alright? I love you.”

Josie’s stomach flip-flops for the second time. “Okay” she says, which could mean anything. She stands and replaces the phone receiver on the wall.

She takes up the pan again and taps it along the counter-top, uncommitted. She walks to the kitchen cabinet, the one higher up where she keeps spices and dry goods. She sets the pan aside, reaches up and pulls down the small prescription bottle sitting near the cumin. She fumbles for a moment with the baby-proof cap and finally gets it loose. She shakes out a small tablet.

She discerns her palm, in it the fine dark orange disk. She flips it over, reading the inscription branded into the coating. She cocks her head a moment, considering. Then, she sidles to the sink cupboard, bends on one knee and opens the screening with great deliberation. She can feel their eyes on her, small and dark. Observing her, tolerating her. She reaches forward with the tablet, and sticks it squarely on the platform of one of the traps, a humble offering.

“Here, take it” she cooes, almost humming. “You’re remising.”

Lampyridae (A Love Story)

At four in the morning, it woke up and at seven in the evening it was caught in a jar and used as a reading lamp until it sputtered and died. Between those two dynamic and equally earth-shattering moments, it ate, grew, fell in love, fell out of love, fell back in love and then out again. By eight-o’clock that night, when the boy had opened the jar back up to set it free, it had already been dead for a half hour (maybe longer) and it’s rear-end had fizzled out leaving a weird blue glow in the jar and behind the boy’s eyelids.

The boy would always wonder about that after glow. Whenever his mamma would turn the lights out, he’d think of that jar, the one that looked like captured radiation. He’d blink his eyes once or twice, trying to get rid of the image of the room in negative.

This story isn’t about the boy, for the boy was busy living his life. The little thing in the jar, however, had finished and was now reflecting as the air ran out of the Jar. It had lived a very short life, and in the moments of its expiration had glittered and popped as the little light his thorax produced started to die-out. It felt it had spent too much time loving, and not enough time understanding, for now, it had no idea what to do in its current dire circumstances. It spent more time with his small brain clouded with romance and the scents of females, the tiny sparks of loving in the dark, the warmth of nearness, that it was now In great need of escape and hadn’t the capacity. It lay its head down on the cold-ish glass of the bottom of the jar, the part that raised just enough for it to elevate his mandibles and sigh outwardly. It moved its legs to a more comfortable position and watched as its formerly excellent vision began to blur around the edges. I have loved but I have not lived… but what is it to live without having loved? Then, with a moment of self satisfaction, It quietly passed away, leaving a dim blue glow in its wake.

You Must Be This Tall

We were on the side, where there weren’t no one looking. We were up in the air, where not nobody could shake a fist at. We were down below, where they we could dodge their rubber soles when they took them giant steps above us. We was invisible. There were four of us at the time, pink cheeked and outta breath. We tongued suckers and lipped cotton candy the color of our ruddy faces. There was big-tops and trains, toy boats and freak apartments. That man with the no arms, he done rocked back and forth like a monkey in a straight jacket and we’d watched like anyone dumb enough to sit and giggle. It was summer, and like I said before, we’d run underfoot. Things ain’t like that place was. It was gold, and it was brown and summer-tasting. There wasn’t no fear like back when, in that gold place. It was warm and oblivion and we loved it. We would sit for hours in that place, would stick out our tongues at them leering clown faces, impressed to heck with our own grotesque faces we made in the mirror wall. During the noon hours the four of us worked to spoil that sweet of ice cream and chocolate round our mouths, spouting words like “Hell!” and “Damn!” and “Screw!” as loudly as we could into the midway. We’d look around like we ain’t had a clue if we was bein’ watched by someone’s gramma or somthin’. At seven, Josie, Cal, Dickey and my mamma’d come and get me for a supper we was never gonna eat from bein sick over all that junk. I got myself a beltin’ those nights from getting my dungarees all dusty and smudged from road dirt an sugar, but in the end, there’d been a few hours there where weren’t no-one looking and where not nobody could shake a fist at. Those gold days when we was invisible.

Not There

Dirty sneakers line the foot of the entryway. A stack of drippy umbrellas and the carpet dusted with tracked-in leaves and pollen… there was once a time when it hadn’t been carpet, but hardwood—easier to sweep. In the foyer, on a lamp table, sits the day’s mail and still damp rolled newspaper bundled with ads and coupons. The rubber band that ties it all up is pink and inviting. Though it is two in the afternoon, no-one has bothered to look at the mail or the newspaper. The living room is dark; the heavy shades are pulled against the weather. The housekeeper brought in fresh flowers despite the weather and snipped the stems with sheers that now rest on the cutting board block. The kitchen is spotless; dull grey light permeates the porcelain sink and Teflon pans patterned with blue cornflowers. The room smells sharply of ammonia and lemon, sterile and clean. There is a dishtowel neatly folded over the refrigerator handle, for convenience sake. The front door opens and shuts abruptly, and the silence is broken only by this.